Take a look at the domain name. Combine that with one of my personal mottos: "Work hard, play hard". You now have a pretty good picture of my Thanksgiving!

Here's the short list:

• Dislocated shoulder (right side)
• Hyperextended knee (right side)
• Dislocated hip (right side)
• Massive swelling/bruising of knee (right side)
• Bloody cleat marks on the face

Let me explain.

Turkey Bowl

I'm not sure if this is a tradition in your parts but we keep it alive and well in the family. Things get even more interesting when family is involved in the actual game. We had just such a Turkey Bowl game this year: a perfect storm involving 3 brothers-in-law and a bunch of former high school team mates.

I won't give you a blow-by-blow but the highlights are necessary. First, we were playing full-on tackle football. It's like two-hand touch without holding back, somewhat akin to Rugby (in case you were wondering). Alex (one of the brothers-in-law) setup a game at a local high school stadium, called a few former team mates from the football team, and we got cracking. It was a good set- solid quarterbacks, receivers, and even a couple of linemen. All-in-all, a good setup for a great game.

A great game it was- I was on the team opposing both Jesse (brother-in-law) and Alex (the other brother-in-law). This was both fortunate and unfortunate: Jesse and I have an ongoing rivalry. I've challenged him to a wrestling match this year- one in which I intend to beat him soundly. He's an excellent wrestler, outstanding athlete and all-around great guy. Still, he's a superb target: 6'7", 220 lbs., lean, extremely strong, and a highly skilled wrestler. You can't make it any more of a stretch for a 170 lb., 6'1" scrawny whelp like myself.

I choose to guard Jesse. He's a fast mover but, due to the physics, has a harder time accelerating than I do. I didn't think this was a concern until:

Ouch.

Jesse was on a roll. Checkout the bulldog takedown:

Then it was my turn. I can't emphasize enough how glad I am that my wife took these shots:

If you can't tell, the little person tangled up in Jesse's legs is me. And yes, he's about to go down - hard.

In the end, Jesse, Alex, and Ben (all on the opposite team) won- by a single point. But, thanks largely to my efforts, they paid dearly for every point. I made several tackles, scored one touch down, and kept Jesse from getting more than that.

Unfortunately for me, I also paid for my heroic efforts. Toward the end of the game, I made a very poorly aimed tackle- throwing my arm in the path of the receiver's legs. It's not a strategy I would recommend and not one I would take, had I been in pads. To be honest, I wasn't sure if I would be able to take him down. This indecisiveness and poor execution left my arm out of the socket and me writhing in pain on the ground. With cleat marks on my face, just to salt the wound.

There wasn't anything for it but to get back up and play out the game. Still, to this day, my right arm is only semi-functional. It is, after all, quite painful to dislocate a shoulder.

Wall Walking - or Plain Idiocy

I don't think anyone would be embarrassed by an injury obtained in a tackle turkey bowl game. I wish that had been the source of the rest of the damage. Alas, it simply isn't so. If you refer to the list above, you'll note that the following remain:

• Hyperextended knee (right side)
• Dislocated hip (right side)
• Massive swelling/bruising of knee (right side)

I could spin some heroic tale to justify these injuries - I frequently rescue babies in strollers from drunk drivers, after all - but there wasn't anything glamorous in the true origin of these particular ailments. In a sentence:

I tried to take a large step up an unstable rock wall and slipped.

That's it. That's all it was. That single step hyperextended my knee, pulled my leg almost clean out of the hip socket, and gave me a worrisome, swollen, disfiguring bruise just below the knee. To top it all off, that knee is still giving me trouble when standing and walking, let alone while running.

It's frustrating to realize the price of stupidity. Remember that.

Wrapping Up

(That was a pun, by the way!)

This blog is not for the faint of heart. There's a mix of geekery, athletics, and, above all, living life to the fullest. The by-product of the latter is described in the domain: Accident Prone. For those who dabble in the sedentary lifestyle, I would tell you this: the scars are better than photographs for reminding you of the thrill of living. The pain fades with time and, with enough experience under your belt, pain itself can be little more than a distraction to the life you're living. Get out there and give it a try.

(That has to be the weakest and least effective invitation evar. Still, I recommend it.)

