Feeling Lucky, Keweenaw Sledding

As a computer programmer I like to think that I understand reason and logic as well as the next guy and more than most, but I would never claim that those elements are the only, or even the major drives in my life. Case in point, I have been slowed and challenged by recovery of my broken elbow sustained on January 5th, with surgery on the 9th. I've been spending hours per day in various sorts of stretching activity trying to get motion back, lots of trips to the Doctor and bad nights of sleep trying to deal with a brace that keeps pressure on the arm to straighten or bend it.

A couple of weeks ago, I was first able to have enough motion to get my contacts back in, so I decided I was ready to snowmobile again. Anyone that buys a $7K machine that they may not get to use at all in a winter doesn't get top marks for reason, but I suppose taking off riding after surgery, rehab, and lots of lost hours when the arm still is far from 100% could be considered grounds for insanity, BUT, the trails were great, the sled was great, nothing bad happened at all, and it was WAY worth it! There are few things as much fun as doing something "insane" and coming out just fine.

Sometimes we like to think that it would be great if we humans felt the most motivated by what was logical and reasonable and showed the greatest odds of bettering our lives or the world around us all the time. In fact, a scientist thinking of "adaptive behavior" might assume that millions of years of adaptive evolution would produce exactly that outcome ... a very rational and adaptive human. They would of course be wrong.

We feel the best when we feel "lucky", when some sort of risk has paid off and things went well. We are forever cheering the underdog. Vegas and the lottery draw their billions, and like Lake Woebegone, we like to think all our kids are "above aveage".

Riding a snowmobile on groomed trails in the daytime without having any alcohol and staying generally at less than 60MPH isn't really completely "death defying" ... but relative to sitting behind a desk punching keys, it is pretty wild. The Keweenaw picked up 30" on top of the 15-20" that they had on the ground and we had some of the best trails ever, and very low traffic. managed to get the sled up from 160mi to 500mi, so got it broke in a bit for it's first year. It may not have been the most sane way to spend a couple days of vacation, but at least for me, it would have been hard to beat on the fun scale.