Days at home

I was loping through tall grass on a fading forest road when it occurred to me what I miss most about cycling. I'd been pondering this since I walked past my mountain bike with its sad deflated tires that haven't been touched since January, yelled at my fingers while fumbling with the laces of my running shoes, and stepped outside into wind-blast of grass pollen and heat to go for a run that I felt strangely not enthused about, at all. I say strangely because nine days passed after my surgery before I felt stable and pain-free enough to venture back to trails, and I thought I'd be more excited about it.

I've been feeling down this week. It's not just about my hand, although I'd be lying if I didn't admit that pain and lack of instant-fix (which nobody expected) weren't a large percentage of my sour mood. There was also, of course, the latest batch of world news, mass shootings and this debacle of an election year. There was the onset of spring allergy season (my second of the year thanks to moving from California to Colorado.) There was some concerning news about Cady, the sweet cat who lived with me for 11 years and now resides with a friend in California. An acquaintance died. This woman and I were close in age and shared similar passions, so her candid writing about her battle with cancer over the past twenty months always struck a chord. Her illness had progressed to the point where the news might bring the platitude, "At least she's no longer suffering." But she remained grateful every day. She was never unrealistic, but she was also never resigned. She was grateful when she could hike; and when she could no longer do that, she was grateful when she could take her young son to the park; and when she could no longer do that, she was grateful when she could get out of bed; and when she could no longer do that, she was grateful she could still draw; and when she could no longer do that, she sent out a final goodbye. She was gone just over a week later.

So I was a bit sad and I was stuck at home, unable to drive to town with my bad hand, and canceling an interview and a meet-up with a friend because of this. I do love the place where I live, and enjoyed some beautiful sunsets and humorous interactions with birds, rabbits, and deer. I'd take my laptop outside, but the allergy fog would drive me indoors before too long. The heat ramped up to nearly ninety degrees. I ventured back into running slowly — 4, 5, 6 miles on the dirt road, extremely careful because tripping and falling would have been a disaster.

I did get a lot done with my Iditarod book project, which I'm happy about. The first draft is nearly finished. I just have one more chapter and a few details to add, and then it will be time to sort through it and determine whether it makes any sense. Thematically the storyline is quite similar to "Be Brave, Be Strong" — about failure, kindness, and overcoming self-doubt. I'm thinking about combining the story with a full-color photo book, because designing such a book would be a lot of fun — even if not so lucrative. After this I need to find less esoteric subjects to write about. Maybe. I'm not sure it's that important.

A follow-up with the surgeon brought a lecture about not using my hand enough. Although the nerve still has a long way to go toward healing, I can improve my strength and dexterity with hand exercises. Great. There will surely be more pain and mistakes down the road (I already broke the screen on my phone because I dropped it), but maybe someday soon I will stop screaming at my shoelaces.

The surgeon basically gave me the go-ahead to live my normal life, so I celebrated today by exploring a new trail near my house, Twin Sisters Peak (a small rocky outcropping in Boulder County, not to be confused with the popular summit in Rocky Mountain National Park.) The heat index was high but there was a nice breeze, and despite allergies I begin to feel more peppy after slogging out the first mile. By accident I veered off the main trail onto a disused forest road. After realizing this, I decided to keep following it all the same. Suddenly caught up in the prospect of new discoveries, I realized that this is what I miss most about riding my bike — exploration. There's a large scope beyond this small radius where I've run and hiked since moving to Boulder two months ago. Wheels give such an empowering sense of freedom, when it's possible to cover dozens of miles in a few hours. Sure, there's still tons of new space to explore on foot — including the mysteries of my own back yard. But I can't help but look out toward the snow-capped Continental Divide, and want to go there right now.

The old forest road largely petered out, but I did run into some no-trespassing signs, so I turned around. I hadn't planned to climb all the way to the peak, fearing a scramble, but upon return from my "adventure," I changed my mind. Tentatively placing my stiff, weak fingers around holds — but refusing to put any weight on them — I managed to gain the summit. Atop that rocky outcropping were incredible views of every space I've explored so far, and so many more I haven't. I may be down sometimes, but I'm still grateful. Every day.

