So, What happened you ask

So, imagine a tent. Okay, imagine a bigger tent. Now try and think about a tent just slightly bigger than that. There you go! We had an arrangement for the Highland Games to have a huge tent for our entertainment stage and beer garden, which we organized with Ray France of Mountain Jubilee. By all accounts this may be the only tent of this kind in Western Canada, and Ray is a great guy.

The deal is we pay Ray a certain amount for tent rental, and we help him set it up. This is, at least for the first little while, a highly technical process that I was in no way involved in. It came to a point where what was needed was brute strength and endurance; I was the only one available.

The actual raising of the tent involves taking a large iron clamp that is held by 2 people, and attaching it to one of the centre poles. Then 2 people grab and pull, one person pushed the bottom of the pole down and the other pushes it up. This does not really do it justice.

I was one of the medieval pullers of poles, and I was fastidiously using my legs to lift rather than my back. I do at one point remember thinking to myself that I was about to use my back rather than my legs to pull; I also remember not taking an alternate course of action after that thought. The next thing I remember is what appeared to be an audible sound coming for the muscles of my lower back. I know; it doesn't sound likely, but that is what I remember.

It seems that I am one of the 15% of the population who have their sciatic nerve running through the Piraformis muscle and my Piraformis was particularly displeased with my activities, and took this out on the sciatica. This explains why I shed a tear or two trying to tie my shoes on the Tuesday after the games, and why I wore crocs for most of that following week.