Winter Park

Warning, there are graphic pictures in this post.

Shannon and I went to Winter Park for a day to have some summer fun. Winter Park has North America's longest alpine slide, a mini golf course, a giant maze, and several other summer time attractions. I was looking forward to the alpine slide because it's a lot of fun and I hadn't been in years. We played mini golf, but that was somewhat disappointing because the course is falling apart and hasn't been maintained and there were little hooligans running around everywhere, jumping on holes in front of us and yelling and screaming. The giant maze was more fun that it had been in past years because I didn't get stuck in it for half an hour. The alpine slide was every bit as fun as I remembered it... until the last run.

On the last run down the alpine slide, I got an exceptionally fast cart. I was having a great run until I kept too much speed leaving one turn and entering another. I lost my balance and fell sideways in the track, catching myself with my knees and elbows, which slid down the plastic track at about 20 mph. During the fall, I hooked the underside of my right knee over the outside of the banked turn. That probably kept me from face-planting in the middle of the track, but resulted in a large burn on the backside of my knee. This picture shows the burn on the back of my right knee a few hours after it happened, when it was still fresh.


I righted my cart and rode to the bottom of the track, slowly. One of the track attendants noticed my wounds and pointed me to a first aid shack they have at the bottom of the track specifically for people like me. The burns weren't really painful, yet, but I decided to clean and bandage them properly. The spray-on antiseptic nearly crippled me when it hit the back of my knee. It burned. Bad.

That night I took the most miserable shower of my life. I had fresh abrasions on both elbows and both knees, so I couldn't stand under the water. When my the back of my right knee got wet, it felt like someone sprayed me with acid. That night's sleep wasn't much better. I had re-bandaged the abrasions to keep them from sticking to the sheets, but every time I bent my knee, it burned intensely. This picture show the burn after it has scabbed over with my hand for a size reference.


That was about ten days ago. The burns on my elbows and left knee are healing well, but the burn on the back of my right knee is still pretty painful. It has scabbed over, so every time I bend my knee, the scab wants to break and pulls at my skin and leg hair. I've only got about a 45° range of comfortable motion. One final picture shows the scab as it is now, but it's pretty gross, so you have to click the flickr link to see it.

I hope it's healed completely before my family reunion at the lake, so that I can go swimming!