Conrad Lotten is again the hero of this story.

On Wednesday I blew a launch on the north launch at Mt. Borah. I did something very similar what you saw in the video of my launch on the west side later in the day. Likely I took two or three steps with the glider horizontal then let the glider nose come up. Also I launched on a flat slope with no cliff (until later) into no wind or wind from the side.

In this incident I suffered from cuts and and scratches. The glider suffered from a broken down tube, a bent downtube, and scruffs to the nose cone:

Click on above for high resolution shots. Thanks to Billo.

The picture above of the bandage has a story. This was the cut, a bit deep, a flap of skin that had to be cut off. The first thing we did was rinse the scrapes and cuts in lots of water. Conrad says the best thing that you can do for a cut or scrape is thoroughly rinse in in lots and lots of tap water. Doctors used to use sterilized water, but tap water turned out to be better because you used much more of it and the point was to get out the dirt and other bad particles. So the more the better. Thoroughly flush the wound.

We put betadine on the cuts, but Conrad said this was useless, that it killed the good with the bad. The ointments and anti infection agents didn't do anything useful. It's the original cleaning that counts to stop infection.

The next step was to get a bandage that kept the cut moist so that the skin could grow back quickly. Conrad went to the chemist and found OpSite post operative dressings. They required that I shave my leg around the wound in order to get them to stick to skin instead of hair.

This was a deeper wound than just a surface scratch, so the idea is that skin cells have a much easier time growing in areas where they are no continually dried out. I wanted a bunch of skin to grow back as quickly as possible. It is working.

I've had no infection on any of the wounds. The OpSite bandage stays on as long as I like. In fact there is no need to change the dressing, Conrad states. Better not to disturb the skin as it grows back. I can take a shower with the bandage and it stays attached to the skin.