Folk Fest

Yet another setback on the road to recovery. Maybe. The truth is, I've been functioning in this semi-injured state long enough that I don't really remember what normal is supposed to feel like. But I do try to be careful. These days, with summer approaching ever faster, I try to be so, so careful.

Today I had some grocery shopping and other mind-numbing errands to do. Before that, I decided to go for a walk on the beach. You know, slow walk on a flat gravel beach, skimming the surf and picking up seashells like toddlers and little old ladies can do. But the tide was coming up and on my way back, I had to climb up into the rocks to get through. I tentatively chose every step, taking advantage of every handhold and generally following the mantra of three-point contact. However, I was probably just shy of that number when I set my foot down on a slanted boulder and lost contact immediately. I plummeted down the slimy surface in a blinding flash of white pain. It felt like my knee had finally ripped clean from my leg like it's been hinting at all this time. I lay crumpled on the rocks for several seconds, unsure of how to make my next move. If I got up to walk and learned I couldn't, I knew I'd be devastated. And not only that, I'd be stranded alone on a beach with the tide coming up and not a soul knew I was out there. But if I got up and learned I could still walk, I'd have a short hike and a long afternoon full of shame and regret ahead of me. Of all the fun things I could have done to unravel any progress I've made, a toddler walk on the beach would be about my last choice.

After the white streaks stopped shooting across my field of vision and my knee-jerk panic reaction subsided, I accepted the reality that I was OK. I stood up and oozed my way off the rocks at a literal rate of about 100 yards an hour. When I made it back to the safety of smooth gravel, my gait and speed returned fairly quickly back to normal. It seems that all I really did was bend my knee too far when I fell forward, and that pain I felt was just the "10" version of the normal pain I feel in other knee-bending tasks, such as pedaling a bicycle. No new damage, right? Just a little warning from the tender tissue. That's my story. I'm sticking to it.

Well. It seems I've gone off rambling about my knee again. I really intended this post to be about Folk Fest, which is an annual old-timey-and-other-acoustic-music event created to fill out a week of that dull time between winter skiing and summer fishing. Folk Fest is huge here in Juneau. I really had no idea. Half the town packs the city auditorium so tight that there's no room to dance, which is probably a good thing in my case, and countless musicians spill out in the streets, the bars, the motels - anywhere - to start their own renegade sets. We went tonight to see the headliner, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, because we heard they were the real deal. And they were. Alaskans really love their old-timey music, which always struck me as amusing because of our distance - both culturally and geographically - to rural Appalachia. But I am starting to understand the draw. This music will grab you and fling you around in leg-kicking frenzy and spit you out in an idealized world where nothing happened after 1929. I'm not going to pretend I know anything about the culture of old-timey. But I do know that it's a fun escape when it comes through town.

Also, since I'm on the subject of rambling, I wanted to say hello to all of the new people from all over the world who dropped by Thursday (thanks to Blogger for the link love.) More than 5,000. Wow. You may have even read a few posts and are probably wondering why someone would devote an entire blog to a knee injury. But there could be worse blog themes, don't you think? I mean, what's the deal with those people who pretend to have an informative regional blog and then just spend the whole time talking about their hobbies? Pathetic, really, when you think about it.

Hooked

Do you ever wonder how seemingly normal, otherwise-well-rounded people find their way into endurance sports? Of course there will always be genetic anomalies out there who can burn endless miles without even trying. But where does the rest of the field come from? How does a person look at something like a 24-hour bicycle race - the stomach-turning loops, the joint-throttling repetition, the creeping night fatigue and the 20-hours-per-week training it takes to get there - how do they look at something like that and say, “hey, that might be something I’d be good at”? Or even scarier - “hey, that might be fun.”

I’ve ask myself this question before. I feel like I can trace it all back to a single moonlit morning, when my friends Monika, Curt and I decided we wanted to see what the top of Mount Timpanogos looked like at sunrise.

