Ear Muffs

Friday was not a good day, although at the start it had heaps of possibility. A perfect sized swell was on the way for my good bye weekend, we had the kick of party the next night, all my friends from Pichilemu were coming back into town and I was getting ready for Antarctica.

It just seemed to get better too, because I went down to Nacho´s place and found that he had fixed my board and not charged me for it. I have been surfing my single fin a lot lately so I was really looking forward to getting back on my thruster. I waited for the wind to die down and then I went out for a surf with brian to catch the last hours before dark.

It was really fun, and we were pretty much the only people out in the water. We spent two and a half hours swapping waves and having fun. It was even starting to get better as the sunset was approaching. The wind was continuing to lay down and the swell was starting to line up better and suddenly we found ourselves getting even better waves.

I was stoked and decided to stay out in the water longer because I´m leaving tomorrow and won´t get a chance to surf a wave like this for a long time. I then see this beautiful wave line up and I can tell that it´s just going to be an awesome wave, but I´m a little out of position so I scramble over to a spot further outside. I get there in time but I have to have a late takeoff and as I spin and go my hand slips and I dive headfirst into the water with my hands behind me. Normally I´d have my hands on my head and nothing would happen but this time my board corked up and the rail gave me a vicious blow right to the ear.

When I surfaced I was really dizzy so I immediately grabbed my board and went in. I could feel the dizziness dissappear but I was having a hard time hearing out of my ear. I figured that it wasn´t much and that I´d have it checked in the morning.

Chris and Val just had a baby girl, Emma, and were driving home from Santiago and I was invited to go over to their house and have a little surprise party for them. Everyone was sitting by the fire and hanging around when my ear started to hurt a bit, not a lot but enough to be somewhat disconcerting. I waited for Chris and Val to get back, I congratulated them and then quickly split and went to the hospital to have my ear checked out.

Ruptured ear drum

It has to be one of the worst sounding injuries, up there with punctured lung. This of course meant that I am done surfing for a while which severely depressed me. So I got back and sent a text message to my folks letting them know what happened that I was alright, but not calling them on Sunday because of the ear and the fact that I just wasn´t in the mood for talking. So what happens? Of course, they call.

Normally my parents have a great soothing effect, but this time they seemed to have forgotten it. I had been cleared for travel by the doctor but they didn´t even ask what he said and were somewhat persistent in trying to get me to skip out on Antarctica and just come home even though going to Antarctica has been something that I was really looking forward to doing. It would be really cool to see all the sea life down there, the leopard seals and the orcas and the blue whale (the biggest mammal in the world). I was already in a bad mood and since they weren´t doing anything but worsening it I was really curt and quickly got off the phone. Should I have been nicer? Yeah, probably but in that situation I think it is at least somewhat understandable.

It should have ended there, but the next day I go to the internet and rummage through my email to see that there is a message from the organizers of the Antarctica Cruise.

Its fucking cancelled.

So now I´m not able to do anything because I´m on meds, I have a ringing in my ear, my plans have fallen through and I have two weeks left to kill and plane tickets to the south of Argentina that aren´t really worth anything to me.

So you know what I´m going to do?

I´m going home. I´m going to go to the LanChile office and trade all my tickets in for the first flight home. So whoever´s around I should be home by the weekend. See you soon.