I suggest we count the mishaps — that way we'll see if Dad's theory holds up. As I wrote recently, the very first thing I did in Edinburgh was buy a falafel salad. A salad, so as to avoid eating the bun, which I should steer clear of if I'm firmly intent on losing weight after all. While waiting for my order, I exchanged a few words with a very skinny, young guy. At first, this didn't work out because he was rummaging around in the ceiling of his kiosk looking for the necessary accessories: the price you pay for the tininess of the establishment. As soon as he finished, I learned his name was Iain (or Ian?). That was the name (unfortunately, in the past tense) of a cool and famous Scottish writer — Iain Banks. Who wrote, among other things, the excellent "Culture" series of novels, which I've recommended more than once.
Iain in our Latvian reading would probably be Jan. Ian turned out to be the son of a Scottish father and a French mother. Apparently, the Scots will go to any lengths, even mail-ordering French women, just to avoid dealing with the English. Of course, nowadays this is just on the level of joking banter and teasing. However, there is this feeling lingering in the air. If cataclysms and upheavals start, the Scots will remind the English of everything, and will probably even leave the UK. Maybe they'll even kick their asses for old times' sake.
In Scotland, everything is saturated with hints or stories about the Jacobite rising. I think I'll remind you and talk about it later, otherwise it's impossible to understand anything about the Scots at all. Even a thing like the kilt, and why they love it and are so proud of it.
Nevertheless, I must finally get to the mishap. Having devoured my breakfast on a bench in Princess Garden, I discovered that my ass was smeared in sauce. There was almost nothing to wipe it with, and it was unpleasant to try and clean my pants somehow without a napkin when crowds of tourists are wandering all around. See, that's how my first serious mishap happened to me.
Just kidding, of course. You could call it an annoying trifle, rather. Fortunately, the weather was wonderful, which is a great rarity for Edinburgh. Sunny, temperatures around 20 degrees, moderate wind. Beauty! I got incredibly lucky with the weather, because all the days I was in Scotland, except for the last one when I flew out of Glasgow, there was no rain. By local standards, this is something incredible. So, I lucked out in some way.
The weather served as an excuse to call Andrey, and find out that he has the day off today. We quickly met up on that very Waverley bridge, which had become our regular starting point. We immediately got to talking a lot, because we hadn't seen each other in a long time. In such cases, you want to pour everything out at once. Then sometimes there is an abrupt ebb of emotions, when it's unclear what else to talk about.
That day, this problem wasn't waiting for us, because we decided to carry out a plan that had been discussed long before my arrival.
The thing is, Andryukha has become a fan of the longboard — it's like a skateboard, only longer. In Edinburgh, this isn't such a popular thing yet, and he has to order everything online. Fortunately, there is some user base, and these comrades gifted him some spare parts, explaining that you can't ride on what he currently has. Andrey now has two boards; he bought the second one significantly better right away, when he had already gotten a taste for it. By the way, these contraptions cost a fair bit — like a mountain bike, although they are noticeably simpler in design and number of parts. The lack of mass appeal takes its toll.
I had never dealt with skateboards or longboards, and my balance is poor anyway. I should have remembered that better before diving in headfirst.
It all started quite nicely, though. I tried to stand on the board jumped off after a couple of seconds, repeat a hundred times. I was doing all this right by the famous Arthur's Seat. This is a hill formed from an extinct volcano, around which the city of Edinburgh arose. Andrey, as it turned out, lives right at the foot of it. It's a twenty-minute walk from the center — a prime spot. I later lived there myself, on the other side, though. This happened because of mishap number two, but it's unknown whether we'll even get to it at this snail's pace.
Returning to the longboard, Andrey didn't hand out a helmet (which is cool), but didn't hand out elbow or knee pads either, even though he had them. During the process, he warned me that his girlfriend had been learning to longboard not so long ago. In the process, she landed on her ass, and then limped for two weeks. Andrey showed me the little hill where it happened, and explained that although the little hill seems tiny, for a beginner it can be quite dangerous. If the reader is expecting that this is right where I take a spill, you're rejoicing too soon!
I was attentive and careful, rolled down neatly and wasn't hurt at all, but quite the opposite, I was encouraged. Unfortunately, here I fell victim to beginner's syndrome, becoming too confident in my abilities. When Andrey showed me the next hill, the slope of which wasn't all that much steeper, I just immediately decided that everything would be fine. Alas, this hill, although it wasn't steeper, was ten times longer. This is where the real hardcore shit begins.
When the longboard accelerated to twenty-five or thirty kilometers per hour (according to sensations developed over many years of bike rides), I caught a wobble. It's something like resonance, when the back part of the board starts to swerve harder and harder. Andrey warned me about such a thing, and before that I hadn't let it reach that kind of mayhem, but here there were no options. When the wobble became threatening, to avoid tumbling off the board head over heels, I jumped off onto my feet. Alas, not having bent my knees enough, and therefore not cushioning the impact enough. My poor knees caught a brutal blow, and I fell flat on the grass, and wallowed there for a while.
I have experience with knee injuries, and therefore I immediately realized that the situation was not hopeless. When I got up, it turned out that although it hurt a lot on the sides of my knees, my legs bent more or less, and most importantly — there was no noticeable instability. If I couldn't stand firmly or bend my leg, it would mean a meniscus or cruciate ligament injury. The pain, then again, although noticeable, wasn't excessive. All this gave me reason to believe that I might get away without any major complications. Unfortunately, the pills I take dull the pain, and it was problematic to understand its real intensity.
At first, I was optimistic, and even too much so. I forgot that injuries don't always manifest in full force right away; you have to see how things swell up and hurt in the following hours and days. I, of course, reproached myself for being careless and not understanding that I absolutely shouldn't be taking risks.
When we dragged ourselves to Andrey's place, his cellmate (a Polish lesbian, Kasia) froze a rag for me and handed out some ointment, and also strongly recommended applying cabbage overnight. I didn't follow this advice, which was a mistake, because just a couple of hours later it became clear that everything was worse than I thought. My left leg stopped bending, I started to limp heavily, and on the stairs I was barely hobbling at all.
The next day I was supposed to go on a two-day tour of the Highlands, Inverness, and Loch Ness, and in general, the main idea of my trip was hiking in the mountains. Now all these plans were threatened by one short-sighted action.
What happened next? How did I handle this crisis? Did I tear or break something after all? How does Scottish medicine work? You will find out about all this in the next episodes.