Between injury and recovery

On Friday I had carpal tunnel release surgery in my right hand. The procedure required a long vertical slit through the palm, where the surgeon cut the transverse carpal ligament to relieve pressure on the median nerve, and also removed a fair amount of scar tissue from the area. The scar tissue was especially surprising. A majority of people who suffer from chronic CTS - many for years before they seek treatment - never build up scar tissue and have better nerve response than I did after three months of symptoms. Everything about my case points to acute CTS, except for I never had a damaging wrist injury. Or did I? The long tunnel of scars and bruises is becoming increasingly murky.

What the surgery did determine is that this was never going to get better on its own, and may not still. It's up to the nerve to heal now that the compression has been released. It was, however, badly compressed. As soon as the wound heals I can employ massage to prevent scar tissue buildup and hand exercises to improve strength, but most of the actual healing process is beyond my control. Knowledge of this has admittedly brought me down, but that sad feeling could just be the pain and fatigue from surgery, and dealing with what is currently an utterly useless right hand. I lost my temper today when I failed to wrap a band around my hair - so I threw my hat across the room and stomped all over it. Childish as it is, sometimes a temper tantrum feels good.

When my mom heard about my surgery, she offered to spend her birthday driving across Colorado with my dad so they could drive me to the clinic and stay by my bedside as I woke up in a recovery room, groggy and begging for apple juice. My mom was very sweet to take care of me over the weekend, and I feel lucky to have her. It was especially fun to show my parents our new home and the surrounding mountains.

The hat-stomping incident occurred after they returned to Salt Lake, when I decided to get some fresh air by walking up to my neighbor's house to deliver a check. The process of getting ready - changing into outside clothes, adjusting my new arm sling, writing and signing a check with my left hand to a satisfying level of third-grade-penmanship, applying sunscreen, and putting on shoes and socks - took a frustratingly large amount of time. By the time I got to the hair tie and hat, I'd had it, and let my hair whip and tangle in the wind. Dark clouds built overhead as I walked. After three miles I still hadn't found my neighbor's house (turns out he moved his street sign) but by then there was thunder directly overhead, and I needed to hurry home. When it started to rain I tried jogging, but that was far too painful and ill-advised. Then the sky opened with heavy rain and nickel-sized hail, and all I could do was duck beneath a pine tree and hold my good hand over my neck as hail pelted my head and back, and rain soaked the bandages I wasn't supposed to get wet.

"Mom would not be happy with me," I thought. (Sorry, Mom.) I felt like crying, but I'd already spent all my tantrum energy on a hat.

Instead I waited for the hail to subside, then walked the rest of the way home in a downpour to change my bandages and dispose of the disintegrated check that I'd spent such a long time writing and carrying up the road for nothing. Sometimes it just feels like there's a dark cloud hovering overhead. But things get brighter. I know that.

Blame it on the Tetons

 Beat and I are often accused of failing to take "real" vacations. Every time we leave home, they say, it seems to be for some kind of difficult endeavor, steeped in suffering. Of course this isn't true, but any such argument requires dredging up philosophical musings about the subjective nature of enjoyment, and reasons why one woman's day at the beach is another woman's slow-roasting torture of sunburn and boredom.

Memorial Day brought an opportunity for a classically enjoyable vacation in the form of a Google employee retreat in Teton Village, Wyoming. There would be relaxing in a spacious suite, big breakfasts, nice dinners, a wine tasting, a rodeo, and access to any number of luxuries that come with a resort destination. Attendees were encouraged to enjoy scenic floats on the Snake River or bus tours to Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks, but warned that late May is still the pre-season and outdoor opportunities would be limited.

On Wednesday Beat and I drove from Boulder to Jackson, and the scenery and wildlife viewing was great right along the highway (Over the course of the weekend we saw elk, deer, bison, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, osprey, and a grizzly bear, all from the comfort of the car.) We enjoyed a few nice meals with Beat's colleagues. Somewhere in there I developed a crushing headache, which I can't even blame on the altitude as Teton Village is a thousand feet lower than our home in Boulder, but I'll go ahead and blame the altitude anyway.

I was feeling quite lousy, and sulked through Thursday's long breakfast followed by an afternoon wine tasting, where I drank bottles of water and struggled to hold down a light lunch of barley soup and salad. (If you're wondering how there's a winery in Jackson Hole — because I certainly was — it works because they grow their grapes in Sonoma County, California, and truck them into Wyoming for fermentation. Reportedly the high altitude and cool summers aid in this process.) Anyway, by mid-afternoon I was all relaxed out, so I angled for some fresh air and a short hike before dinner. Nothing too difficult — we could just walk up the ski hill, look out over the valley, and jog down.

