Friday, December 27, 2019

Third time's a charm? Three strikes you're out? Bad luck comes in threes?

In the nearly 20 years Terry and I have been together prior to Calgary I can think of five ER visits: each of Alex's broken arms, when Zoltan "broke his head wide open" (needed one stitch), when Terry rolled the tractor over his foot, and when baby Alex had a fever and I foolishly went against every instinct to just wait another day.

We arrived in late July. We had our third ER trip recently. Dayenu! (Enough!)

Trip #1: our third day at post. We had gone to Shakespeare in the Park and after the performance Zoltan fell off the stage while playing around. He refused to put any weight on his foot for 2 days, we finally decided to get that checked out.
Diagnosis: Dramatic license

Trip #2: Zoltan is sort of, a little bit, run over by a car when on his way home from piano practice. In an abundance of caution, the driver called the police and ambulance, and the paramedic (when I arrived on the scene) convinced me to let them ambulance take him to the hospital to get checked out.
Diagnosis: Overabundance of caution, but we couldn't have lived with ourselves if he had internal bleeding and we hadn't gotten it checked out.

Trip #3: Terry was cutting our new ice skate guards down to the right size and his hand slipped on the boxcutter blade. We first thought it was simply a bad cut that would need stitches then realized he couldn't move part of his finger.
Diagnosis: sliced tendon. Needed surgery and will have a splint for up to 2 months.

In hindsight, only one of those visits actually needed to happen. Feel free to ask us about how "awful" Canada's "socialized medicine" is (hint: we feel so fortunate to have gone through all this here.) 

Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Troll Falls



Our first attempt at hiking the Rockies in the snow didn't go all that well - the temperature was significantly colder than predicted, Terry and I weren't properly attired, and I also realized a coat is too long for proper hiking and I do need a warm jacket.

So, fast forwarding a few weeks: we had the free day, the clear sky, and the apple cider to spice, heat and throw in thermoses.

Troll Falls is a recommended easy half-day trip from Calgary (between the 2 hour round trip and the quick jaunt to the falls). It is also highly recommended as a winter hike.

We almost didn't get there with all the stops the kids made to play in the snow. Seriously, the first kilometer took about 45 minutes. When the sign said it was only 0.3km to go, we got hardhearted and said no stopping until we get there!

It is early enough in the season that we could see water still running down the falls on the inside of the ice. From the front was all ice, and from the back it was all ice, but in the middle water ran. Our cameras were unable to capture this.

Climbing up the side of the falls is a recommended treat and Alex did not need to be told twice. The only regret is that we didn't have ice cleats, and the icy area just behind the falls was way too slick to venture towards without them.