So I re-opened the weblog today. I had shut it down in June because of some stuff I was doing with work, and because I'm keenly aware that my coworkers (and now employees) "look me up" on the internet, and I'm frankly not sure what they'll find. As far as I can tell, the content here goes back to 2000 or so, and this post is the one-thousandth post here. Which is both fitting and somewhat ironic.

See, I wanted to do or say something special for that thousandth post. That's a lot of yammering on and I don't have a lot to show for it. But as I think about what I want to say today and what I've said over the last ten plus years here (and content culled from advogato), I think this is actually pretty important.

On July 6, 2009, I was in a motorcycle accident. I broke vertebrae L2, L3, L4 and L5. They "healed," in that they grew back together, but as with the rest of the bones I've broken, they didn't heal back correctly. Immediately after the accident, I spent about ten weeks in bed, unable to move. Then I started physical therapy, which lasted almost two years. My physical therapist discharged me, saying she'd done as much for me as she could and that I needed to take things into my own hands if I wanted to get better. It's important to note that "better" at that point was "better shape than I was in before the accident."

I started working with a personal trainer, and I'm about four months into that. About three months ago, I started going to CrossFit. Between the two programs I get 3-5 workouts in a week.

As recently as June, I was taking fifty-mike fentanyl patches for the pain; I take nothing now. I still have a little weakness and pain, but it's to be expected. I've got a broken back, right?

The reason I decided I could start posting here again is that I've got a long journey ahead of me. I've been talking with a spinal surgeon who is an avid skydiver and has counseled many people who have been injured in jumps and want to return, and I'm going to see my surgeon on the 4th. My goal is to get clearance from my doctor for the training leading up to jumps. That's really the first step; I've got some ambitious goals, but I'll leave those under wraps for now. When the weather gets better, I'm also going to get the car out on the track as much as I can. There's just too much torque in that thing to put to the ground on the street. And I want to get in to power-kiting, which should hopefully lead to kite surfing. And, if I've got the leave and the money, I have a two-week hiking trip planned for the Huayhuash Circuit in Peru.

I've never been one to set easy-to-reach goals for myself.

So I need to not just get fitter, but reach a level of fitness I haven't had since I was playing soccer in high school -- seventeen years ago (back then, I was running 7:19 miles; today I can manage 400 meters, but I'm pretty winded). The stakes are higher than they might seem reading this: if I attain the level of fitness I need to go racing, skydiving, endurance hiking, kite surfing, and so on, I'll be a happy guy. That's great. But if I don't, I'll be disabled. I cannot imagine higher stakes than that. It's almost as if the fun (and dangerous) stuff is the reward for the hard work.

"Visions of up" has always been about my deepest, closest-held dreams: flight and velocity. Here's to "up."