Day 138 - July 17th 2009
Jogging something I do everyday. With no day job I like to take full advantage of the fact that I can run in the morning. It helps me stay in the kind of shape I need to be in to perform at my physical best. It’s about the same mile everyday. A medley of old 80’s songs or Off The Wall plays while I’m getting my exercise. I’ve done it just about everyday since I’ve been back from tour and nothing strange has ever happened… until today.
I screamed bloody murder as I nearly tumbled to the sidewalk, my foot bent inward pointed towards my face. A sharp pain that I rarely ever feel shot up my leg and coarsed through my body, something’s wrong, really wrong, I can feel it.
I limp half a mile home like the dumb ass that I am. My ankle is pretty screwed up and I’m filled with fear. How serious is this? Cause I have gigs to play, stuff to do, all these things I need a pair of good legs. Do I need a doctor? I have no health insurance. What if it’s broken? What if I need surgery? What if for some reason they need to chop it off? I think all these things as I limp home like your common garden variety asshole. It’s obvious that I have Beavised my ankle…DAMNIT!
I get home and it’s swollen. I’m icing it I’m soaking it and nothings happening. It hurts…bad. I gotta call mom. She thinks I fractured it. That’s 8 weeks in a cast, that’s no good. Through some on-line research I deduced that my condition was closer to a really bad sprain which is no picnic either. Mom wants me to come see the doctor. Not into that. With no health insurance you might as well bludgeon me to death with a tire iron and leave me in the corner of the ER to die.
Hard as it was I needed to get my mind off of it because we were back at Philly Rising at World Café Live for the first time in two weeks and for the third time really this summer. Tonight would mark the end of our hiatus. I move around a lot during the course of the night so it was going to be difficult to say the least to do this. I figured though with the long layoff there’d barely be no one in line and it would be a relatively light night as it was going to take a while for us to build steam again…wrong
When I got there almost a full 90 minutes before I was slated to do signups it was already at double the capacity. There were gonna be a lot of sad faces tonight.
We got people signed up and the fun really began. We started early and one thing was apparent from the get go, this was going to be a night that was pretty heavy on talent. It seemed like everyone that hit the stage was going to be a real contender to win our competition. From New Wave Veterans Spoons for Adam to Soul newcomers the Overexposed, to The Parachuting Apostles, to banjo wielding Huston. Tonight it looked like the best acts in town were showing up and really competing.
The winner ended up being Gabby Fleishman, a young woman who’s been coming to Philly Rising off and on for about two years now. It was close bu she managed to make it out alive on a night where the competition was truly stiff. I was proud to be a Philly Musician tonight, and even though it didn’t make my leg hurt any less (actually it was pretty sore from all the walking I had to do) It made me smile, something I hadn’t really done all day.
Off to bed with me now. Gonna see if I can get some sleep, I’m almost certain it’s gonna be a long one tomorrow
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