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[Monday, July 10, 2000: Enviro Trek.]
Today was Enviro Trek day. The plan was to spend the morning planting trees in Gatineau (?) Park and volunteer at Escapade 2000 (where 65km of bike trail around the Ottawa-Hull area were officially opened).
All in all, it turned out to be a fairly uneventful day. Most of the people who actually did stuff were part of the Enviro Trek committee. They ended up manning the stands and displays, while the rest of us (after we had planted our token tree) were basically free for the entire day. I spent most of my time playing volleyball, ultimate and throwing the disc around. I even learned how to do the spinning jump catch! *twirls*
![[My Future Trek group.]](../Pictures/2000-05-14/2000-07-02a.jpg)
During the last full day of Future Trek, we had an event called Enviro Trek where we promoted environmental awareness and helped plant trees in Rockcliffe park. As I was not part of the Enviro Trek team, I wasn't needed to man any of the tents or displays. I was only there to plant my tree (and enjoy the weather). This involved surprisingly little back breaking work, and much of the time was spent mulling around waiting for things to happen. (Was I ever going to regret it later that day.)
This is the "Out of the Blue" group shot.
The weather was oppressively hot and sunny in the morning, but as lunch rolled around, a wave of clouds came by and we were subjected to occasional showers. Nothing too heavy mind you, but it always seemed as if something big was coming along anytime soon.
One of the attractions at the event was a vehicle known as a velobus (velo = bike for those non-french people). It was a boxy four-wheeled, 33-seat (three rows of eleven) peddle vehicle which steered like a pig and moved so slowly that people could run to keep up with it. Don and I wanted to get on the velobus before we left the park. I was a little wary once I found out that people on the velobus were pelted by waterballons as they were leaving, and after they had returned. Every time we heard a large calamity at the entrance, we knew that the velobus had returned.
Don and I had missed a couple of chances to get on the velobus, so we jumped on the opportunity of getting on the vehicle. We ended up getting on the back and sped away as the lynch mob threw water balloons in our wake. Some hit the back of the vehicle, but we came out mostly dry.
![[The Vélobus.]](../Pictures/2000-05-14/2000-07-02b.jpg)
One of the events that was taking place during Enviro Trek was the ride on the Vélobus. The Vélobus is a 33 seat peddle vehicle (it even has a license plate!) which was used to tour around the park. This was also the same vehicle that ran over my foot when we put it away. Ah, the memories.
This is the picture of the Vélobus.
The velobus was very difficult to get moving. It had only one gear, and no matter how hard you peddled, the darned thing didn't accelerate very quickly. The driver and the other two riders in the front I recognized as some of the better soccer (and ultimate) players that I played with during the week. They cane up with this harebrained idea to bike all the way downtown. This suggestion met with considerable support from the peanut gallery, so as we approached one of the main roads, they started turning left (away from the designated path which was marked by pylons). One of the guards who was standing there asked us where we were going and our driver told him that we were going to go downtown. He sorta laughed at us and told us to stick to the trail. What could we do? We turned right and continued along the trail.
Now our driver still had the idea of directing us down to downtown Ottawa, but in the meantime, he had fun trying to wave between the pylons. This was very difficult (impossible basically) since the pylons were spaced less than the length of the velobus, and since the vehicle couldn't steer worth.. crap, we ended up running over quite a number of pylons. It took us (in the rear) some time to figure out why there were so many pylons getting stuck under us.
Now I should note that the trail that was marked off was still partially open to traffic. The pylons were put in place so that bicyclists wouldn't have to worry about any cars that my be coming to greet them. Further, the velobus's four wheels were attached to the vehicles like stubby little appendages to the side of the bus, so the vehicle required a little more horizontal leeway than it looks.
Dissention began to rise in the ranks as our illustrious leaders began to drive rather haphazardly, driving with one side of the velobus in the gutter, or casually sucking up pylons along the trail. They somehow managed to (more or less) behave around the checkpoints where guides were posted to help us along the way. At one point, we had to stop and turn, so one of the guys in the front jumped off, grabbed an extra reflecting vest that was lying at the checkpoint, and ran to catch up with us. I was tempted (actually, I did) to peddle as hard as I could, but he managed to catch up and jump back onto the bus, plus reflective vest.
