Yes, Again
Today was my last day of work at here in Vancouver, which is quite excellent. I now have two and a bit months to relax, travel the world, and enjoy myself before I land back in Australia. This is also rather excellent. What's not excellent at all is that I stirred up my lower back snowboarding last weekend, which means I probably won't be able to board for the rest of my time in Canada. This is pretty bad news, but I'm not exactly surprised.
My lower back's history is not a happy one. I've struggled with it for years, seeing physios and doing various exercises. I haven't ever seen a chiropractor or a blind faith healer, but I don't really believe in either of those, and I'm pretty sure the problem is related to soft tissue, not bone position or my connection to the astral plane. The last time it was really good was after I'd seen a specialist back physio in Brisbane, who got me playing indoor soccer, lifting weights (including seated row, which is bloody hard on the lower back) and flinging a frisbee around with Katie in about a month. Unfortunately, it felt so good that I stopped doing my exercises, so when I hit Vancouver it got bad again.
I've seen three different physios in this town, and my back has never really been fixed properly. I've done my exercises religiously, gone to weekly treatments and stayed away from bad activities with excessive pelvic thrusting, and still I seem to be caught in a cycle of pain, treatment, recovery and relapse. As well as the obvious pain and the monetary cost of treatment, it's definitely limited my Canadian adventure (particularly stuff like sea kayaking, hiking and naked bear wrestling), and contributed to me currently weighing about as much as a small hockey stadium.
This time around, it flared up after a day's snowboarding that wasn't particularly long, and wasn't particularly eventful. I really have no clue why it happened then, and not three weeks ago when I was riding the longer, steeper and more difficult slopes of Whistler and then cramming myself into a bus seat for two hours. All that remains is that it did happen, and it will have a significant impact on my holidays, particularly the "Go snowboarding in Utah with Clair and Cam next Wednesday" part.
Despite it all, I've decided to not get depressed. I'll have a ball in Salt Lake City without the snow, and then I'll relax in in April, do a few more low-impact Canadian things around about, and get my back into good enough condition to enjoy London, Japan and Thailand on the way home. It's hard to stay sane when Cypress gets three feet of snow in three days though. Dammit, that's just cruel.