A Valentine's weekend to remember, part 2

(In our last episode, I was clutching my bloody ass and wondering where the hell my keys could have gone...)

With no keys, we can't drive home. I can't get into the office on Monday, since it's a holiday and none of the office people with spare keys will be there. So I quickly reach the obvious conclusion:

Me: "We have to go back."
Keiko: "GO BACK?!?!? Go back WHERE?!?!"

So I give what is pretty obviously a persuasive, eminently rational explanation why we should walk back to the site of our recent near-death experience. However, since my credibility with Keiko is at something of a low ebb (ha!), my "persuasive", "eminently rational" explanation comes off to her a bit more as "unconvincing", and "totally insane".

We compromise by agreeing that we will walk back there, and from the safety of the high cliff peer over the edge and see if we can spot the keys down there. Since there are several shiny trinkets attached to the keys, which helps prevent me from losing them (normally) and which are probably at least in part responsible from my losing what is rapidly becoming clear is a significant chunk of the skin on my right ass cheek, and since the rocks are very dark, owing to what I now more clearly realize is their near constant inundation by waves, it's possible in theory that the keys are just stuck in one of the little crevices that the waves pushed me along, and might therefore be visible against the dark rock when viewed from above.

We decide to leave as a Point To Be Negotiated Later what will happen if in fact we do see the keys down there. There turns out to be some strongly divergent feelings on that issue. It is not unlike when the Israelis and the Palestinians, after much impassioned discussion, agree that a summit is a good idea, and that if you're going to have a summit, some place like Oslo where the weather is cool and the women are hot would be a good place to have it, but we'll leave the other details, like Palestinian statehood, right of return, final status of Jerusalem, and the continued existence of Israeli settlements on the West Bank as points to be negotiated later.

So we turn around and start walking back. Fortunately, the adrenaline hasn't really dissipated yet, so although I am aware in a general sense that I have sustained a lot of injuries, and am going to be feeling a lot of very specific pains in the near future, I at this moment feel only a general, amorphous sense of Pain. It's not exactly a short walk, but we move quickly and return to the scene of our brush with death.

From our safe perch high on the cliff, we scan the area surrounding where we started and ended up. No evidence of the keys turns up. But, after much looking, I do notice that high tide still hasn't come in yet, and I decide that now is a good time to bring up my insight that the obvious flaw in the previous Plan was that we didn't pay consistent, careful attention to the ocean, but now I, having swiftly and wisely learned from experience, have developed a New Revised Plan.

Me: "OK, I'm just going to go back down there for a quick look around, youstayrightuphere, and watch the waves. If you see one that looks particularly big, scream or something and I'll get out of there immediately."

See? A sensible new Plan.

Keiko: "OHMYGODYOUARENOTGOINGBACKDOWNTHERE!!"

Keiko is _flipped out_. She is at least an order of magnitude more upset than she was in the immediate aftermath of nearly getting killed. This catches me a little by surprise, but fortunately she is still somewhat in shock, and clearly exhausted by the whole experience, and so faced with a negotiating strategy of quiet persistence, she eventually capitulates. As I climb down the cliff I reflect that she probably figures that if I get myself killed in the next 10 minutes, she's super hot and should therefore be able to hitch a ride to the nearest airport without much trouble.

So, a few minutes later, I find myself back on the dark wet rocks. I am now feeling acute paranoia, and look up at the ocean about every 0.8 seconds. This makes looking through the million nooks and crannies in the rock a pretty slow process, and a couple of times I see a suspicious wave and bolt for the cliff, but the ocean more or less behaves itself, and I comb pretty much the whole area.

And then, in the crevice that leads to a 6 inch wide horizontal cleft in the rock that quickly plunges 4-5 feet into the ocean, and which the original wave pushed me clear over (thankfully), I see a glint of metal. I reach down there, and pull up the key to our hotel room. Or what's left of it, anyway. It's a large oval metal tag that says "Sea Rock Inn Rm 4", with half of a key attached. The key has been cleanly snapped in two. It was the only key not attached to the primary set of keys I was carrying, since it isn't mine. I can't believe it's snapped in half like that. That's apparently how hard I my ass hit the rocks. This realization suddenly, perceptibly accelerates forward the time at which I am going to start fully feeling the pain associated with my injuries.

