A Thanksgiving I wish I could remember

What happened?
What did I do?
Where is my gear?
How many hospitals have we been too together? (question to Erin)
Only two you’re getting off easy (my response to Erin)
Did you tell them I am allergic to sulfa drugs
This is the best hospital I’ve been to in Europe.

These are the questions that I kept asking every 90 seconds for the better part of the day this Thanksgiving..
This time a week ago I was driving south from Berlin to a small ski area in Austria; to say I was excited would be a major understatement.
The last thing I remember is getting gas north of Munich around 10 pm Wednesday night.
Thursday night I wake up long enough to wonder where I am, and realize that I am not dead because I can reach over and touch Erin. I smile and fall back into a mix of head injury and sleep.
I wake up Friday morning; notice my neck and abs really hurt; my eyes are slow to open and focus. I look out the window and see a mountain that looks like the mountains around Estes Park. One of my first thoughts is how did I get to Estes?
One of my next thoughts was what the hell happened to me?
Erin explained that I was skiing in a white out and feel about six feet; if it where not for my helmet the spots of blood that the cat scans found in my brain would be much larger. This news does not make me happy, but at this point I am just glad to wake up to my beautiful wife.

I quickly go threw my memory:
Parents names, day I got married, address back home, phone numbers, friends names, peoples faces, email passwords, bank accounts, its all there!!

Friday was spent taking EEG tests, heart tests, ultra sounds, and getting to know my two other roommates that I was sharing a room in the Neurological ward with. They told me their names, but I decided to call the one that had his head bandaged “Rio” and the one that snuck alchool into the room “Zach”. These guys are not nearly as cool as their namesakes, but they would have to do for the week.
I don’t really remember much from Friday, and in retrospect really was not doing to well. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been on Erin.

Saturday I woke up and felt good, not great but good. I was going to be OK. I still had to be in the hospital for 3 more days, but I was going to be OK..

I never claimed to be a smart man (something that has become harder with the loss of brain cells recently), but I have been smart enough to learn from my mistakes. So I decided that I would spend the next few days learning from this mistake. The problem with this objective is that I don’t remember about 48 hours of my life, and that where I had my accident was substantially below my skiing ability. My inability to learn from this mistake was really starting to bother me; after all if I could not learn from it then what was the point of causing this much stress in people?
This need has been with me for the last 5 days; at first I thought life was telling be to back off the adventure sports that I love to do, but then it hit me! Everything that happened this year the marriage, joy, success, pain, shitty times, injuries, the move, and general stress of 2007 happened so that we could slow day and same “Dam we are lucky” lucky to be alive, lucky to be married, lucky to have such great friends, lucky to have great family, lucky to have a job, lucky to have my brain, and lucky to have had so many experiences in life that have left me breathless and feeling very lucky.
So even though I was throwing up, getting cat scans, wondering who I was this past Thanksgiving does not mean that I did not learn to be thankful to call you all friends and to be alive.
In the words of our guide from Machu Picchu “everything is possible, and nothing is sure” so make sure you slow down a bit and realize just how dam lucky we all are this holiday season.

(Thanksgiving dinner?)

I have some dam good friends

So I woke up knowing that I have to submit my application to CSU and a bunch of school work I need to get done today. I open the computer check my email and see this http://www.myspace.com/flatpatrick1 (make sure you click on Patricks first adventure) in an email from Zach.
Now being thousands of miles away gallivanting around Europe isn’t always as glamorous as it may seam (although it is pretty cool) At times its really hard being so far away from family and friends especially when we are lucky to have such a great group of family and friends (great seams like an inadequate word for you all, maybe I will invent a new word to describe how lucky I feel to know you guys. How about a combination of super, great, fantastic, amazing, lucky, blessed) so here is the word that I feel is adequate of everyone’s "greatness" sufanamalucssed. I am not really sure how to pronounce it, but hey living in Berlin I have gotten used to words that I cant pronounce and have to many letters in them.
So back to the myspace page. It made me laugh out loud; I was literally coughing up my cereal it was so funny. It was just what the Dr ordered..
I can't wait to see all the adventures of flat Patrick over the next few months; lets just hope the guys can keep up with him on the slopes; after all I heard he learned how to ski from the real Patrick.

Berlin livin

Good morning America! How is everyone back home? I feel like all I do on here is talk about me, and the cool places we have been. So lets talk about you!
What have you been up to?
What’s new in your life?
Are you going anywhere cool for Christmas?
Any really interesting new year’s resolutions?
Or you could just email me and tell me how your life just hasn’t been the same since Erin and I left..
So feel free to email me at kayakclimb247@yahoo.com

Alright enough about you, it’s time to talk about what we have been up to.

We got our first snow in Berlin!!!

Incase you hadn’t noticed Erin and I have been doing our best to not be in Berlin much, and until last week we where pretty successful at that goal. I think I was only in Berlin 4 days the entire month of October. Well that has changed; like the gray cloud that has moved into Berlin we to have been hanging around a lot.
There is so much to see and do in this town that not leaving it just gives us a chance to explore the city we live in and the cool things it has to offer.
Last weekend we road to the huge forest that is close to our apartment in Zehlendorf. This forest is called the Gruenavald and contains the only hill in Berlin. For those of you that aren’t in the know, Berlin is the flattest place I have ever lived and the fact that there is a hill is odd because the geology of the area is all sand. So you may be wondering how did this hill get to Berlin? Well my friends that’s a great question that I can answer for you. Much of Germany has been shaped by the two world wars that it hosted; this fact holds true for the geography of Berlin. Berlin was the most heavily bombed area in the European front. Those bombs blew up 90% of the city leaving Berlin in ruins. The allies decided to take all of these ruins and pile them up in the South Western part of the city. This is how berlins only hill came to be, it’s literally made out of the buildings of old Berlin.
Now Berliners are smart people they said “hey we have a hill” what should we do with it? So in 1969 they got a bunch of concrete and poured mans first artificial climbing wall (they where very ahead of the times). Other parts of the hills provide a place to fly kites, mountain bike, fly remote controlled airplanes, and on top of the tallest one is an old CIA radar station.

They ended up pouring about 10 of these concrete structures all over the city. Not knowing my way around the city and being a climber I decided the only way to learn the city was to visit these structures. I have been to most of them and I have to say that they are really cool, some are old bunkers that in WW2 housed 10’s of thousands of people and other are just poured concrete that was poured for the sole purpose of climbing.

Thanks for reading the blogg; I need to get back to school work and planning some trips. Ruff life really..
Hope you are all doing well
Patric