What I Hurt On My Summer Vacation

by Joe MacLeod

WARNING: We will be showing you some pictures of minor injuries and one medical mystery sustained on Summer Vacation. They are not beautiful.

ALMOST EVERY YEAR my wife and I drive up to the beautiful and scenic and everything smells like pine trees Adirondacks in Upstate NY to stay in a rental cabin near our favorite lake, Schroon Lake. It’s pretty much all fun and games until somebody gets hurt, and then it’s fun and games again. It’s refreshingly and revivifyingly childlike, I think, the way we shrug off injuries when we are all lathered up and hellbent on having a good time. 

For us, a good time means paddling around on the lake in kayaks, swimming in the lake, standing around in the lake, walking to town, getting all sweaty from walking to town and then jumping in the lake, sitting in a comfy chair in the cabin reading a book, sitting on a deck by the lake staring at the lake, sitting on a dock on the lake drinking beer, and pretty much all the time listening to music. Also: eating food and snacks. Not good would be the normal crap like watching TV and looking at a computer and phone and stuff, feh!

There’s a lotta recreational sitting, even in the kayak, so it’s not some sorta crazy athletic-lifestyle activity we’re talking about here, but I always manage to sustain some sort of injury, and this year my wife joined me, possibly by coincidence, in joining the ranks of the vacation walking wounded. I don’t think the beer drinking has anything to do with these injuries, honest. If I thought there was a correlation I would say so. I enjoy the effects of alcohol, I ain’t gonna lie, but I take getting loaded at camp very seriously as far as Safety First.