Days 120-123 Ashland (in town)

Days 120-123 Ashland (in town)

I had actually never been to Ashland before. My children had come to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival on school trips. I had driven through Ashland on I-5. But I had never actually visited it. So I really wanted to visit the little town and see a couple of shows.

I felt good but my body was tired all day. I could walk around, interact and have fun. But I felt like I had to overcome a lot of inertia to be able to move anywhere. Luckily, our hotel was just a block from downtown Ashland, so we didn’t have to walk too far to explore the city.

Happy Wives of Windsor

Tonight’s show at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival was Merry Wives of Windsor. I felt like everyone on the show did a great job. I particularly enjoyed watching the actors who had roles in both this and Into the Woods, seeing how different the portrayals of the characters were. That being said, I admit that I enjoyed Into the Woods more, as it seemed to resonate with me more.

Swimming and Rescue

The three of us escaped the heat by swimming in the hotel’s small pool. But I also felt tiredness throughout my body here, since I didn’t want to spend a lot of energy. I swam a little, but most of the time I sat on the steps, legs submerged, talking to Becky and Matt.

My memory of what happened next is somewhat hazy, although I tried to write down the details shortly after. I’m going to tell what I can…

Also at the pool there were some families with small children. I think one girl’s mother alerted me to the situation by jumping into the pool. I saw a little girl (5 years old?) who had been on an inflatable ring flipped over with her older sister (8 years old? maybe her cousin) trying to lift her head out of the water and turn her back up. This was on the edge of the bottom of the pool so they couldn’t touch the bottom.

He was sitting on the top step on the shallow side. I leaned forward into the water, pushed myself off the step/wall, and stopped behind the girl, between her and the wall. I remember seeing the mother with big eyes on the other side of her daughter, looking panicked at not being able to save her daughter. I grabbed the girl in a cross-body bag, swam a stroke or two to the side of the pool, and used my free hand to pull us both toward the wall. The girl was still breathing well. I think about her facial expression and think she may have been a little confused trying to figure out who this stranger holding her against the wall was.

I don’t really remember how he ended up getting out of the pool. I guess the mom came and helped.

Understandably, the older sister stayed with her family and cried over this incident for quite some time. I approached and assured him that his actions helped keep his little sister’s head above water and also alerted others to the situation so they could intervene. I told him that in situations like this, it’s good to shout for help.

Swimming Retrospective

Background

I spent about seven years on an emergency response team at work. Since we never do everything perfectly when responding, it is always valuable to examine our response and try to evaluate what we could have done better.

For a little background, I am very comfortable in the water. To alleviate the heat and humidity as a child, he spent summers at the community pool, where he was also part of the swim team. As an adult, I participated in triathlons for 20 years and did some open water swim races up to 4 miles long.

Most of my lifesaving training occurred on a lake at Scout camp when I was 13 years old. It was one of the best merit badge classes I have ever taken. The instructor (Thank you, Steve Dobbs) really emphasized safety and the importance of doing things right to avoid double drownings (where both the victim and the rescue attempt end up drowning).

Retrospective

The standard life-saving sequence taught is “reach, throw, row, go.” My instructor expanded that to «think, reach, throw, row, go with support, go.»

Think: This was very quick in this incident and I probably should have thought for a second or so. I saw the incident, realized I could help and moved.

Reach/Throw/Row: Possibly he could have run around the pool to grab the buoy or staff. But I also think it would have been slower.

go with support: The idea here is to carry something with you to keep distance between you and the victim. Panicked victims instinctively try to grab you and climb on top of you, pushing you underwater in the process. If the victim can’t grab you, they can’t push you underwater.

I probably should have grabbed something. The counterargument is that he was attacking the victim in 2 or 3 seconds while grabbing something that probably would have added several seconds. Also, the victim was much smaller than me and was only 1 or 2 strokes away from the edge of the pool.

fast recoil: I was taught, before physically attacking a victim, to make a «quick reversal.» This is done a little beyond “throwing” range by floating in the water with one foot raised in front of you to push the victim back if they are thrown. It provides the opportunity to quickly reassess the situation and rethink your strategy.
I didn’t do a quick reverse and I should have. However, I thought about the situation as I slid underwater towards the girl. When I surfaced, the situation was still as I expected.

Go commitment: I think I did the right thing here. With the girl in front of her mother and in the middle of the pool, I was able to grab her from behind.

Immediately take control of the girl’s body, keep our heads above the water and quickly take us to the solid wall of the pool.

Cross chest carry

: From behind the victim, you use one of your arms (I used the right one), reach over the victim’s same shoulder (your right shoulder), cross their chest, and hold them under the armpit. Since you have your entire arm over his torso, you have good control of his body. And while on their side, you can use your hip against their back to keep them on the surface while you swim sideways using your other arm.

I think I’ve thought about these things enough that I deliberately and automatically positioned myself between the girl and the wall, knowing that this was the best place from which to get her to safety.

Aside: It’s surprising how little «full-body fatigue» matters when the adrenaline floodgates open.

Becky was interested in doing some riding on the PCT while in Ashland. Having both her car and Matt’s, we decided to transport the cars and do a day hike from where Becky picked me up to Callahan’s. It was a 6-7 mile hike and then we had a nice lunch at Callahan’s.

Mount Shasta in the distance

With Mate/Bones

Becky (with PCT sign)

Matt and Becky

Later that day, we did laundry. Our hotel did not have laundry facilities, but we had a sister hotel across town that did. So we drove there and swam in that pool while we did laundry.

Dinner at Osteria la Briccola

That night we had a very nice dinner at Osteria la Briccola in downtown Ashland. The food and service were excellent, more than a step or two above the usual cheeseburgers I had been eating when I went to the towns along the trail.

my dinner

While eating dinner, we heard the story of Matt’s trail name, Bones, when he hiked the AT in 2024. Before the hike, he had been researching the most common injuries on the trail. A large percentage of them appeared to be bone-related, which influenced Matt’s decisions along the way, such as consuming enough calcium to preserve bone density and strength.

At the end of the meal, we decided to split a very elegant and rich chocolate cake (Tortino di Cioccolato). Since Becky is very chocolate-motivated, we joked and joked, asking her to observe good hygiene along the way by licking the dessert plate clean. We all had a good laugh (and I took a photo) as she voluntarily did it (after making sure we weren’t being watched at the time). That action served as motivation to give Becky her track name: Cioccolata.

Chocolate cake

• Proper etiquette on the way to cleaning dishes.
• After a couple of days of relaxing and playing, I was feeling stressed about having to get things done while I was in town. I didn’t feel like I had done everything, but I did enough to feel comfortable:
• organized photos (camera)
• I purchased and installed a new string for Chickadee (guitar). A rope broke on the last day of hiking to Ashland.
• I used hot glue to cover some of the exposed metal on my camera case so that it hopefully wouldn’t cut into the fabric of your dry bag.
• I used hot glue on my trekking poles to keep the strap from slipping.

I bought a new hook and sewed it on my leggings.

organized food, creating bags of trail mixes from random dry foods I had

I also packed my bags again.

It was Monday and we discovered that almost everything related to tourism closes on Mondays in Ashland. But we were persistent and found a small Thai restaurant that was open for dinner. The food was good, but it didn’t satisfy my hiker hunger, so we went to Zoey’s for ice cream afterwards. Their Oregon Trail ice cream (chocolate, blackberry and hazelnut) really hit the spot.