You’d think orthopedic surgeons, on their time off, would be involved in something relatively tame, like golf. Relaxing. Low risk. Right? But two local surgeons live a bit more on the edge. Their hearts beat a little faster. They lose themselves totally in the moment. They challenge themselves with interests even less predictable than the human body.
Dr. Paul Lin
Rocky Mountain High
Take Dr. Paul Lin. He just got dropped off atop a 12,337-foot snowy peak 75 miles west of Denver. There’s nothing but the wind whipping around him and a 360-degree view so perfect he can barely take it in. He’s up behind Copper Mountain, and he’s facing down a slope with a seriously steep drop-off. His heart thuds with the thrill of the moment; he pauses…then pushes off. He starts carving down the slope, picking up speed. The chalky snow flies behind his board, and the wind snatches at his breath. It’s magnificent. Everything clicks, and he’s in the zone.
For Dr. Lin, that moment is the most enjoyable experience you can have. When the powder is just right, he knows just how remarkable that is, and he makes sure people know it’s worth savoring. “I tell them, ‘It will never be like this again. Enjoy every moment.’”
The best bit, for him, is just being outdoors in the wild, mountainous countryside. Getting dropped off by a snowcat means he can explore more large-scale mountains more quickly than he could, obviously, by hiking. “You’re exploring miles in minutes that would take you days and days otherwise,” Dr. Lin notes. “I think of it like a motor vehicle that takes you around a mountain at high speeds or like a dirt bike; you just keep on going. It’s like freedom.”
As you can imagine, it takes him out of his day-to-day work as a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician for OSS Health in York, where he helps patients manage pain. Dr. Lin got into snowboarding at Lake Tahoe in the year between medical school as a general surgery intern and as a physiatry resident in York. He’s taken a few falls (separated his shoulder and hurt his wrist and his back, but nothing he calls “serious”). He’s big on safety and “respecting the downhill, even when you’re advanced.” He must look different when he rides, wearing wrist guards, elbow guards, knee guards, butt guards (yep, they exist), and spine padding. He cross-trains with rock-climbing, skateboarding, and surfing.
Dr. Lin used to head west with a community of riders, but now his wife and kids (ages 3 and 6) are starting to learn. He’s also teaching his children to rock-climb and built a 25-foot climbing wall in his garage. He does several types of climbs, including 600-foot “multi-pitch adventures.” And possibly the kind where you see the silhouette of a climber on some inspirational poster. With skateboarding, he’s a bit less accomplished, skating just the bowls and vertical ramps, but he says he’ll eventually become “less of a bottom dweller and rise to the top of the bowl.” In other words, he’ll be one of those awesome guys jumping with a lot of air under them.
Dr. Brett Himmelwright
Accelerating Everything
Then there’s Dr. Brett Himmelwright of OIP (Orthopedic Institute of Pennsylvania) in Camp Hill. He’s basically in love with his dark blue 2012 Corvette. And you can see why. She’s sleek, she’s powerful, and she’s fast. She handles like a dream. He goes on vacation with that car. (His wife is into that car, too, for the record. As soon as it’s safe for their three-year-old to be around this car he loves, too, she’ll rejoin him on his automotive rounds, bringing their son along. For right now, it’s a little sketchy, because he’s fast too, and he wants to be wherever Dad is.)
Dr. Himmelwright’s venture into high-performance driving began when he saw an ad for a driving school that taught you how to drive faster. He was all in, with one caveat: “My thought was, I don’t want to go to school and use their car, something I will never own. I want to learn to drive my car better and faster.” So he bought his first fast car and signed up for the classes. He spun and crashed that first car (“modified by a wall” is how he puts it), walking away uninjured. That’s when he got the Corvette.
When you’re learning, you get an instructor Dr. Himmelwright likens to an attending physician. “They ride with you and say things like ‘Don’t ever do that again!’” You graduate up the ranks until you’re ready for your first solo drive. “That was both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. Now,” he says, “it is absolutely exhilarating. Most of the terrifying has gone away.” It’s still a rush, since he travels around 150 miles per hour, which is hard to imagine for those of us who (legally, at least) barely top 70 on PA roads. “You become immersed,” he says, “but somewhere in the back of your brain you still have to realize the potential for bad things happening, the potential for injury or to wreck. And that’s part of the exhilaration: trying to find that perfect balance where you can find a little bit more speed without doing something that pushes you over the edge.”
Of course, as a surgeon, Dr. Himmelwright’s got a solid handle on safety. In this case, it starts with good brakes and good tires. It also involves special equipment: a harness and seat that hold him in place, gloves, a helmet, and something called a Hans device, a bulky collar that attaches to the helmet and protects his neck. (According to Dr. Himmelwright, if Dale Earnhardt, Sr., had been wearing one, he’d still be alive.)
Dr. Himmelwright rides on specific tracks from Virginia up to the Finger Lakes, where his favorite track lies. High-performance drivers drive on the same tracks NASCAR and other sports car series use, but they don’t just race around the oval; they get to do what Dr. Himmelwright calls “the twisty stuff.” “Watkins Glen has a perfect combination of straightaways that allow you to go fast and tight and technical corners that make you hone your skill.” He explains some tracks are “smaller and just tight; you never get to go fast because you’re always working on the corners.” While that may be good for, say, a Miata, in a relatively high-horsepower car like his (just under 500 horsepower), he says “The Glen” is fantastic.
Another reason the doctor drives way faster than most of us is because it fosters “a kind of mental vacation from work and all those stresses, even though you’re very focused,” says Himmelwright. “You intentionally blot out all of the other stuff around you and concentrate on this one thing you’re doing.” In a way, he says, that’s similar to surgery, but it’s hard to imagine his adrenaline is pumping quite as much when he’s holding a ten blade as it is when the telephone poles start to blur.
