Broken Foot and Still Smiling

A hike to Reed Lakes in 1994 didn't go as planned. We got hungry pretty quickly. Sean ate so many blueberries on the steep part that my mother thought they were out of season when she followed behind him. After the boulder field I got tired and cold - I didn't know yet that I was sick - so I napped while the rest continued the hike.
When they returned we headed back down the boulder field, and right at the end, my dad landed wrong and broke his ankle. This picture is at the location - they look too happy in the picture, but it is the spot that he broke it.
We still had a long way to go, a very long way. Well, the only way down the steep part was for him to scoot down, kind of crab walking down the mountain. He was so bruised from this. He kept calling for a stick so that he could support himself. I think the picture adequately answers his call, but I looked anyway. When we got down the mountain we still had a long way to the van - my mother went up ahead to take stuff and bring stuff back. She also kept lying to us and saying we were almost there. Humble tried to carry my dad, I tried to carry my dad, but mostly we were useless. Amber laughed a lot. Like her sister Holly, she could find humor in misery. Sean - decathalete Sean - carried him and he took turns limping. Humble sometimes helped keep him balanced and I found lots of good places for a quick nap.
Eventually, we made it. It must have been nearly midnight because it got reasonably dark. We went to the first hospital - which was still quite a distance. Dad got a cast.
The next morning Dad decided it itched and the only solution was to drill holes in the cast so that he could scratch better. Well, drilling holes just made more itchy places from all of the material it scattered throughout the cast. So, he cut the whole thing off and scratched it until it didn't itch any more; then he went to another doctor to get a new cast.
He got the new cast and repeated his drilling and cutting the next day to relieve the itching. Too embarrassed to let one of the first two doctors know what he had done, he found a third doctor. Perhaps smarter than the others, he gave my dad an aircast. One that he could take on and off.
Within days he would balance carefully on the bad foot and make a quick hop - which became known as the Hood Hop - to prove that it was getting better and that he really didn't need the aircast either.