However, I am cheered by having found the key, so I redouble my efforts to find the other keys. But the afternoon clouds are coming in, the wind is picking up, and the waves are starting to come more frequently, and I start getting the feeling that the tide is going to start really coming in soon. And so, after casing the area one last time, I give up the search and climb back up onto the cliff, where Keiko is now shivering, and, admittedly with some justification, feeling pretty unhappy.

So we start walking back to the inn. It's somewhat of a long walk, and by the time we get back, it's pretty clear that the adrenaline-induced grace period on pain is swiftly coming to an end. So, we walk through the front door to talk to Barbara, the innkeeper, and get a new key to our room. We are absolutely drenched, shivering from the long walk in the chilly ocean wind, and visibly bleeding.

Barbara: "OH MY GOD! What HAPPENED to you guys??"

I figure I should probably field this one.

I explain to her about the Plan, and how it had seemed like a Good Plan, but which had, in the final analysis, really turned out to be more of a Retarded Plan, etc., etc., and Barbara flips out. We get a lecture about how people die out there, we're lucky to be alive, and so on. But she's very kind and sympathetic, and gives us a new key, her last couple bandages, and the phone numbers to a place that will deliver food, so we don't have to go out tonight, and the one car rental place nearby, which is 15 miles away in Fort Bragg.

I need the car rental place because my spare key is in Half Moon Bay. There's no one I can really ask to do a 9 hour round trip to bring the key to me, and even if there were, I wouldn't ask, because no way do I deserve to weasel out of that. It's now past 5, if there is a locksmith, he's probably up in Ft. Bragg also, we'd have to use some kind of emergency contact, and he'd have to not only unlock my vehicle, but fashion a key to start it. There seems to be a lot of uncertainty in that scenario, plus it may well be more expensive than renting a car for a day, so I figure we'll just do the 9 hour round trip tomorrow, and then stay here tomorrow night.

Trouble is, it turns out there are no more rooms here tomorrow night. So Barbara calls next door, at the Agate Cove Inn (in Mendocino, every building is one of 3 things: a B&B, a restaurant, or a funky shop selling local artisans' stuff) and gets us the last room over there.

So we take our new key and trudge up to our room, where we peel off our wet, bloody clothes and put them by the fireplace. Then we take a super long hot shower to get the dirt and blood off. I am still bleeding rather a lot, it turns out. And I can't put pressure on all the different places at once, so I start prioritizing. This also proves to be a good time to do an inventory of our injuries: Keiko has sustained cuts to several places on her arms, plus sizable bruises on her arms, legs, and ribcage. I have lost the skin on my right ass cheek, some of the skin on my left knee, most of the skin on my right knee, and several large patches of skin on my right leg and right hand. It is also clear that there is bruising pretty much everywhere on the right side of my body (though bruises rarely are visible on my skin).

In addition to that, as someone who has broken multiple bones, some of them multiple times, sprained both ankles multiple times, sprained my wrist, been knocked unconscious several times, fallen from a tree, and been nearly drowned multiple times, I am here to tell you that every type of physical trauma has a unique flavor of pain associated with it, and it is just after the shower that all the specific pains finally hit. And there are a lot of them. But, it allows me to compare against previous experience and give a rough diagnosis: right ankle, clearly sprained, clearly mild-moderate severity. Right knee, clearly sprained, moderate to severe. Both knees and the ankle are starting to swell severely now. And did I mention the pain? Ouch. ouchouchouchouchouch.

I hobble over to the phone and dial up the car rental place. It's the only car rental place within 50 miles, and it's Enterprise, but when you're as far away as we are, they don't pick you up. Not that it matters- they don't have any cars available. Right, it's a holiday weekend, and they are a tiny facility. And, they're closed on Sundays. Which means, we may not be able to get a car until Monday. He advises us to check in tomorrow morning and see if anyone returns their car early.

