It didn't seem like a big deal when I hit a patch of ice and fell skiing at Arapahoe Basin ("A-Basin" as it's known to locals) on New Year's Day. I picked myself up, finished that run, and even did one more before before calling it a day.

By the time we got home, though, I couldn't straighten my right arm or bend it enough to touch my shoulder. And there was that teeny-weeny matter of excruciating pain, which is how we came to spend nearly four hours in the ER on the first day of 2009.

There was too much swelling around my elbow to get a clear image, but the docs said that the pattern of swelling on the X-ray was indicative of a fracture of the radial bone. Depending on what the orthopedic specialist says when I see him on Tuesday, I could be off the slopes for over a month.

In the meantime, I refuse to let Alison have one of my newly prescribed Percocets for her residual aches and pains from skiing. (She's 25, for God's sake, how many aches and pains could she really have?) I also wish that there had been a little less ice and lot more powder at A-Basin on Thursday, so that my landing could have been as soft as Patrick's was at Keystone last Sunday.