Sunday, April 19, 2009
Muchos snakes ahead!!!
Rattlesnake Meets Bike from hjv on Vimeo.
I wanted to weigh in on what appears to be a rather innocuous video of me bike riding to some music.
Nature is a brutal and unforgiving bitch, and I lapsed into what seemed like hours of fighting a tangled snake in the bottom-half of my bike in this video. Camera angles be DAMNED. The horrifying sight of watching a half-pinned rattlesnake try to strike your very leg that is mercilessly locked into a metal bicycle pedal is something I cannot erase from my memory. Not in a week at least.
I spent most of Monday morning researching and remembering snake bites of friends and strangers alike. Most of my phone conversations that very afternoon seemed flippant as to the outcome of such an encounter, but my friends (every SINGLE one of them) reminded me how bad a hemotoxicic bite could have been. I'll leave out the details regarding vomiting blood and self-urination, but the reality is that I was about 1 mile from the nearest road, in fairly heavy grass and scrub brush so I'm not even sure the cell phone would have worked in an emergency...
Photo after graphic photo of pit viper bites accompanying gut-wrenching testimony by bite victims made me want to get up and leave work and sit in a corner at home for awhile. This was in direct contradiction to the EXTREME elation I felt just minutes after the event, where I biked like an adrenalized demon through the remaining mile of unknown singletrack while all the RIGHT songs played through the tiny earphones of the iPod.
Proof of a God?
I don't care.
I HAVE SURVIVED, and that which does not kill me makes me stronger.
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5 comments:
Yikes. You're wasted on vimeo, H. You need your own cable TV show. I'd watch it. ;)
Ugh, I hate snakes. I would have peed.
Skye and majorh,
The most awesome feeling of being alive hit shortly after this event. It was like electricity. And all the right songs played on the ipod for the next 2 miles!
Proof of a God?
It isn't going to stop you from putting yourself in the position of it possibly happening again though, right? Because that's who you are. You live life to the full, and then things happen that remind you that you are (living). For years I've watched you do hideous things to yourself in the name of fitness and fun. I can't imagine you being any other way. You're that nudge in the ribs that says "Get out there, and breathe".
I am captivated by the deep blue skies of a clear day...
They remind me of my youth.
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