So Keiko and I are stuck. We camp out on the bed and watch TV for a couple of hours, and then decide to see if we can walk into town and get some food. Upon attempting to stand, I nearly end up in a heap on the floor, since all the joints are swollen and stiff. Also, they really, really hurt. And, upon looking back at the bed, it's clear that over the last 3 hours my ass has continued to bleed for some nontrivial portion of the time. Oops.

But we're starving, and there's a nice restaurant in town, and I think I owe Keiko about a million nice dinners after this, so I grit my teeth, struggle into some clothes, and we hobble slowly down the road into town. Once we're moving, the pain is much more manageable. We eventually make it into town, and have a very nice, very slow dinner, after which I am once again almost unable to stand, as the joints have stiffened up again. But a bottle of wine has gone a long way to dulling the pain.

We hobble back to the inn, and go straight to bed. Over the course of the night, I wake up about 3 million times, because every act of moving is an act that involves a high degree of pain, so every time I move, I wake myself up and find myself in pain. By morning I am exhausted and miserable.

At 1130am, as we are packing up our stuff to move next door to the Agate Cove, the Enterprise in Fort Bragg calls, and says someone just dropped off an SUV, which I can have if I can get to them before they close in 30 minutes. I tell him to hold it for me, and then hobble down to the office at the Sea Rock as fast as my gimpy joints can take me.

I stumble into the office, where Barbara is talking with an older couple who have just arrived, and who are friends with the owner. I quickly explain that we can get a rental car if I can get to Fort Bragg in the next 25 minutes, and that we're all winning if i do since my car is stuck in the Sea Rock's limited parking until I can get into it. The older gentleman, Rick, listens to an extremely abbreviated version of the story, and then volunteers to drive me.

So Keiko stays behind to move us from Sea Rock to Agate, and Rick and I head for Fort Bragg. Along the way, he gets the fuller version of the story, and in his super-chill NoCal way, says, "Oh well, live and learn, I guess." Yeah, that's true. I'm especially excited about the living part right now.

As we enter Fort Bragg, Rick turns to me and says, "So where is the Enterprise?"

Uh oh.

Back at the Sea Rock, when I had said that's where we needed to go, he had reacted as though he knew exactly where that was. So, I didn't think to get the address. And I have no cell phone to call anyone with, since it's waterlogged. And, it's 11:52. I tell him to pull over at a Longs Drugs that we're passing, and I run (well, hobble very quickly) inside and up to an old guy at the Photo Development counter. I ask him where the Enterprise is, and he says "Wow, I didn't even know they finally got a rental car place around here!"

sigh

But he hands me the Yellow pages, and I look up the address and ask him where that is. It turns out to be only a few blocks away, so I make it to the Enterprise at 11:58, where Michael, the guy I've spoken with on the phone multiple times, has apparently been making bets with his assistant as to whether I'd make it before close. Ha ha.

So he rents me a Chrysler Aspen, which, if you haven't seen one, is about the size of a double decker bus. But it's a vehicle, and I thank Rick profusely, offer to buy him and his wife dinner (he politely refuses), and then head back to get Keiko.

Our room at the Agate is amazing, and priced accordingly, which is probably why it was the last one available. A beautiful ocean view. But Keiko and I pile into the Aspen, and begin the 4.5 hour trek back to Half Moon Bay. For the record, if you have a sprained right ankle and knee, driving is extremely uncomfortable. But Keiko, being a New York City girl, very rarely drives, and is also banged up, and we have to drive over some rather treacherous roads, so I just suck it up and do 3.5 of the driving hours. In further proof that you can take the boy out of the Catholicism, but you can't take the Catholicism out of the boy, I figure this is all just part of my Penance Plan.

