Evel Camievel

It's a boy thing. If you're not doing it at 100kph with your eyes closed and no safety net then you just shouldn't bother. On reflection it was pretty sureal, we had only been watching the kids tobogan for about 5 minutes when Jo gave Cam a little push and sent him off down a big hill just around the corner from home. He headed off slightly left and initially looked okay but as he gathered some speed the solitary tree at the bottom of the hill started to apply it's magnetic pull. Kent, a good friend and father of one of Abbies best friends Jacqui, said 'he's gunna hit that tree' and a good prediction it was. Kent's Canadian practiced eye was making a good call. Jo and I were saying 'No, he's oka.. oh oh, maybe he'll... I think... CAM!' Cam, Cam, Cam of the jungle watch out for that tree! Jo felt terrible given she pushed him but it wasn't her fault, that tree was hell-bent on having our kid.

The other thing about boys is that we don't listen to good advice. We need to hurt ourselves, sometimes several times, before thinking that preventing the pain might be a sensible plan. Cam had already had some minor injuries sliding on the snow, mostly face plants into the ground, or another kid or that kids board/sled ending in some brief tears and a split lip. The common link behind most of these mishaps was Cam's failure to maintain his Situational Awareness. In other words, 'Where am I and where is everyone else?' I think it's fair to say that now he might start looking around a bit more when he's speeding down a hill on ice at 40kph without a helmet (actually next time he does it he will have a helmet, his hockey one that also has a face grill). Anyway our calls to him were too little, too late and we watched him, in slow motion of course, smash into the tree pretty much head/face first, roll onto his back and stop moving. This is the point where, as a parent, your heart stops but somehow you start running. We were soooo lucky, the tree in question had branches all the way to the ground and some were broken off from previous impacts fashioning them into nasty looking daggers. Cam missed these with his face and so avoided a fate worse than a trip to the emergency room and a mild-concussion diagnosis.

Now you'd think that after this we'd put sliding around on the white stuff on the back-burner, at least for a while. Well you'd be wrong, I'm a boy, we have to do this a few more times until we work it out, let pain be your friend! This weekends plan is to head for Chicopee and do some tubing. Apparently they have 4 groomed tubing runs, shaped like large water slides, and a lift, just for sliding downhill on inner-tubes. Nice! We'll keep you up to date on further head injuries as breaking news comes to hand.

Andy, out.