Now, the people in the back started to really worry as the leaders pulled all of these antics. It all came to a head as we were careening towards a four-way stop, a little too close to the side of the road. We didn't seem to slow down much as we approached the intersection, until someone (who was on the right-hand side) tried to shout out to the drivers that we were too far to the right. Too little, too late. There was a *THUNK* and our bus came to a sudden halt. The STOP sign that we ran into bent a bit. One of the leaders hopped off, gave the sign a swift kick, saw that it was still sturdy, and we continued on (after maneuvering ourselves around the sign). There was a witness that I noticed as we slowly sped off, and I shouted out to her,
"You saw nothing!"
Like that would hold up in court.
We continued on the trail until, for some odd reason, the line of pylons ended. I might not have been paying attention at the time, because we (in the back) were staring at this odd foot peddle that only the person in the back right corner of the vehicle could press. It was around the time we left the trail when we discovered that it was (as some of us first predicted) another brake peddle (there's also one in the front). We realized that we (in the back) suddenly has some (nominal) power over our navigators (at the front).
The next time I looked up and around us, I noticed that we were away from the park grounds, and in the middle of a residential area. Curious residents who happened to be outside watched us as we waved and hollered at them. They seemed (to me) surprised to see us, which suggests that we did stray from the pre-designated path. This only fueled the bickering between the front and the back. Don (who had control of the brake peddle) stopped us a number of times as we approached stop signs when it was pretty obvious that the guys in the front wouldn't. (I found out later that the velobus is in fact a licensed vehicle. It even has a license plate!) It's always nice to obey the law. Each time we slowed down, someone in the front would look around to the back and ask,
"Who's doing that?"
But the conspirators in the back (I think only four of us knew) remained quiet.
After wandering around in the residential area for a little while, the guys in the front asked us what we wanted to do. They wanted to go downtown still, and wanted to put it to a vote (there was a resounding cry of "No!"). They were also quite lost. Fortunately, one of the guys with us was from the area and directed us to continue going forward. We eventually saw pylons in the distance and headed in that direction.
Reaching the pylons, we saw that we had come back to someplace in the middle of the original trail. We were on the wrong side of the road, which meant that we had to cross the road to make it back to the trail. Unfortunately, there was quite a bit of traffic (cars on the near side, and bikes on the far side) that made this passage difficult. A couple of the guys in the front jumped off, one donned the reflective vest (that they acquired earlier in the ride) and went into the middle to stop traffic. The other two went out to clear out the pylons to allow us passage. So, as traffic reached a standstill, we (ever so slowly) peddled our way through the gap and back into the pre-determined route. There must've been quite a number of surprised onlookers.
We were not out of the woods yet, the last leg of the ride was mostly downhill, and despite our confidence in our leaders steering ability (or because of it) Don rode on the brakes part of the way down, so that we wouldn't end up careening over the edge of the cliff.
As we approached the park entrance, we prepared for the onslaught of water balloons that we expected to come our way, but we didn't see anyone. The only thing we saw was an ambulance parked on the side of the road that arrived while we were gone.
When we got to the entrance to disembark, I saw that there was a girl who was lying on the grass with her head and neck held in a brace, and cushioned with a couple of pillows. Asking around, we found out that one of the girls got hit in the head by a waterballon and something happened to her neck. The mood of the group got much more somber after hearing the news, and despite the number of people who wanted to ride on the velobus, they told us to put it away.
I decided to help out with putting the vehicle back, and we went through the labourious process of turning the vehicle around. Because you could not peddle the velobus backwards, we needed people on the side to move the vehicle in reverse. It was a tight corner we were rounding, so we had to go back and fourth a number of times before clearing the curb, at which point the velobus really picked up speed.
I was pushing on the right hand side of the velobus in front of the rear wheel. Once we had cleared the curb, the vehicle picked up speed and I started running with the vehicle when I felt my left foot (which was extended behind me) stop moving. The next moment, I was thrown aside onto the road and my foot was throbbing in pain. I was in complete agony and couldn't do anything but roll around and clutch at my injured foot.
I'll continue this story later.
[Tuesday, July 18, 2000: Velobus.]
Pain. That's all I felt as I rolled around on the grass next to the road (and next to a steep cliff for that matter). My mind was so occupied by the signals coming from my foot that I was unable to respond to the few people who actually came to find out what happened. I knew pretty well what happened. It seemed as if time stood still for just a moment, before I popped back into reality and immediately fell to the ground.
One of the St. John's Ambulance (SJA) workers who was originally tending the girl who got hit by a waterballon (who now had a couple of paramedics watching her) came over to assess the damage. She asked the standard questions, "Where does it hurt?", "Can you feel your toes?", *poke* "Can you feel this?", etc. None of my nerves seemed to be severed (little comfort at the time), but they weren't sure exactly what I had injured. I didn't think I broke a bone since, despite the pain, it didn't "feel" broken. But how could I be sure?