The Timpanogos trail is in itself a fairly mellow hike. At 18 miles, it’s long but mellow. Of course there’s a fair amount of elevation gain, but since Boy Scouts and BYU students make up the bulk the trail’s regulars, it can’t exactly be listed under Xtreme. But throw in three recent college grads, a long night of partying, a sleepless 2 a.m. launch time, two frozen water bottles, six Jolly Ranchers and a single can of Red Bull, and you suddenly have something that skirts the gaping chasm of “Epic.”

I remember struggling up the ridge line at mile 7, about 5 a.m., when our silent suffering started to slip into audible abuse. After several long minutes of groans and grumbles and my comments about the brilliance of freezing water for a hike in the 35-degree chill of a September morning at 10,000 feet, we all just stopped. Cut to silence. And looked at each other. I could see in my friends’ eyes the dead-end fatigue I felt in myself. It was suggested that we turn around. I glanced up trail. The ridge was no more than a half mile away - and beyond that I imagined the wind-blasted ridge line, the strenuous scramble to the peak, and the inevitable sunrise over the Heber Valley.

And so I said, "Well, the hard part's over now. It's all mental from here." Somehow, I talked myself into believing that. And Monika and Curt, as though too tired to argue, nodded. So we marched.

At the peak, Monika - the only one smart enough to bring any sort of breakfast - shared her strange little soft cheese wedges with us before she and Curt passed out on their own respective rock ledges. I sat beside a weather tower and watched wisps of pink clouds burn away as the Wasatch Range stretched deeper into the morning. In the new clarity of daylight, I had a bewildering view of what seemed to be thousands of peaks. I wanted to climb them all. And even stranger, I thought as desperately lapped at wet ice through the narrow neck of my water bottle, is that I wanted to start that second, from that peak. I wanted to walk to the next peak, and then the next. As exhausted as I knew I was, I craved some sort of journey into the eternity I could suddenly see.

I think that's when I knew.

What's your story?

The time it takes to heal

Traveling at godspeed
over the hills and trails
I have refused my call
pushin' my lazy cells
into the blue flame
I want to crash here right now
the hourglass spills its sand
if only to punish you

for listenin' too long
to one song

“Sing Me Spanish Techno,” The New Pornographers

So I did a couple of things today that bummed me out. The first was visiting my physical therapist in the morning, still crusty-eyed from another rough night of sleep and carrying the shame of relapse. Instead of getting the stern lecture I deserved, I got some wince-inducing stretches that didn’t even touch my knees. For some reason, the PT has started to direct almost all of her focus on my IT band, which I don’t even understand. All I do know is I now have a new burning sensation - in my upper leg - and no real source of hope. And, if nothing else, a physical therapist should offer hope, don’t you think?

So after that I hobbled over to the gym and renewed my membership. I had a membership when I first moved to Juneau, back when I was a real baby about all the rain. But once I adapted to the whims of seafaring life, I downgraded my membership to punch passes and then barely used them. Life was good then. I got out a lot, and I fell way behind on my celebrity gossip. But now that I’ve sworn off cycling, my options are limited. It’s really best to keep my swimming down to two days a week ... at least until I chop off “that rattrap,” which is what Geoff calls my hair now. And I do need to do more weight training in order to build strength where atrophy reigns. So it’s back to hamster wheels and People magazine for me.

In the meantime, I continue to search for reasons. Back when life was good and I had no idea which body part Britney Spears shaved that week, Geoff and I actually had a couple of discussions about my one-note bicycle training. It think it was after we came home from some short cross-country ski outing. I started complaining about the various areas where I was more sore than I should be (in my ongoing effort to prove that skiing isn’t actually fun). “Well no wonder,” Geoff said. “It’s not like you ever use your feet.”

And it’s true. When I wasn’t bicycling, which was really rare, I was skiing, running on the elliptical machine or lifting weights. In fact, after snow first covered the mountains and I stopped hiking, I didn't participate in a single full-impact activity. I had been shielded from gravity since October. No wonder my knee buckled under the first sign of stress.

Now that I’m several months wiser, I’d swear my allegiance to cross training in a millisecond if I thought it could help. I realize, though, that I don’t really have a choice.