As you no doubt are aware, my family consists of 2 adults (well, at least one responsible adult and another that looks like one) and 5 children. Scroll down a bit to get a refresher course on the family (with pictures!). Feel free to jump down there now.

Back? You'll remember that our 5 children are ages 7 and down. This presents some unique challenges when the family chooses to do something like hiking, especially when that hike is somewhat challenging. This, as you'll have guessed, is precisely what we decided to do with our 4th of July: a bit of family hiking.

I won't disparage those sadly deluded persons who think that the pinacle of the outdoors is a well-maintained asphalt path that spans a completely level stretch between the parking lot and a small waterfall visible from the road (here's to you, Bridal Veil Falls!). Suffice it to say that we like the challenge and the beauty of the mountains, preferably away from the rest of human civilization. Given that we have 5 children, it isn't strictly possible for us to galavant around the raw wilderness, so we settled for a decent middle ground: the Aspen Grove Timpanogos Summit trail.

That trail is a tough route, if you follow it all the way to the summit. This time of year, it's not only physically demanding, it's extremely technical. We obviously didn't summit with 5 kids ages 7 and under; we simply went to the lower waterfall that sits below the first steppe on the approach to Emerald Lake.

Having taken young kids hiking before, we knew that this would be a pretty slow approach and, as we contemplated this, Elise and I came up with an idea to help us kill time on the way: give every child a digital camera.

The Setup

To be fair, we weren't exactly sure what would happen if we gave cameras to kids ranging from 2 to 7 years old (sorry, 11 months is a little young for this). We actually didn't have 6 cameras to go around. Instead, we scrounged my old iPhone (2G), our nice camera (Kodak Z712), and two iPhone 4s (mine and Elise's). Initially, we gave the iPhone 2G to Gini, my iPhone 4 to Thomas, and Elise's iPhone 4 to William. I kept the Kodak.

The Rules

Since we didn't have enough cameras for everyone, we setup a sharing regime- when we felt like someone had had enough time, we asked them to pass it along. This went surprisingly well and there are pictures from each of the cameras taken from every child (minus Jonathan).

We told the kids to take pictures of anything they found interesting- things that were different or unique, including plants, animals, and the like. We also asked them to take pictures of the family. Beyond that, we let them run loose.

The Experience

Of course, there are several pictures of plants right outside the van where we parked and there are a number of pictures from the first quarter mile of trail. Every so often, we would have to tell the children to "Lock the phone and keep walking!", though it was less prominent than you might think. The pace we set was pretty comfortable.

After the first quarter mile or so, the kids got down to business. Every 30 seconds or so, they would take a camera out of their pocket and snap a shot at something they found interesting. We tried to keep sharing up, but Thomas and Gini accounted for the bulk of the photos taken by kids. William took his fair share, Peter took just a few.

When they had settled into a rhythm of walking, snapping a picture, and returning to a walk, we made pretty good headway on the trail. There were a few fun spots: we crossed a raging stream on a wet and rickety bridge and we spanned a couple of fairly long and treacherous sections of snow. Of course, these were picture-worthy and we gave opportunity for both the kids and ourselves to take pictures.

Overall, the hike was fun and successful. The kids were in surprisingly good shape by the end. As you'll see in the album below, even our 2-year-old Peter was running and giggling at the end. As a hike and a family activity, it was fantastic.

The Results

What about the pictures? You just had to ask. We uploaded most of the pictures to Google last night and this morning, just to let you see how things went. For the most part, I think they're what we all expect: a few out of focus pictures, many pictures of nothing in particular, and a few beautiful gems. Those gems and the wonderful experience we had gathering them made this one of the best family hikes - and even general activities - we've ever had.

You can view the entire album with all of the pictures (unedited!) here:

Timp Independence Experiment Photos

Here's a simple slideshow for those who want to simply kick back and see what happened:

The Family: A Refresher Course

Just in case the names and ages are foreign to you, here's a quick refresher on the family (as it stands today):

Gini (Virginia), 7 years old	Thomas, 6 years old
William (Will), 4 years old	Peter, 2 years old
Jonathan, 11 months old

The two adults (one adult aged, one adult in truth):

Elise: The beautiful adult	Me: Adult-aged