The day started out in pain and ended in fire. Ok, that's overly dramatic. It did start out in pain, as I sprained my ankle in a truly stupid move on my part. So here I was at Pickering's, parked about a block away. The plan was for me to drive my car while Pick drives the rental back to Alamo, then I can drive him to his car which is back at work. Simple plan, it's about 01:00 and quite shadowy in his neighborhood. As we leave his door he says he'll follow me and goes to his car. Thinking I should hurry I jog to my car and just as I'm reaching it I step on a sidewalk/grass ledge and go right down.

The pain is quite overwhelming as a writhe on the ground, swearing all the while under my breath. I know immediately that I'm in trouble, yet I can't help thinking that I have to get up and help Pick return the rental. After a few minutes Pick drives up looking for me, where he finds me still on the ground next to my car. Dave is does not seem particularly concerned when he comes over, and it was later that he said that he thought I was just checking under my car. Anyway, I test my foot and can't put any weight on it, so then Dave helps me back up to his place.

Once there, Dave fills a cooler with ice water so I can soak my ankle. Wow, the water is really cold and I can't leave my foot in it for more than a few seconds at a time. So I keep dunking my foot while we watch some sort of documentary about Malcolm X or some similar subject. After a while I'm able to keep my foot under for 10 minutes, which Dave says should be long enough. By now my foot has swollen a bit in the lower ankle area, not too bad though. It's late so we turn in for the night, as I worry about what I'm going to do about this tomorrow.

In the morning I know I need to go to the hospital to get the foot looked at. I'll also need crutches to get around. This is like the first time I've had any sort of medical emergency and I'm really unsure of what to do, so I call Sweet for help. Probably not the best move on my part since he ended up wasting most of his day, and Pick also. But I did want to get my car back to Concord and go to the local hospital there, and we did achieve that, but rather sub-optimally.

At Mount Diablo Medical Center, I waited for about half an hour before I was led inside to sit on a chair. By this time both Dave's had gone to return the rental car. Sweet said he'd drop by after he was done and I said I'd page him with 000 for don't get me and a phone number if I want him to call me. Little did I know that I wouldn't be able to page him because the public telephone didn't allow outgoing 800-number calls.

It only took an hour and a half once admitted. They had to take X-rays, the doctor said it was probably a torn ligament, which would take 7-10 days to heal. If it was completely torn, then it could take a couple of months to heal, she wasn't sure from the X-rays how bad it was, but gave me a referral to a specialist in case I hadn't heal in a week and a half. Everybody was friendly and I got new crutches and a walking splint.

So now I was out, waited for Dave since I figured he would take 2.5 - 3 hours. Eventually I gave up and called a cab, then paged Dave to tell him not to pick me up. When he dropped by later he said he had gone to work and gotten bogged down, so I lied a bit and said I got out late and called a cab immediately. No need to make him feel bad.

And so ended a rather long day for me.