A little "oops" with a wood splitter = a little longer away from the bikes...

  

Oh you know... just mic'ing up a nice police officer.

Roel traipsed all around Venezuela and like everyone else I enjoyed that gorgeous country vicariously through his stories. A week after his accident, he flew to Florida and a week later we were in Vermont, visiting my Dad and brother. The three guys re-roofed our family home. (I stayed down below with a beer, giving directions, as I was having an inner ear issue and we all decided it would be best if I remained on the ground.)

 

"FBF" Men at Work

 

After the "Men at Work" shot from Colombia, I figured it was only fair to post a "Woman at Work" Photo from Vermont

 

Beauty is everywhere you look around my Dad's home

 

Roel LOVES helping my Dad by splitting wood with our hydraulic wood splitter. On our second to last day in Vermont, I heard an expletive ring through the wooded canyon our home sits in and went running outside. I looked up on the roof where my Dad was finishing some details up and he exchanged looks with me. We both went sprinting down to the wood pile where a seething Roel was holding a very bloody hand and angrily stalking up the hill towards us.

The nearest hospital is 40 minutes away. After x-rays and a thorough cleaning of his finger they declared that he had cut it all the way down to the bone, fracturing it and severely damaging the tendon. He would need to go to another hospital, an hour in the opposite direction to have surgery the next morning.

 

A bloody trooper in the ER

It was a tense evening, filled with unspoken questions until Roel finally nodded off thanks to some great pain meds.

The surgery went well, with Roel exclaiming what a poor job they did anestizing him after they had brought him into recovery… he thought they hadn’t done the surgery, yet. Hahaha.

The surgeon was able to repair the tendon, which she said had been 90% severed and estimated that he would be able to use his finger again in 3 months, but that it would take about a year to get it back to normal. Well, so much for our August 27 return to Colombia. But thankfully Roel still had his finger.

 

Gotta love Vermont and the little squeezy cow to ensure Roel's hand was comfortable

 

Pain meds are wonderful

 

And so is anesthesia

Roel spent two weeks being miserable while his wound healed and then spent the next two months getting 2-3x weekly physical therapy. We took an amazing road trip to NC/VA/DC for a friend’s wedding. We caught up with the friends who began my love-affair with my Transalp in Asheville, George, one of of our ADVRider.com friends who we had never actually met in person, and attended the most spectacular wedding of our friends, Alex and Peter (she’s from VA and he is from Slovenia - they live in Sydney now).

  

Back at work...

 

When I returned to Sarasota, they had hired my replacement reporter (I hadn’t yet told them I would be staying past August) but they needed someone to fill in for the promotions manager. So I spent the next month in that role and slowly making preparations for getting back on the road and visiting with family and friends in Florida. Roel returned to Holland (his 90 days in the US was up and he needed to refresh his status) and of course he needed quality time with his family as much as I did.

A dog after my own heart... licking every last drop out of the empty carton ;)