96: Pain in the neck!

On February 24th, I landed a perfect boof off the launching pad in Soc Em Dog, a rapid on the Chattooga.  But I landed on my upstream edge (the Burn is an edgy boat), resulting in an almost inevitable flip but a roll I expected to control effortlessly.  Except.  If you watch carefully, you'll actually see my roll interrupted by the tucked side of my head smacking a rock -- the stern visually rises out of the water while I'm upside down:

Nailing your head on a rock can result in trauma.  Almost a month later, when I still could not rotate my head, I had to don this neck brace for several weeks.

Low down in Chapter 16, I mention the cabin serves as a distraction from whitewater, that it may help prevent injury.  Maybe it has, if this happened during a one of the few paddling trips I take nowadays...

For those of you following the blog, I was deep into chinking during the weeks I was incapacitated and then in the brace.  I almost fell off the ladder only once!