A good day to not be riding

(Photo by Brian Wallace/Juneau Empire)

So somewhere beneath this mountain of snow is Thane Road, a favorite route of mine. The road was of course closed for avalanche control when this one came tumbling down. But I think the gunners shot off a little more than they could handle. Road crews said it would be at least 10 hours before they could clear away the 20-foot-high powder wall, and there's a whole town's worth of people who live on the wrong side of this thing. Rough.

It's crazy weather day here in Juneau. We hit the all-time seasonal snowfall record early this morning - 195 inches (the official number is measured at the airport. Where I live, on Douglas Island, we have received closer to 240 inches.) Then it switched over to rain - heavy, heavy rain. Heavy in the way that waterlogged snow sitting atop a fresh powder slab is heavy. Avalanche danger right now is an understated "extreme." Flood advisories are rampant. They even threw in a wind advisory for good measure. Officials are telling people to drive at their own risk. If you don't get buried by a snow slide, you'll probably be swept away by a torrent from a flooded-out stream, or blown away by 50 mph gusts. Welcome to spring in Southeast Alaska - where winter doesn't just melt away. It implodes.

Either way, it's a good day to sit inside the office, ice my knee into dull-ache oblivion, and dream up ways to make a great gimp adventure out of it all tomorrow. Any ideas?

Patellar tendonitis

So my diagnosis has been upgraded from "angry knee" to "jumper's knee." At least this diagnosis makes a little more sense - even if it is a malady usually reserved for basketball players (and, apparently, people who can't pedal a bicycle as well as they think they can.) The bad news is my condition is at least "grade 3," which means I need to:

* Rest completely from the aggravating activity. Replace it with swimming/running in water (if pain allows).
* See a sports injury specialist/therapist who can apply sports massage techniques and advice on rehabilitation.

* Accept the fact that I've basically wasted an entire month.

The doc recommended physical therapy. That sounds expensive. But I'm willing now to accept that this is a problem worth throwing money at. The fact that I've been so stingy and stubborn is one of the reasons I've lost an entire month.

Because I acquired the injury in an interesting way - riding a 100-mile snow bike race - the doctor always ends up spending more time chatting with me about my bicycling than he does talking about my knee. He was asking me another string of questions about the Susitna 100 today when I finally dropped my most pressing question.

"So I want to be able to ride another 100-miler by early May. Think that's possible?" I asked.

"Yes, that's possible," he said.

I paused to wait for the qualifier, but it never came. So I said, "But ... um ... will I have time to get back into shape before then?"

"The idea is to not fall out of shape," he said.

I waited for more doctorly advice, but he just looked at me with a straight face. I was confused. This is the guy, after all, who recommended active recovery all along. But he wasn't gushing with specific suggestions. And because I'm pretty sure that I had it all wrong before, I went for something I've never tried."So, should I try swimming?"

"Swimming is good," he said. "Your physical therapist will be able to help you develop some recovery-specific exercises."

I felt a bit bewildered. There I was, fishing for an authoritative lecture about all of the things I shouldn't be doing, and I was only getting closer to having an actual MD tell me I should start riding my bike again. He chose that awkward pause to pick up our chat where we left off, in which I told him about my desire to ride the 24 Hours of Light.

"I'd like to ride the 24 Hours of Light," he said, "but I'm going to be in Coeur d'Alene that weekend."

I knew the doc was a cyclist, so I said, "Oh, are you going to do some riding down there?"

"I'm going to race the Ironman triathlon," he said.

"Ironman? Um. Wow. That's great." It's just my luck that I'd get a crazy enduro-nut for a doctor. He probably considers patellar tendonitis to be a perfectly normal condition, like blisters. He's probably tough enough to go out and run 100 miles through such a niggling injury, but that PhD degree forces him to recommend physical therapy to lesser animals like me.

This is all hugely speculative on my part, of course. But the diagnosis seemed to be good news either way. I had plans to go out after my doctor visit to consul myself with sushi. But instead, I decided to celebrate ... with sushi.

Now it's time to call those PT people and get to work. White Rim, here I come.

Into the daylight

I believe today is the Vernal Equinox.

In the northern hemisphere, that means springtime. In Alaska, it means cold daylight.

Twelve hours now. And very soon, much more.

I've lived through exactly two Alaska winters and one Alaska summer. I may be one of the deranged few who actually enjoy winter more. Don't get me wrong. Summer holds its own joy, and its own trials. I basically stumbled through last summer. Making a major move and enduring a period of homelessness in the middle of it all didn't help. I found myself pinned between obligation and the constant crush of activity. Winter is very liberating to me. The landscape freezes over. The world slows down. And I can move freely among it.

Summer is going to be very difficult for me if I can't ride my bike. I don't say this to fish for sympathy or diminish the trials of people who are truly suffering. I'm just making a statement that I suspect is true. It's not about my life one, 10 or 20 years from now. It's just about this summer, and how I watch the sunset creep further into the evening and resent that retreat. Longer days have a way of feeling much more empty. I've always believed my life to have a well-rounded array of meaningful elements, but some holes can be difficult to fill.

Like I said, though, I'm really not digging for sympathy. And I promised myself I wouldn't subject anyone who stumbles across this blog to my whiny rants anymore ... but ... It's been on my mind a lot. Probably because it's spring now, and I have a doctor's appointment this morning. There's not a lot he'll be able to say that will make much of a difference - beyond "major reconstructive surgery" (unlikely since he's already established minor injury, but you never know.) However, I am now sufficiently humbled and will take any advice more to heart. And I do think this month has been valuable in learning much more about my weaknesses ... both physical and spiritual.