Last night, Anya and I watched "The Late Show: With David Letterman." On the show he had Aron Ralston who gained fame when he survived a five day ordeal of getting his hand caught between a rock and a hard place in the Utah mountains by cutting his own arm off. The fact that David Letterman devoted almost 3 full segments of his show so that this young man could tell his story. David Letterman, who isn't known as the world's greatest interviewer gave a surprisingly mature interview to Aron Ralston.

It was really interesting hearing about how this man survived on little more than a frozen burrito, some limited water supply, and some crumbs from a muffin from Sunday until Thursday.

Throughout his ordeal, he happened to have a video camera with him. When his fate was still up in the air, he recorded a "last will and testament" that he wasn't sure would ever see the light of day. He said that his ordeal put him through a wide range of emotions. At times he said that he was laughing out loud at himself because he would have these external dialogues with himself of "I NEED to cut my hand off," and then saying "I don't WANT to cut my arm off." It must have been purely maddening.

His nights were the worst because the temperature would drop to around 55 degrees, and all he had in terms of clothing was a pair of shorts and a t-shirt.

Probably the aspect of his survival that is the most surprising is that in order to make it so that he could perform a self-amputation, he had to completely shatter the bones in his arm. He said that the breaking procedure was similar to how you would break a 2 by 4 in a vice grip. Basically, just letting Newton's laws of force do their trick. Just imagine putting a piece of wood in a vice grip and pulling on the top end until it shatters. And he did this TWICE, both bones had to break after all. After this excruciatingly painful ordeal, he then had to do the nasty procedure of cutting off his arm through nasty tendons and muscles with nothing but a pocket knife. The whole ordeal was timed and clocked in at about an hour or so.

Once he was free, he said that he was then able to get one last surge of adrenaline to help him scale a rock face. Because of his long ordeal, it wasn't long after that that a search party found him and took him to a hospital.

He said that he's been asked the question a lot of if he thinks that everyone would be capable of doing something like that to save themselves. He answered that he found "something" within himself that got him through this and something that got him the ability to "do what he had to do." He thinks that this place that was in him, is in everyone and that all it takes is something to tap into it for it to take effect.

Sitting on a comfortable couch, it's hard to listen to his story and think that I'd be able to do something like that to save myself. But I'm sure that put in a similar circumstance, I would have worked something out. It's impossible to say "I could" or "could not" do something in a similar situation. Fortunately, I'll probably never have to be in a similar situation. The human body is capable of amazing things though. Last night proved that beyond shadow of a reasonable doubt.

matt out