[St. Peter: "What did you come up with, J.C.? I came up with 2 weeks of unremitting joint pain, near-total loss of credibility with his girlfriend, total loss of credibility with the girlfriend's mother, ridicule from his friends, and a month off from sports."

Jesus: "Taking the economic view- one expensive hotel room, replacement costs for a phone, two digital cameras, a security badge, and an office key, a car rental -biggest size possible-, gas, and a lot of flowers."

St. Peter: Ah, but a little bit of wisdom...

Jesus: ...priceless.]

4.5 hours later, Keiko and I pulled into Half Moon Bay. I keep a spare house key hidden outside, and so we go inside the house and I immediately get the spare car key. It feels so sweet to have one thing back that I lost. I also look up my student's home phone number, so I can call her and let her know that I won't be able to see her on Monday. Her dad answers, and since I don't really feel like explaining right now the ways in which his daughter's expensive tutor is a retard, I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm just playing hookey.

We grab season 3 of Coupling, since once we get back to the Agate Cove, we're not going to (a) feel like doing anything but laying around, or (b) be able to do anything even if we wanted to, since the town shuts down at like 9p.m. And then we drive the 4.5 hours back, getting back to the Agate Cove at 1030pm. At this point, I am rapidly learning all the roads in Mendocino County like the back of my hand. Exhausted, we retire early.

The next day, we lie in bed and watch Coupling, plus admire the amazing ocean view from our room. Then we avail ourselves of the fancy shower with two showerheads. I desperately covet one of these- although showering with someone has a certain kind of obvious upside potential, having your own consistent stream of hot water is also awesome, and so, dammit, why not have both?

We head down to breakfast, and upon entering the dining room, are loudly announced to everyone by the innkeeper, who we have not actually met yet, as "our celebrity guests who nearly got swept away yesterday." All conversation stops and everyone turns to look at us. Awesome. That's definitely what you want with breakfast.

[St. Peter: "Public humiliation? Wow. I didn't see how that could get worked in."

Jesus: "Yeah, that was a bit inspired, if I do say so Myself"]


The Agate Cove Inn. Breakfast and humor served daily.











After breakfast, we pack up to check out, and I propose that since we didn't get to hike around the headlands Friday, why don't we do it today before we go. After all, the pain tends to be pretty manageable as long as I keep moving. It's just the starting and stopping that really hurt.


The view at the Agate Cove.












In the picture above, you can see just above my right shoulder a chunk of the headlands that sticks way out into the ocean. And at the very bottom of the chunk, if you look closely, you can see a little nub that sticks even farther out. That's where we almost died.

So after making a quick run up to Fort Bragg to dump off the rental, we drive back to the scene and park, and start walking around the headlands.

The coastline around here is so awesome, though I do recommend viewing it from up here. Note that the dark rock is rock that is regularly hit by ocean water, which tells you how big the waves can be.








Look at the size of the wave in the lower right. I don't think the camera adequately conveys how big it is.





Along the way, I mention to Keiko that having a near-death experience places her in an elite subcategory of my friends- friends I've had some level of near-death experience with:

Tom, vehicular, ca 1989, I-40 in southeast MO, definitely his fault
Plaid, vehicular, ca. 1989, highway 59 in East Texas, definitely his fault
Plaid, vehicular, ca. 1990, I-55 in Mississippi, definitely my fault
Joel and Zhian, wilderness, ca. 1991, Big Sur, definitely Zhian's fault
Shara, vehicular, ca. 1992, just outside the Riverport Ampitheatre after the Steve Miller concert, definitely the fault of some fraction of the 6 other drivers involved.
Laszlo, wilderness, ca. 1996, Arches National Park, definitely his fault, despite what he says (note to self: when wandering in the desert, never let the Jew lead)
Sarah, wilderness, ca. 1997, Big Sur, shared fault (my risky plan, her not following the plan)
Laura, vehicular, ca. 1998, I-70 outside Indianapolis, definitely my fault
Jeffrey, wilderness, ca. 2004, Banff National Park, definitely my fault
SP (my sister), vehicular, ca. 2005, I-10, definitely my fault
Keiko, wilderness, 2008, Mendocino, definitely my fault

Unfortunately, I had some difficulty accurately conveying the appeal of being in such an elite club.

