Forever… and a half.

Yep, it’s been that long since I typed away (happily at least) on this… whatever you want to call it. Series of tubes? Digital interface? Brightly lit screen that sucks my life force?

So, what have I been up to? Where am I? Was my left arm amputated? Am I even still alive? These are problably the sorts of questions you have been asking yourselves since for the last 5 months since my last post, as you hit the ethanpringle.com tab on your web browser and frantically click the refresh button every five minutes thinkng, “he still hasn’t responded to my comment!”

Riiiiiiiiiiight. Truth is, I’ve just been really lazy, flacky and downright unmotivated since I hurt my shoulder almost six months ago (got damn it seems like forever)… that’s just what happens when your drivin force is laterally torn away from you. Climbing, traveling, more climbing, a little resting, spraying about climbing- that’s what I do, what I love, that’s all I really know. So now that I can’t do that stuff anymore I think: what the F#@k do I do now?!? Lemme just say that life is pretty dull without climbing. Remember all those moments around a campfire of at the gym or wherever, when someone (maybe even you?) says, “but who really cares right? Cuz it’s only climbing.” I even said something just like that to a few people the night I ripped my shoulder apart at the nationals on problem 4. One of those people was Andrew Bisharat and he replied with a “well, I don’t know about that.” I was tricking myself into believeing there was a whole world out there just waiting to be tapped into, a world where I’ll rediscover myself and discover and help others and learn new things, and become a more well rounded person… Well, there is, definitely. But I still trying to figure out how to be interested enough in it to actually tap into it. Maybe I’m a spoiled brat. Yes, I definitely am, but I can’t help it if life doens’t seem as interesting without the seemingly silly persuit of climbing rocks. So for all your psyched little groms out there, lemme give you a suggestion, either you don’t ever take climbing as seriously as I have in the last five years, or don’t get as injured as I did! Be car-fool!

So why now, you may be asking yourself. Why the update? Why the heck not, that’s why. I’m that bored and have pretty much nothing else to do, even though it’s another beautiful sunny day outside. C’mon, I took the dogs to Dolores Park this morning!?!

Ok, onto the shoulder business. So… I did go through with the surgery. It’s freaken crazy how many people I know have jacked their shoulders in the past year. I guess once you hurt yourself you start to pay attention to eveyone else who is complaining about the same injury and you just grvitate twards each other… but I digress. I gave my shoulder over three months to see how it would heal, which it did, a little, but not nearly enough for me to climb anywhere close to the level I was used to. All the signs pointed twards surgery and a few doctors (including Roger Rogalski- thanks so much for all the advice) told me that getting it scoped was probably the right course of action. On the morning of June 3rd afer watching the previous night’s daily show and colbert report on my own little personal screen in the ICU, and getting the most painful IV ever (she dug and searched my forarm for a vein for like three minutes until I told her to just look in my hand, dang it woman) I was brought into the main surgery center and given general anesthesia. I woke up about two hours later with intense pain in my shoulder and begged for the morphine (oh sweet morphine). I was released from the hospital that same day, about seven hours after I had entered, all groggy from the drugs. I took the Vicodin for a couple days before it no longer hurt enough to necessitate it. My shoulder hurt pretty bad for abot a week and was really unomfortable all the time. It was really hard to sleep most nights, which I guess is kind of normal for me. Then every day it felt a lot better then the last. There was a time when I thought I was screwing it up again, or undoing the work that the doctors had done when I would move the wrong way or trip on a crack in the sidewalk or something and it would twinge really bad, but after the one month mark when I didn’t have to wear the sling anymore, all the twinging stopped. Since then I have been going to physical therapy at kaiser and getting my shoulder all sretched out. It’s sort of a tight rope walk between stretcing out the joint and gettng it all moblie again and strengthing it. So I’ve been doing some strengthening exercises with the yellow theraband and stretching it as well. Nothing too heavy. I have heard people climb again after this surgery, have taken anywhere from three months to six months off after the surgery. Chris Webb says his doctor told him six months, and his friend who had the same surgery was climbing lite again after five. Either way, I’m gonna take it slow. I’m not trying to get overly excited again and re-injure myself. Uh-uh. Negative. Of course I want to climb hard again and continue to challange myself once I’, back in shape, but for now I’m just going to take it one day at a time.

Obviously, a lot has happened in the last five months. A lot. I ain’t about to talk about it all right now. But I’ll just give a quick update of some significant events that have happened in my life as of late. I… turned 23, and was dragged by a plane by our (I was strapped to an eastern European girl named Val) parachute on my birthday, just after my first skydiving experience in Lodi. That same day my dad woke up in am ambulance on his way to SF general after a bad biking accident where he smacked his head on the cement after apparently hitting a parked car and flying over the handle bars and suffering a severe concussion (he had some memory loss for about four hours after the accident and a henius black eye/gash o his fore head from his helmet which wasn’t on very tight…). I’ll write a post about that day soon with a detailed description of the near fatal skydiving freak accident. I finished my first semester of college (whoo hoo) although I still don’t know what grades I got because my teachers still haven’t entered them into the system… I most likely didn’t receive an A for either class since I crammed last minute for every test and wasn’t too confident about the outcome, especially on the History tests. I am committed to learn to do my work as soon as it’s assigned to me in the coming semester though! Riiiiight. It was a quick six week course which is pretty awesome because it’s over before you know it. More details on all that soon enough.

So besides that, I’ve just been chilling in the city, goofing around and going to the sierras for a couple quick gettaways. My friend Ben and I climbed snakehike back in may which was really fun and made me want to actually start climbing walls, like a real California native should… can you believe I’ve lived here my whole life and never gotten on El Cap? Shameful. What else… not much really. I have been jonesing so hard lately to go climbing it’s rediculous. I have aspirations of things to accomplish in the next few years of my life such as learning a misical instrument, learning to sketch and finally learning spanish, but one thing at a time… right? Now to figure out what that one thing is going to be… enjoy yhe pics and video and I’ll update again soon.

-E

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