[Names, specific locations, and jurisdictions omitted.]
So there I was, sitting at home minding my own business, when the phone rang... 'twas a friend wanting to go for a walk in the storm. (At this point, the wind was just starting, and there was just a bit of a drizzle.)
So, I grabbed my rain parka, and headed over to her place. She got all bundled up, found a couple of flashlights, and we headed off... as it turned out, up into the hills, for a hike on a proper trail, not a road like last time. (If I'd known that was the plan, I would have changed from my office shoes into my mud boots.)
Having found a place to park, we headed up a fire road, and thence onto a trail heading uphill, as the drizzle changed to serious rain. Making our way around a big fallen tree that completely blocked the trail, we continued....
Now, there hadn't actually been any signs saying so, but I'm pretty sure we weren't really supposed to be where we were after dark. Apparently, one of the trees decided to take the law into its own hands branches: something caught me a nasty scrape on the top of the head. I stopped after a few steps, noting that the scrape actually hurt, turned around, observed the presence of a medium-sized tree branch just at top-of-head level, with a nasty jagged broken-off bit sticking down. I patted the top of my head, noted that my hand came away bloody, and decided it was time to turn around.
I guess I must have been quite a spectacle a minute later when I got back to where my hiking partner was, with blood dripping down my face. She was concerned about my continued hiking ability after being bonked on the head, though in fact I hadn't gotten wobbly yet. I borrowed one of her scarves to wrap around my head to keep the blood out of my eyes, and we proceeded back to my car, and thence to her house. (The scarf did a fine job of keeping the blood out of my eyes, but there was the occasional problem of keeping the scarf out of my eyes.)
After a bit of cleaning up, it appeared that there was enough damage that I should get it looked at professionally. OK, so where's the nearest Kaiser facility with an emergency room? Check kp.org -- oops, error 500; it comes up with an emergency backup page which isn't very useful. The 800 number on the front of my card isn't much help either. Phone book time! There's a Kaiser emergency facility not too far away.
Showing up at the emergency desk with a bleeding head wound did get the attention of the triage nurse - "You could receive a concussion from such a bheump." Once he was satisfied that I didn't in fact have a concussion, and that the nature of the injury was a scrape rather than a bonk, I spent an hour or so waiting my turn at the Minor Injuries department, frightening small children to pass the time.
Eventually I got home, with 15 or so staples holding my scalp together, and a tetanus booster just in case (since I couldn't remember just how long ago my last one had been).
In retrospect, it's a good thing I hadn't changed into my mud boots. If I had, my head would have been about 3/4" higher, causing more damage to my forehead....
No photos of this one.
Update 1:
Started cleaning yesterday's clothes. How did my socks get bloody??? Seems like the blood would have to have run down my legs, and I didn't find blood on my legs, nor on the inside of my trouser legs. Anyway, the light-colored stuff is soaking in cold water + detergent, in preparation for hand-laundering. Next up will be the shirt, which fortunately was dark brown already; it's well bloodied, so I want to deal with it separately, but getting it completely clean isn't that much of an issue. Then there's the rain parka, but I don't think that'll be a problem.
There's a lesson here: it's important to choose the right religion. If I'd been a Sikh, my head would have been protected against this sort of thing!
Update 2:
Cleaning the rain parka wasn't too difficult. Though it had a lot of exposure to blood, it doesn't have a lot of absorbent material in it (go figure). There's no apparent damage to the hood. I guess it puts the Third Law of Robotics ahead of the First.
I gave up on the socks as not worth trying to clean.
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