Moments later, one of the paramedics came by to check on how I was doing. He asked the same questions that the SJA lady asked, and I gave the same replies. Just to double check I guess. The paramedic then asked the SJA lady to grab some ice and something to wrap my foot in. She came back moments later with a blanket and some ice, which felt bitterly cold against my quickly swelling foot. They wrapped it up and let me find some comfortable position as they asked if anyone could drive me to the hospital. Apparently, it was against regulation to have more than one patient in an ambulance at one time, so they wanted to see if I could be brought to the hospital separately. Unfortunately, we had gotten to the park by bus (school busses in fact) and the available transportation was back at the village. After a couple of minutes of weighing the consequences, the paramedics decided to drive me to the hospital in the ambulance instead. (Whee! My first time!) After checking to see if there was anything I needed (my stuff, which was close by fortunately), and after loading up the girl, they drove the ambulance in front of me and helped me on.
I realized, just before boarding the ambulance, that I had not brought my wallet along with me. I didn't think I'd need it since there was nothing to buy, and.. well, nothing I'd need my wallet for. Furthermore, I couldn't remember my health card number! (Well, I sort of did, but not really.) That did not bode very well for me, but I mentioned something about it, and they told me not to worry.
The ambulance ride itself wasn't very eventful. They asked me some pretty basic questions (What's your name? Where are you from? etc.) and filled out some sort of report. I looked around at all of the medical equipment and sundry that lined the inside of the back of the vehicle, and realized how cramped it was back there with the stretcher. It was also hard to see outside since the rear windows were small, and the opening to the front of the ambulance was also fairly meager. I spent the time talking with the girl (who's name was Sally), and the paramedics. We did the usual small talk before arriving at the hospital about ten minutes later. (We weren't in any sort of rush.)
I had wondered what sort of injury Sally had sustained, and they told me that it was some sort of hyperextension of the neck. That sounded pretty bad. I has asked her how it all happened and was rewarded by a first hand glimpse of the incident from the victim's point of view. (Which isn't really all too much since she didn't remember much of it.)
After we had arrived in the emergency ward in the hospital, one of the paramedics brought out a wheelchair (Another first!) and helped me in. He told me to go to the front desk to get checked in and then wait to be seen by a doctor. So I got wheeled into the lobby, where a dozen or so people were waiting to be served, or waiting for someone else to be looked at. Nobody paid much attention to me as I was rolled up to the receptionist and answered her questions (the same ones that the paramedic asked on the ambulance ride to the hospital, I guess to triple-check). I was then given a new pack of ice for the foot (as the original ice had melted long ago) and told to wait in the lobby to get registered.
When I rolled myself out into the lobby, I saw Heather, one of the organizers there (the one who was talking with the paramedics.. oh, I never mentioned that.. oh well, she was talking with the paramedics). She asked how I was doing, yada, yada, and we talked for a while. I sorta hinted that she should go and check out Sally because her injury looked much more life threatening than mine. (Neck as opposed to foot? You choose.) So she went off and looked for her while I sat around wondering what to do.
The wheelchair that I was in must've been pretty old, because the chair has been worn down so much that my butt fit right into the grooves in the seat. This was okay for a little while, but it's hard to stay comfortable because they aren't very cushioned. Also, due to the ruts in the seat, it was hard to sit in any other position for long without getting very sore from the funny shape of the grooves. Man, I'd hate to be stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. How the heck to people stay comfortable in those things?
Eventually I was called up to get registered, so I wheeled myself up to the room and the girl behind the desk asked me what my health card number was. I didn't know for sure, so she asked me a couple of questions and called into.. somewhere and asked for my OHIP number. Voila! A few moments later, she was printing something out, had me registered, and put a band around my wrist. She told me to pick up my registration card before I left and to wait to be called. Yay.
I found a magazine to read, watched the sports for a little while, and eventually came up with this brilliant idea to have my picture taken for posterity. So I asked this elderly man, who was sort of looking in my direction anyway, to take a picture of me in the wheelchair. After taking the picture (which I hope comes out) he asked me how I got injured, and I went through the story about the vélobus,
"Well, you see, there's this thirty-three seat peddle vehicle known as a vélobus.."
So I asked what he was doing there, and he told me that one of his friends had cancer. That sort of put my injury in perspective since, well, my foot injury is nothing compared to having cancer. We talked for a bit longer before his friend came out and they went home. I was left alone to wait in the lobby again until they called my name.
