My coworker, Josh, went up to Big Bear for the 4th and sent me this photo while he was there:

Josh’s Urban Pole Adventure

This is what happens when wrestlers decide to take on a new challenge. 🙂 Now, I’ll have to find time to teach him an inversion!

In other news, I haven’t posted much over the last week because I have been injured – not by pole, though! I sustained a pretty bad dog bite to my left hand while breaking up a fight at work (I work with dogs at my day job). An urgent care visit, x-rays, and a lot of saline solution and gauze, etc – that was my Friday afternoon. I spent most of the weekend alternating between cleaning the wounds, resting (okay, okay, being stoned on Vicodin on a couch, in front of a tv), and trying to test the limits of my newly busted hand.

Which is also my pole hand.

I saw the doctor again today, and overall, am doing really well. Most of the swelling is gone, which allows me to do more with it, and the wounds look like they are starting to heal well. I am not allowed to go back to work just yet, because of the nature of my job, and I am still on antibiotics. I should hopefully have full range of motion back in my hand within two weeks (if I don’t, I have to go back for an MRI to look at internal injuries to tissue/tendons). In the meantime, I have bandages and a sling for outside of the house to keep the wounds clean and to keep me from overdoing it with using the hand. It still gives me a fair amount of trouble in very basic ways – I don’t have full range of motion to my arm – can’t extend it fully in certain ways – and my hand does not open fully, nor close fully, which means I can’t grasp or grip anything with weight involved. Which means…no pole.

Since I will be out of pole for a couple of weeks, at least, I am looking into heading into class and working on my right hand – which, oddly enough, is my strong hand in real life (which is why I wasn’t totally taken out by the injury, in terms of life/world). I have very little coordination in my right when it comes to pole, and very little conditioning as well, so it might be good to do a few weeks of work on it, as frustrating as it might prove to be. 🙂