A little more than a week ago I went skating with Kyle, and though I wear all manner of protective gear (helmet, knee pads, wrist guards), I still managed to grind about 6-8 square inches of skin off my right leg, right below the knee pad and right above my skate.

See I was about to drop into the big bowl, and this dude on one of those really popular little bikes seemed to be coming right at me, but I didn’t catch sight of him until I was literally on the wall of the bowl, about to let gravity do its thing, turn towards the bottom, and rush down in. Except that I aborted, which means my wheels were parallel to the horizon on the edge of a very steep incline. My body fell towards the wall, which had been smoothed by years of graffiti. Once my hands hit the wall, my wheels no longer had enough surface area friction to keep me from sliding down in, and since my wrist guards consist of an external plastic bar that runs from my palm to below my wrist, I slid like I was on ice.

Now things would have been fine had I been A) wearing jeans or B) had the entire bowl been painted with graffiti. Unfortunately, right at the transition, when I was moving the fastest, the graffiti disappears, giving way to much rougher concrete, which was responsible for removing my skin. Of course this all happened in about two seconds, it was like: skate in, bail, slide, get up. I skated my way out of the bowl, sans 6 square inches of skin where I could check myself out. It wasn’t that bad, red, like any roadrash, but not that bloody. I tried to wash the dirt out with my water and continued skating for awhile.

Now in the interest of healing and not just letting my skin scab over, I purchased a new tube of neosporin, some non-stick gauze pads, medical tape, and was very good about keeping my wound dressed. I even wore shorts to work for a week (something I haven’t been in the habit of doing in the cooler climes of Northern California), luckily the weather has been unseasonably warm.

So now it’s been like 10 days. The shallower parts of the scrape have healed, the deeper parts are still red, and it all itches like hell. But this is where it gets worse. I’m breaking out in hives. I think. I can’t tell if it’s just my body’s cute way of commiserating with my healing parts, but on my non-injured leg, I’ve got a swath in roughly same area of insanely itchy raised red skin. And not just there. There’s also some hives around my sock line and worst of all, in my belly button. I mean with the legs, I could possibly imagine having brushed by some poison oak on my hike on Sunday, but inside my belly button? It’s gotta be hives.

But then I’m like WTF is a hive? Maybe I’ve just reached some level of Neosporin toxicity. In any event, I itch, it’s driving me crazy, I’ve moved on to hydrocortisone, but I’m thinking it might be time to bring out the big antihistamine guns.

Update: Poison-oak self-exam