Call my name they did, and they directed me to go to one of the rooms down the hall and wait for a doctor to see me. I rolled myself down to the room and realized that it was one of the few rooms that didn't have one of those automatic doors. After some fancy foot placement and chair maneuvers, I was able to squeeze my way into the room. The room was pretty full, and I found some dead space next to one of the doors to wait.
The main drag about hospitals is not usually the treatments or the diagnosis. It's usually the wait. The agonizingly long and boring wait. I had waited around an hour in the lobby before moving into one of the waiting rooms to wait even longer. I was there for a couple of hours before being looked at by one of the doctors. While I was waiting, I looked around at some of the other patients and wondered what sort of ailments were bothering them. One of the patients was this girl who seemed very bored. I probably should've talked to her, but I was in a watching mood. (Besides, after I heard pap smear, I decided to back away..)
Heather came by every now and then to see how I was doing and give me updates on Sally's condition. It seemed as if she was rushed ahead of me to get x-rays taken of her neck to see if there were any bones broken or if there was any serious damage to her neck. So basically, she didn't know.
After she had left to go keep a vigil with Sally, I continued watching the other patients (and their companions) in the room. (You can tell who the patients were by looking for those wrist bands.) I watched as, one by one, they were called by the doctor to be examined. Some spoke English, some French, but they all seemed to have something different wrong with them. The bored girl started talking with one of the guys next to her saying that she had been waiting five hours to be looked at. Five hours! Oi.. I had so much to look forward to.
We were supposed to have a formal ending ceremony at the end of the day, and I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to make it. I wasn't particularly interested in the talks or the speeches, but I was a little worried about missing out on the food. It had been a number of hours since lunch and I was already famished. (I had burned off a lot of calories that day.) As the hours ticked by, the chances that I was going to be able to make it in time for dinner diminished, and even after I finally got looked at, the doctor told me to take some pills and to go have some x-rays taken.
As I didn't know where the x-ray area was, he was going to send an orderly to take me there. I was immediately given a couple of bright blue pills to swallow (apparently pain-killers) but I had to wait for the orderly. I spent the time looking at the piece of paper the doctor gave me (to give to the x-ray people) and try to figure out what the heck he wrote down. What caught my eye was the name of the injury,
Hyper Dorsiflection
Cool. Quite a number of minutes passed by when Heather returned asking me how I was doing. I told her that I needed x-rays and that I was waiting for someone to take me there. She knew where the x-ray room was (as she was there with Sally) so figured that she'd be able to take me there. So we had to wait until she could find someone to talk to to ask if she could take me to the x-ray room. *whew* You really have to be patient at a hospital.
So we were off, and fortunately, there were only a couple of people waiting to have x-rays taken. I needed to take a leak (as I hadn't for quite some time and drank lots of water), so I was brought near a one person bathroom and I hopped in and did my duty. After I had hopped back into the chair, I realized that I had aggravated my injury, it was very painful for only a little while, and then all of the pain seemed to dissappear. I guess the pain-killers had taken effect.
While I was waiting to have my x-rays taken, Sally (sans stretcher and neck brace) walked up to greet us. She looked fine, although a little distraught that they didn't find anything wrong with her. So Heather talked to her for a while to cheer her up when I got the call to be looked at. I talked a bit with the two girls manning (womanning?) the x-ray machine while they told me to twist and turn my foot this way and that to get the perfect shot. (Turn a bit more.. a bit more.. a bit more.. *snap* Perfect!)
As the pain-killers had already taken effect, I didn't feel all to bad. (A bit drowsy maybe.) After the x-rays were taken, I waited outside while they developed the film so I talked to this girl who was lying on the stretcher with nobody attending her. She said that she might have diabetes. Yummy. Everybody's coming out a winner it seems.
I was given the x-rays and after a bit of confused wandering, we went back to the original waiting room to have a doctor take a final look at my foot. Sally had already left to go to what remained of the formal dinner while Heather stayed with me. The wait wasn't as long as the first time in the room although it was still about an hour long, and we spent most of the time talking about food, and what sort of food we would get if we couldn't make it for the dinner. I suggested Dunn's smoked meat poutine which is so bad for you that it was worth the foot injury. *drool*
There was another person in a wheelchair next to me, so I asked her what happened. It seemed like she broke her wrist while rollerblading. Ouch. If you want to go to a place for a pick-me-up, don't go to a hospital.