After about 20 minutes of walking, I turn to Keiko and inform her that we've got to go back to the car. This is the third calendar day since the incident, and the pain in my leg and ankle has gotten steadily worse. Given that my ankle and leg are probably at least sprained, I should probably not be hiking around on them anyway. It's just that I was really hoping to have a nice hike on some beautiful coastline, dammit.

So we go back to the car and decide to just head back to Half Moon Bay. We decide to take a slightly different route, because I'm tired of the same old Mendocino highways I've been up and down so much recently, plus this route will take us through Ukiah, where I have reason to believe there is a used bookstore with science fiction, and where we can get some lunch.

In Ukiah, we get some food and decide to see Jumper. As we are getting ready to go inside the theatre...

Keiko: "I can't find my cell phone."
Me: "When was the last time you saw it?"
Keiko: "When I gave it to you last night so you could set the alarm. You put it on your bedside table. You didn't pick it up when we left this morning?"
Me: "Uh, no."

Bear in mind, Ukiah is already 2 hours away from Mendocino. We are nearly halfway home. The movie is starting in 5 minutes. I'd call Agate, but I never had their number, because Barbara is the one who spoke with them. Plus, I have no phone to call with, since it's ruined. And now Keiko doesn't have a phone either.

So I dig out my credit card receipt, which thankfully has an 800# on it, and then we go in search of a pay phone, which we eventually find (it's not so easy to do anymore). We call Agate, and sure enough, the phone is still on the bedside table. They are fine with our driving back to get it after the movie.

So we watch the movie, which we both enjoyed, and then I drive the 2 hours back to Mendocino again- this is the 3rd time in 4 days we're driving into Mendocino from a point at least 2 hours away, and pick up the phone, and then turn around and drive all the way back to Half Moon Bay.


The view of the Mendocino coast. Um, covered in fog. But pretty nonetheless...









And that was basically our Valentine's weekend. We also spent Monday together, but were careful to do nothing more adventurous than go get lunch. Do I know how to show a girl a good time or what?

Postscript: As of this writing, nearly 2 weeks from the original incident, my ass and legs are still covered with scabs. Also, after 5 straight days of slowing increasing pain, I did finally go to the doctor- a terrible indignity as far as I'm concerned. They did x-rays, and fortunately I did not break or fracture my leg. Instead, my diagnosis of sprained ankle and knee were confirmed, and in addition to that I have a mild contusion below my left knee and a severe contusion below the right knee. Apparently it's likely I bruised the bone. I didn't know you could do that.

Another thing I didn't know is, for the first 72 hours after you sprain something or get a contusion, you want to apply ice. What you don't want to do is apply heat, since that opens up the blood vessels and increases the amount of immune system inflammatory markers that cause swelling and pain. So, each of those long hot showers I took for the first 3 days after the incident was absolutely the wrong thing to do.

Yet another thing I didn't know is that after the 72 hour window, you do want to apply heat, rather than cold. The heat, by opening up the blood vessels, increases blood flow that takes away the inflammatory markers that cause the swelling and pain. So, when Keiko flew back to NYC about 72 hours later, and I woke up the next morning in severe pain, and I realized I had only phone students that day, and I work in a solo office, I decided that I would eliminate any non-essential standing or movement. And that included my daily hot shower, either on Day 4, or Day 5. So once again, I did exactly the wrong thing.

So ends the story- we're both banged up, but still alive. And we're still dating, owing entirely to Keiko's good sense of humor and inherent Japanese stoicism.

Ecclesiastes 1:18 says: "Because in much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain." I have gained much wisdom, at the cost of much pain. So feel free, dear reader, to consider me a kind of Napster of wisdom- you can just download my wisdom content for free without having to pay the price I paid for it. Because I just like you that much.