Burns & Bruises

I’m the kind of person who wears sun block religiously and does everything in my power to avoid getting sun burnt. I don’t like the word hate, but if I had to use it, I would with sunburn. I really hate getting sun burnt. All my face products have SPF 15 and 20 and I wear SPF 15 every day in my daily lotion. If there’s a chance of extended exposure I wear at least SPF 55 and for swimming and water sports I put sun block on at home before I even put on my swim suit so I don’t miss any spot. I’m a top of the ears, behind the neck and top of the feet person. I don’t miss any area and I reapply often and after I get out of the water.

So we spent the weekend at Sam Rayburn Reservoir with my sister and her family pseudo-camping. I say pseudo-camping because only one person regularly sleeps outside in a tent, my nephew William. Everyone else sleeps in an luxury travel trailer with all the modern amenities like air conditioning, full kitchen with microwave and toaster oven, full bath, television with satellite and play station. It even has hard wood floors and recliners. We weren’t really camping even though we were at a camp ground. But we did spend a lot of time on the water. Saturday and Sunday we went tubing, knee boarding, swimming and riding around the reservoir checking on trout lines and baiting fishing spots. I made sure to wear sun block at all daylight times. On Sunday afternoon, we spent about three hours on the water to get our last tubing and knee boarding in before we had to pack up and leave to start the four hour drive back to Austin. We all got back in the boat from swimming to head back to the campground and none of us thought of reapplying our sun block. Well, my niece Elizabeth did sort of because she’s always playing with the sun block. I should have paid more attention and reapplied because in that little short ride back to the campground I got sun burnt. And it is not comfortable at all, especially riding in a car for four hours. I didn’t realize how bad it was until we got home. I think I actually got a little sick from it. I’m feeling it today.

Another thing I noticed when we got home was several bruises on my legs and really bad ones on each elbow. I don’t know where the bruises on my legs came from but the bruises on my elbows were from knee boarding. I slammed them down once really hard on the knee board when trying to get up on the knee board while I was hitting the waves and the water pretty hard. They felt sore once I got on the boat, but they feel really sore today. My whole body feels achy but my elbows and shoulders feel the worst. Water sports take a lot of upper body strength which I don’t have and the pulling of the shoulder joints from being pulled behind a boat going no telling what speeds doesn’t help. I’m definitely feeling it today.

I guess burns and bruises are a good indicator of how good of a time you had getting them. You can see pictures of all the fun we had by clicking here or on the Flickr link to the right.