YSA convention day 2 Afternoon" Medic! Man down"

( I'm splitting these into post detailing morning and afternoons otherwise it will be far too hard to read all these posts as they'll be so long)

Well after lunch the first 'class' of the day was the oddball Olympics. I'm fairly certain I can leave it there any you guys could fill in the dots of exactly what we were doing. Basically we were arranged into teams of five and there were a series of challenges that stretched the length of the field. The challenge was to walk as a team to a football, round it then back again to our start position. Sounds easy right? Well if it was that easy it wouldn't be oddball now would it? There was the small matter of the two very long pieces of wood with loops on for our feet that we had to 'wear' as a team. Once we completed that, each member of the team then had to dribble the football around a series of blobs then back again. We then had to run to a piece of 'tree trunk' and bank a nail in as far as it would go, go around the team using a hammer with each team member taking one hit before passing it on. After that we then had 'welly wang', where you had to throw a Wellington boot as far as we could. Following that, we then had to transfer water from one bucket into another with about a five meter gap between the buckets using sponges. Finally there was a race using wheelbarrows where one person sat in the wheelbarrow and the other person had to push them around a series of blobs in a zig zag pattern, whilst blindfolded, so the person in the barrow had to give directions. So our team didn't come first, but then we didn't come last either. So it was good. But then as we had completed the course so quickly the organizer decided that we would go through the course again.

It was like that say in the film Memphis belle, " You only go round once, you never go round again" But we went again, although we ended up with different planks this time. The two girls decided not to go on the planks, as they were only wearing sandals so they had gone some v nasty frictions burns from the loops the first time round so it was just me JRP and M.R. We set off at a pace but failed to anticipate that the missing two girls meant we couldn't brace against each other very well, so our sense of balance quickly went to hell. About midway JRP stumbled, MR started to go over and as my feet were firmly locked in the loops I couldn't keep my balance and went over as well and with the title of this post I'm sure you can guess what happened next.

The one very small advantages of old injuries or persistent ones is when you do it again you know pretty darned quickly what it is you've done and when I went down and was unable to brace myself when my knee hit the ground first at a angle I knew pretty much straight away what I'd just done. But being a stubborn sort I tried to 'walk it off' hoping that it was just 'jared' and nothing more. I was walking to the next Class and ran into j and spoke to her, I should have really listened to her at that point because she thought I should go straight to first aid and wanted to check my knee there and then, but again being stubborn and not wanting to face up to the fact I might have done something that would limit the rest of my weekend I decided to soldier on, but I did promise that if it still hurt after the next class I would finder a first aider/medic . Which with the benefit of the 20/20 hindsight that every human seems to have was a mistake as it got extremely uncomfortable I the next 'class', which was a CES class " When the light grows dim" (or a title to that effect) run by Julian Jones. Following the second class I decided to stop being stubborn and go in search of a medic.

Which was easier said then done as there were none of them at the 'first aid station', because of course that would have been far too simple. I did find SL + J and ES talking and went up and stood there waiting for a pause in their conversation to interject, however there wasn't a pause and they disappeared off having not noticed me standing there. So mental note for any future times if I need a medic is okay to be rude and interrupt people if I'm injured, I have a good excuse :-)

I finally managed to find one of the security guys and asked if they knew where the 'medics' were as I needed a ice pack. He put out a call for one and then looked at me a little askew and asked why I was still on my feet if I had hurt my knee. Which was a very question. So I took a seat, and waited and waited. Although as J would later point out if it had been really serious they would have hurried. Which is reassuring, I think. But Doc S eventually appeared with a ice pack and checked me out. He was happy I hadn't gone anything too bad and had in fact simply aggravated it and suggested I just rested it for a while. Which was incredibly frustrating as I wanted to go to the dance class as they were running a beginners ceroc class which I really wanted to go to. ( it's one thing that has previously put me off going to any cerocs class with our leicesterites as they've all been going for ages, and I've never done anything like that before). So with a heavy heart and leg I wandered back to my room and rested up. Fortunately when I had stopped at the garage Friday morning I had been inspired to buy a pack of ibuprofen, so they helped. Mind you I would have been more happy to be inspired not to sign up for the oddball Olympics to begin with. But hey we get what every inspiration we're supposed to, I suppose.

So while lying on my bed with my leg iced up and nothing to do but stare at the ceiling the inevitable happened and drifted off to sleep. I did wake up in time for dinner mind you, but only right near the end so there was a huge queue for the barbecue at this point and most of the other Leicester YSA seemed to have already gone through. I supposed I could have used my knee as a excuse to cut in line but I was feeling that mean spirited so waited in the queue like a good boy. Well that was that and the fact the ibuprofen was still working :-) So as that great philosopher Homer Simpson would put it. " Hmmm, Chemically induced happy" The food was very good, as it was all weekend it there was any problem it was that there never seemed to be enough of it! By the time I finished however most people had disappeared to get ready for the ball. I'm not making any comment about girls taking ages to get ready, it was simply that most of them disappeared by 6.30 to get ready. The ball wasn't till 8. So back to my room I wandered to get ready as well.

So as it was posh ball I had tried to make a effort, i.e. going to get a nice shirt and bow tie. However I did feel slightly overdressed compared to some people because it had stated that it should be a minimum of Sunday's best, so a lot of the male YSA took that literally and just wore their 'standard' suit and tie. But some of the other male YSA, well lets just say there were some incredibly interesting interpretations of what constituted Sunday 'best'. Fortunately the girls more then made up for any shortcomings on the guys side as they all looked absolutely fantastic. The ball had a chocolate fountain, dodgems outside, a band and they even had some professional dancers come in to give some demonstration dances. We did get in a queue for the photos to get a whole group one of the Leicester YSA. Unfortunately the queue was so long it took over a hour before we got our photo done and the ball had ended, also SW and SW had disappeared so we couldn't get them in the photo either. But despite this small problem the photo turned out very well. I'm going to try and get it scanned in so you can see it. We might not have had time to get much dancing in but e all had a great time and considering I dance the way the incredible hulk walks not doing much dancing was probably a good thing.

and that was the end of day 2!