I also took a look at the x-rays that I had been given and checked to see if I had any broken bones. I'm no doctor, but it didn't seem as if anything bad had happened to any of the bones in that area, so that gave me some sort of relief. Mind you, very tiny fractures would be hard to see, so I still wanted a professional opinion.
When the doctor finally came to check on me, he said that he couldn't find any broken bones, and that chances were that my tendons were stretched or torn. He told me that it should take a couple of weeks for the swelling to go down and a couple of months before I become fully healed. Yay.
He then told me that he was going to prescribe some pain-killers and to have me fitted for crutches before I left. So a number of moments later, I was called in and one of the orderlies went through checking to see if they could find me some crutches that would be comfortable. While he was doing that, I peeked at the doctor's desk and saw that he had some sort of medical manual open to a very interesting section: viral hepatitis. Time to put on the rubber gloves.
I talked to the orderly for a bit, to find out exactly what sort of injury I had. (It was actually called hyper dorsiflection - ligamentous.) He showed me how to properly use the crutches and dressed my wound. He took off the ice (well, it was warm water by then) and wrapped the rest of my foot in a tensor bandage. He gave me my new crutches, and I was off!
It wasn't until then when I realized how serendipitous it was that the ambulance was already there. Mind you, if the ambulance wasn't there, I probably wouldn't have injured my foot, but anything could've happened. Furthermore, it solved the problem of me not bringing any formalwear. The last night for Future Trek was to have a formal ending ceremony.. somewhere fancy, and have speeches, and a nice (semi-)formal dinner. The most formal thing I brought were jeans, sneakers, and a long-sleeved shirt. Yeah, yeah, small consolation.
Another thing that I realized was that I was pretty lucky that I was injured on the Ontario side of the border. We spent half of our time on the Quebec side, and if I had been injured there, I don't know if OHIP(Ontario Health Insurance Plan) would've covered it. Lucky I guess? Yeah, yeah, I'm grasping at straws here!
Anyway, I had this weird déjà vu experience just as I was leaving that area. I felt as if I had seen that part of the hospital many years ago..
As it was too late to go to the dinner, we grabbed a cab to head back to the village. Heather called in to ask someone to go and pick up some poutine for me (*drool*) and gave me the quick version tour of Ottawa (which we had to drive through to make it back to the village.
Because of the rain and wind that was going on outside while we were inside, the conversation turned towards talking about the weather. After talking about the sucky weather that we had been having all weekend, she told me that the tents were not originally supposed to have any wooden flooring. It was only after a huge storm that literally flooded the park that the organizers decided to put something on the ground so that our tents wouldn't float away during a bad storm. That's nice to know.
Once I had gotten back to the village, I used the crutches and made my way to the admin tent where I was to wait for my food to arrive. Heather told me, "Don't be a hero." and ask for help if I really needed it. Eh, I thought I could make it across so I stubbornly hopped through the village (and after a number of breaks) made it to the tent.
People working there looked at me and asked what had happened.. the usual stuff. There was one exception. One of the guys asked me which tent I was from. I told him twenty-nine. He told me that I was really lucky since tent twenty-five (two tents down from us) was literally blown over during the rainstorm that day and everything in the tent got completely drenched. They had to move everything into the cafeteria tent while the contractors came to reposition the tent. Wow.. that would've been pretty bad news if it was my tent..
Afterward, whenever people asked which tent I belonged to, I told them, "Not twenty0five".
The poutine arrived a few minutes before everybody started coming back from the dinner, I ate pretty quickly and sat around for a while before heading back to the tent. While I was making my way there, I bumped into a couple of guys from our tent who were milling around. Our leader bellowed, "What happened to you?" and I went through my velobus story. I was told that they wanted to take a group picture of the people in the tent and couldn't seem to find me at the dinner (nor did they find someone else but I didn't know about that until later). Ah well, I told them to grab everyone and that they could find me in the tent.
I was too tired to do anything else, so I went back into the tent and went to sleep. Don came by to see how I was doing, and after giving him money to pay back Heather for the drugs (since she went out to get the prescription) I went to bed.
Monday, July 10, 2000 at 23:41:09 (UTC)
Ooooh! Captivating story.. plenty of drama! Can't wait for the second half.
Hwanphlegm
Sunday, July 16, 2000 at 22:20:15 (UTC)
On the bright side, at least your injury is credible. Just think how goofy you'd feel saying "yeah, so I was hospitalised after a water balloon hit me on the head."
Mikeomatic