A One Handed Blog

So there I was, driving along quite happily on the freeway into work. Since I have car pool stickers for my Prius I was in the carpool lane and just going with the generally flow of traffic…when I happened to look in my rear view mirror to see a bike speeding up behind me…with flashing blue lights.

Oh great, I thought, as I pulled into the next lane only to be followed by the police bike. Me, in my little Prius being pulled over for speeding…the embarrassment of it all. Being pulled over in my wife’s M3 (which I have been), fine. Being pulled over on my Suzuki GSXR-750 motorbike (which I have been), I can accept…but in a Prius, please!

I pulled off the freeway and stopped. Officer Garcia gets of his bike, walks up and introduces himself, boy am I glad I got everything squared away with the DMV now!. Tells me he’s pulled me over for speeding and does the usual. Anyway, after he’s handed over the ticket he inquires how long ago I lost my hand.

So I told him and he then askes how I lost it, so I explained a little of the story. And he then tells me that he’s a skydiver and starts talking about how he was skydiving at night one time and came close to landing in power lines…imagine that. Not that it did me any good, he didn’t let me off the ticket.

So caught, not red handed but one handed…nice to know some things don’t change, eh.

My brother came to visit from the UK for the week on his way to his company’s annual sales meeting. I hadn’t seen him since he visited me in hospital in Miami back in March/April last year.

It was great to see him again, although Kaboodle kept me pretty busy during the week I managed to at least take a day off during the week and went down to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Both of us have been keen divers so it was fun to go see the fishes without getting wet and cold.

At the weekend we did a day trip to Kirkwood for some snowboarding with my boarding buddy Robert. It was bitterly cold in the morning, probably the coldest I’ve ever experienced down there and the snow is still not great…but the sky was blue! We haven’t boarded together for probably 8+ years, so it was fun to chase each other around the slopes.

The only challenge was that, by the end of the day, my stump was aching from the cold…my prosthetic just "conducts" the cold and the circulation isn’t that great in my stump at the best of times. When I took my socket and silicon sleve off the end of my stump felt like an ice cube! I’m goning to have to experiment with something to keep it warm.