Monday, April 15

North 29° 42.092'
West 114° 10.169'
Distance: 0 miles

This was a bad day! On my walk last night, I saw a rattlesnake. Perhaps it was a omen. The snake was angrier and more aggressive than any rattlesnake I have ever seen. As soon as I got to within 20 feet of him he started rattling at me. When I got back I put together a camp fire with a large pile of wood and another pile to put on later. We had a good dinner, then went to have a fire and some tequila. I poured gas from the stove onto the wood, then Mike said he wanted to light it. I recommended he light a piece of paper and then use that to ignite the gas. He misunderstood. He put the paper right on the gas and lit it. A ball of fire went up his arm and singed his eyebrows. After I saw he was OK I laughed at him for a half hour. The fire was great, the tequila was good and the night was perfect. We went to sleep. Then the wind started up. It was really howling all day today. I amused myself with reading till mid afternoon. Mike tried three times to throw his pillow into the ocean, but I caught it twice and it got stuck on a rock the third time. When Mike became too restless and couldn't lay around any more, we went for a walk south-east along the water. We climbed over stuff and around stuff for a quarter mile or so. When we could go no further we went inland up a draw. It got steep and crumbly, so I went 40 feet ahead to avoid dropping rocks on Mike's head. At one point I chose to go right instead of left. Mike decided to go left. I should have insisted that we stick together. Near the top it got steeper than I wanted to deal with, so I started back down. Just then Mike called to me and said "Chuck! You are not going to believe this. I just dislocated my shoulder." He had dislocated it a half dozen times before, but three years ago he'd had surgery and since that time it has never dislocated. He works out regularly as an added insurance. I hurried over to him and we found a semi-secure place to stand and try to put it back in. Between his strong shoulder and the surgery, I couldn't move it at all. He had to hike and climb with his shoulder hurt back to camp. After thinking for a while I cleaned out my kayak and turned it over. I put one end on an old tire and the other on a large piece of driftwood and taped it down with duct tape. Mike laid face down on this table and hung his arm over the edge. Then I made a cuff for his wrist out of duct tape - turning it inside out so it wouldn't stick to his skin and hair, but so it would stay on. Then I taped large rocks to his arm as weights. We left him there trying to relax with some drugs for an hour in the hope that his arm would pop back in. It didn't. As it got dark he started to get cold. With the kayak bottom not being too flat, he had to hold on. I tried taping him on, but it wasn't totally successful. Because of those two issues and because of the pain, he had difficulty relaxing. At any rate, we were not successful at getting his shoulder relocated. At 8:30 I made the decision to go to sleep. I gave him water and more drugs through the night. Mike dozed while I laid down and thought about what to do.