Being yelled at and more

Nobody likes being yelled at, and it doesn't happen all that often to me. But it did last Thursday at the Senior Center.

The previous Thursday, the weather had been forecast to be simply awful, and we discussed whether or not to head out to the High Country. We decided to go anyway, and it was one of the finest days of hiking we could have had. But it might have gone differently. I wrote about it here, and I called the day simply miraculous. We could not have had a better day. The other hiking group, however, decided to take a different hike because of the forecast. (There are two groups that head out on different hikes, one being longer and harder and the other shorter and not as fast a pace.) When I arrived this past Thursday, I was chatting with some of the women from the other group who had seen my blog post and mentioned again that the forest ranger had cautioned us about possible lightning. The leader of their group walked up right then and began to yell at me for having taken such risks. His voice rose in volume and soon several people were watching and listening as he went on about how much danger we had exposed ourselves to. Before long a couple of others from my group had joined us, and we sort of backed away from the angry person.

He focused on me as he wagged his finger and yelled, and I felt myself shaking and felt the awfulness of being targeted by his anger. Although I was only one of the group, it seemed to me that he felt that somehow it was my fault that we had taken such a risk. It is true that the forest ranger did not think it was a good idea for us to head out, but she made sure we knew how to minimize the risk and gave us some tips about lightning safety. We listened all the way up to the top for signs of thunder, but the forecasted weather didn't arrive. We were not being unsafe at all, in my opinion.

I have carried that load of anger around ever since, and I woke up last night reliving the experience and feeling the leftover karmic baggage. When I was little and my dad would yell at me like that, I would get the same feeling, but at least in most of those cases I had earned it. It occurred to me that maybe writing about it here would give me a chance to let it go. So there you have it.

It's been an unsettling week in other ways as well. I was distressed to learn about the controversy over Diana Nyad's swim from Cuba to Florida. After having watched her rise up out of the sea at the end of her historic swim, I cried with happiness, not only for her, but for all of us people of a certain age who attempt things that we are not supposed to be able to do any more. She didn't even know about the controversy until she saw it in the news, when she should have been exulting in her achievement. It appears that she was in some very favorable currents that helped her swim faster at times, and the resulting faster speeds made some skeptics jump on her for cheating. Why in the world would she have done that?

From Florida Keys News Bureau 

I read somewhere that some swimmers who were looking for sponsors for other difficult swimming events felt that if a senior citizen could do what Diana did without cheating, they wouldn't be as likely to gain funding. I don't know if that's true, but it will make me very happy when this controversy has been laid to rest.

Linnie

And last of all, I did get to go skydiving last Sunday and had one of the most fun skydives I've experienced in years. Four of us, including my dear friend Linnie, were playing in the sky and having a great time. When it came time for us to separate and open our parachutes, she experienced a very hard opening. She has a very sore neck and what she thinks is whiplash. This can happen, rarely though, when a packing error can cause even the most docile of parachutes to open way too fast. It's happened to me a few times, and I'm very careful, as is Linnie, to do everything possible to minimize their occurrence. She is still too sore to skydive this weekend, and I am concerned and hoping that by next weekend she will be back to her normal self. It was our second and last jump of the day. Christy and I went off to see if we could find her a neck brace, and all we could find were soft cervical collars that did little to help. Linnie has been to the doctor several times this week for treatment.

Well, things can only go up from here, right? After a fine week of exercise and time spent in the beautiful Pacific Northwest wilderness, I am looking forward to another wonderful week, and one without angry words or untoward parachuting accidents.
:-}

Coping methods

From The Telegraph, by Jay Williams, Guinness World Records 

What a guy! Thomas Lackey is celebrating his 90th birthday by becoming the oldest person ever to wing walk, breaking his own record set last year. He did it in the UK on Guinness World Record Day, last Thursday 18 November. He is all over the news right now. He says he thinks about his wife when he's up in the air and carries her photo up there with him. Earlier this year I wrote a post I called "Think Skydivers Are Crazy?" with a picture of two people ostensibly playing ping-pong while wing walking in 1927. People have been doing crazy stuff for quite awhile. Some of us use high-risk behavior as a way to cope with everyday stress. Tom had a heart attack awhile back and one friend said the only difference is that now he needs a little help from his friends to climb onto the wing.

The weather has turned amazingly cold and wintery here in Bellingham. On Friday night it snowed all night long and cold air blew down from British Columbia, with winds steady at 25mph and gusts to 45. I took this picture yesterday morning from inside my cozy abode showing the fence separating our apartment complex from the neighbors next door.

I think there was at least three inches of snow, but only 15 miles south of Bellingham in Mt. Vernon, there was no snow. The cold air didn't make it down that far and so their precipitation fell in the form of rain. I waited yesterday for the first bus of the day at 9:45am (which was happily only two minutes late as I stood out in the wind) and went to downtown Bellingham. I was thinking of taking a nice walk, but this is what the sidewalks looked like.

I don't know if that picture is sufficient to show what walking on the frozen sidewalks was really like, but I sure wished I had cleats on the bottoms of my boots, because I had to shuffle along instead of stride in order to stay upright. Finding the Farmers' Market all but deserted, I took the bus to Fairhaven, a few miles south of downtown and bought myself yarn to make a new hat, along with a good book to read as well. I noticed that in only this short distance south, the amount of snow that had fallen was much lighter.

Once I got home, I figured I could write a new blog post this morning and settle in with my book and knitting, foregoing any outside adventures. Tomorrow I'll get my usual workout at the gym by taking the bus, keeping my car in the driveway. The snow and freezing temperatures are not expected to let up until Wednesday. By Thanksgiving Day we should be back to our normal above-freezing temperatures. I saw one of the local Northern Flickers on the finch feeder. This is not the greatest picture, but I took it from inside and couldn't use the flash, as it would have reflected back from the window. The finches use the feeder by hanging upside down and sticking their beaks into the slot located below. He didn't know that, and obviously didn't need to worry about it, as he could use the entire feeder to his heart's content. I also have two suet feeders that he uses all the time, but he needs other nourishment too, in order to keep himself warm.

We all have coping mechanisms for dealing with the stresses and strains of our lives. I jump out of perfectly good airplanes and hike in the mountains. What's yours?