Tag der Arbeit

It was the german labor day yesterday (Tag der Arbeit) and we went over the border to Belgium to check out the local climbing spot.  It was a nice little area, with a abandoned, unkempt castle at the end:

 ... and on the way was the rock wall.  It's just a random wall on the side of a hill, but it was pretty nice.  The thing was bolted like crazy, with something like 10 - 15 routes all around this face.  I was kind of bummed that I don't have any gear with me, and I'm going to ask around at church on Sunday to see if anyone has a rope and some gear.

 As we were at what ended up being the end of our walk, I started carving out a stick to make a bow and arrow (we did that last week and made a pretty cool bow: I got a knife from my bro. for Christmas, so I'm trying to put it to good use).  Katie had the baby and didn't want to wake the baby up by stopping, so we kept walking while I was carving.  Which as you can tell is not really a great idea.  So I dummerweise cut myself, and shaved a big hunk of skin off of my knuckle.  I wanted to clean it up and super-glue it, but KT was insistent that a doctor be involved.  So I tied up my shirt around it and we went to the ER.

At the ER they first sent us away and told us to go to another hospital, but then KT battled her way in.  I sat in the ER for 2 1/2 hours with a T-shirt wrapped around my bleeding hand.  I didn't really want to complain because I was the stupid guy who cut his dumb finger trying to make a stupid bow out of a stupid stick.  I finally got to see someone, and by then the skin I had partially shaved off was pretty much dead.  They cauterized it to stop the bleeding, and stitched the dead skin back on.  Even though there was no hope of it growing back on, the doctor said that dead skin is the best bandaid.

Since I had been so long without food or water and just watched the guy stitch up my bleeding hand, I almost fainted when I got up to leave.  When they finally let me go, KT was home alone with sleeping kids and a baby so she couldn't come and get me, so I just got in a bus and rode a few the buses around till I eventually got home.  It must have looked pretty scary with blood all over my hands and a blood-soaked shirt, but nobody dared to say anything.  So happy Tag der Arbeit!