My Right Hand

I actually took a picture of my right hand the other day.  It didn't come out -- I'm grateful for this, because I probably wouldn't want to look at it.

Here's the deal.  First, the roughly 20 hours of flight didn't do much for my skin.  Made my hand look like -- well, a friend used to describe it as "E.T. just before he died," which is fairly accurate. 

Then, when we went on the canyon swing, the nice man wrote a number on the back of our (right) hands with black magic marker  -- I think it was our harness number (they kept track of how many jumps went on each harness) and then turned the number into a picture.  I had a "6" turned into a fish.  After jumping, I thought I'd try to rid myself of my fishy.  I used some of that anti-bacterial hand gel that is alcohol-based.

HUGE mistake.  Pouring alcohol on a hand that is chapped and (apparently) covered with tiny little cuts is an extremely bad idea.  Not to mention that there was more magic marker ink than this stuff could handle, so I just ended up turning the back of my hand black.

Next day was Dart River, where I got my hands (a) sunburnt and (b) sandfly bitten.  Current count is 19 bites on my right hand alone.

I took a picture to memorialize my chapped, ink-covered, sunburnt, bitten hand.  It's getting better, though.  Conveniently, the stuff that makes the sandfly bites stop itching is also good for sunburn, and it has lotion in it that's helping with the dryness.  And the burn has faded to a tan, and the ink has finally faded totally.  So yay.  And a nice woman in a shop today smeared some aloe vera all over my hand just out of pity.  They're nice folks out here.