Falling down sober...

[Elric]

Took the amazing chicken-powered Fast Attack Brittany out this morning. She got quite a bit of work in, little tail wagging, turned on the Atomic Vacuum Cleaner nose to "Suck 2", lots of ground tracking. Alas, she didn't work one up.

Standing in the field next to the parking lot, waiting for my buddy to close, turned and snagged my toe in long grass. The ground is FROZEN. One of them there falls where you feel things shake loose.

My buddy went to check out another field about a half mile away, but I thought going home was probably a good thing to do. When small kids fall, they are close to the ground and they weigh thirty pounds or so?

 

[Dusty Bannister]

Even in the tall grass, there is not much to cushion the impact. You will feel it tomorrow if not sooner.

 

[RBHarter]

I don't remember now what I was doing at the time but it hasn't been long since I took a spill like that . Ya turn around and your half way down and you can't decide if you want to save the face or the ribs , I'm such a toad the ribs win out more often than not .

 

[Jeff H]

..........One of them there falls where you feel things shake loose............

And not just physically.

"Man, how the h... did I manage THAT?" "Only unsteady, feeble and REALLY old men do that...."

Sobering because ten, twenty years ago, it took SO much longer to hit the ground that you could have reacted and diverted from a fall to a stumble.

Gravity is relative to time on an individual organism-basis. The older an organism gets, the harder and faster gravity seems to work on it. It's NOT an age thing - it's physics. Yeah,..... physics.....

Any more, I just go ahead and take some aspirin when I get up in the morning because I KNOW I'm going to do something like that.

 

[fiver]

and for some reason all that tuck and roll stuff we learned as kids doesn't occur to us until the drive to the doctors office.

 

[JustJim]

When I was a kid studying karate, my sensei emphasized learning to fall. He told us that, with any luck, we'd all live to grow old, when we'd need to know this stuff!

 

[Joshua]

Here we have trip lines in the forest. Our native Trailing Blackberry strings itself from shrub to shub. It’s a vine that doesn’t support itself, but it does climb. It has strong and narrow vines, unlike the much larger non-native Himalayan Blackberry, which has thick arching canes (that’s the one that eats cars and sheds).

Well these Trailing Blackberries got me two or three times this hunting season. Trying to sneak into a spot and then you trip. Make a huge racket as you fall, which in turn would signal a Douglas Squirrel to turn on his alarm. Now everything in a quarter mile radius knows that you are there.

Josh

 

[Jeff H]

Here we have trip lines in the forest. Our native Trailing Blackberry strings itself from shrub to shub. It’s a vine that doesn’t support itself, but it does climb. It has strong and narrow vines, unlike the much larger non-native Himalayan Blackberry, which has thick arching canes (that’s the one that eats cars and sheds).

Well these Trailing Blackberries got me two or three times this hunting season. Trying to sneak into a spot and then you trip. Make a huge racket as you fall, which in turn would signal a Douglas Squirrel to turn on his alarm. Now everything in a quarter mile radius knows that you are there.

Josh

Lol! Sounds like these are much more aggressive and nefarious than our "waitaminute" bushes.

 

[Jeff H]

and for some reason all that tuck and roll stuff we learned as kids doesn't occur to us until the drive to the doctors office.

Spent a whole week in Airborne training learning how to fall down - quite literally. Felt very foolish that whole week, but 40-some years later, When I fall, that's HOW I fall. Doesn't keep me from feeling stupid, but I'm thinking it's spared me some more serious injuries so far.

The problem is that as most people get older, they get wiser - they stop and think everything over before acting upon it and then,... BAM, the ground jumps up and slams you as you mull it over.

Me? I may have inherited an immunity to the "wiser" part, but not the "older" part.

 

[Jäger]

Spent 30 years as a government lawn dart. I never had the infamous five points of contact landings, I always just arrived like a bag of poo. Lots of hockey, some martial arts, about eight years of ski racing mostly downhill, stupid enough to give rodeo a shot for a few years... generally whatever led to me having sudden contact with terra firma, I could still do the meat puppet along the surface and just bounce back to my feet.

Suddenly, and I do mean suddenly, everything is different. And I'm nowhere near as sure-footed as I was just a few years back when I was a 60 year old pup.

I don't catch myself when I stumble, I fall. I don't land in a way that I just bounce up from - I end up laying there for a few minutes going "Awwww!!!"

Two years ago I fell off The Dirt Road Pony going about walking speed in first gear on a grass covered single track. When I hit the ground it was so fast I never got my hands of the grips nor my feet off the pegs. Felt like the Hand Of God had swatted me like a mosquito. Thought maybe my back was broken because of the pain. Off to emerg, nothing found - but I slept in a Lazy-Boy for the next four weeks because the idea of getting up if I laid down was almost terrifying. I've got a mental block since that, and I ride very, very carefully these days.

Few months ago missed a step on the way down from the house floor level into the garage. Another header - this time into the side of my truck before ending up laying on the concrete. Felt that in my neck, shoulders, and back for a couple of weeks. A few years ago I wouldn't have even noticed it.

It's troubling when you've lost confidence about things like that to the point that you take a SPOT with you whether bird hunting or just going for a little jog beside one of the local creeks. And supposedly I'm in pretty good shape for my age. Thank God for that!

Whoever said "The Golden Years" ain't for sissies must have been speaking from experience...

 

[Joshua]

Balance begins to decline around the age of 40. For many years in my twenties and thirties I surfed almost daily. Doing a somersault off of my board at the end of a wave didn’t affect my balance at all. I always knew up from down.

About four years ago I did a somersault on a trampoline at a birthday party. I was about 42. My head just swam, and swam, for what seemed like a minute. I realized that something had changed.

One of the many exercises that the “experts” say is benificial is walking on cobblestone/rough uneven surfaces. It significantly improves balance. So, I guess I need to keep walking in the forest.

I commute to work all year round on my bicycle. It forces me to maintain a minimum level of fitness. I’m still middle aged and overweight, but still active. Last year I went down on some black ice. Put an arm out and hurt my shoulder. Seems that it hurt for three months after that. Riding the bike keeps me fit, but it is also possibly the most dangerous thing I do every day.

Josh