 Our friend Liehann, who is racing the Freedom Challenge again in two weeks and has been exclusively bike training for the past six months, made the arguably poor choice to join us. Up we marched in a biting wind and intermittent sleet squalls. I wasn't anticipating an epic and was wearing a T-shirt and hiking pants, with only a 2-ounce Mountain Hardwear shell, a knit hat, and a fleece buff as extra layers. When I started to feel chilled, I put on the hat and buff but opted to leave my arms bare, relishing the sensation as the feeling left my extremities. See, ever since I developed carpal tunnel syndrome in late February, I've lived with a low-level pain in my hand that can partially be described as a mild case of the screaming barfies. Now that three months have passed, I've grown more accustomed to living with this constant tingling, but I do notice when it goes away. It feels wonderful. And the only thing that makes the pain go away is reduced circulation or actual numbness in my hand.

As we continued gaining elevation and the wind grew more fierce, I debated where to draw the line between my enjoyment of pain-free fingers and the increasing discomfort of the cold. It was about then that I took a sip from my Camelbak and drew a mouthful of slush — meaning the ambient temperature was below freezing.

"Windchill has got to be near single digits," I thought, and decided it was time to put on my jacket. The paper-thin material whipped wildly in the wind, and the fingers on my good hand were too stiff to open it up. Basically I'd become too chilled to put on my own coat, which was not a great coat to begin with. It's quite a dumb thing to do, and of course I knew this. At the same time, I knew enough to understand my body was uncomfortable but not dangerously cold, and that warming up would be quick the moment I turned around and sprinted down to sheltered elevations. So I stuffed the jacket in a pants pocket and continued marching up the hill in a T-shirt.

 It was all quite exhilarating, fighting those primal fears that spark at the edges of survivability. I wasn't yet shivering and actually my body was doing a great job of circulating warm blood through my core and legs — only my arms were icy cold. The frigid wind roared and sleet squalls hung like curtains from surrounding clouds, but overhead there was a patch of almost-sunlight, and I relished it all.

At Rendezvous Mountain, Beat and Liehann had ducked behind a closed tram station. Beat helped me put on my jacket, which was definitely better than a T-shirt but not great, and then we all pressed into the brunt of the wind for one more view of the snow-capped skyline beyond the summit. Running downhill, I managed to warm up quickly. After a half mile Beat graciously leant me his mittens to expedite the real screaming barfies feeling in my fingers (which is a lot worse than what I feel all the time. Lesson learned.)

We returned from what turned out to be a 14-mile, 4,200-feet-of-climbing outing just in time for dinner. My headache had finally abated, so I used up all of my bar tickets on glass after glass of Diet Pepsi.

 On Friday we cast a hopeful eye on a canyon loop in Grand Teton National Park, but we weren't well-equipped for spring conditions. (I did have a better jacket, which I carried on every other outing this weekend.) After parking on the wrong side of Jenny Lake, we'd already hiked nearly eight miles by the time we arrived at the mouth of Paintbrush Canyon. Slush line started at 7,500 feet, and by 8,000 feet we were post-holing to our knees. Over scree fields this kind of post-holing can be dangerous, because you don't know where your foot will land. It could be a deep crevice between two rocks, which could easily end in a sprained or broken ankle.

 The weather was volatile as well. It went from raining to sleeting to blue-sky sunshine in the span of about thirty minutes.

 We found a nice basin to have some lunch and called it good.

 Heading back down to String Lake, where we hitched a ride with Liehann and Trang. We could have trekked all the way back around Jenny Lake, but we were committed to our lazy resort weekend. This hike ended at 13.2 miles. Later that evening went out on the town with a large group of Googlers. There may or may not have been overconsumption of a massive funnel cake and the purchase of a fur-lined jock strap. (Beat was not the one who made this purchase, and wanted me to clarify this, although he did go on about how well a fur jock strap would work in Alaska.)

 Saturday morning, we weren't willing to brave the crowds in the national park, so we traveled to the other side of the valley to scope out a route to Jackson Peak. The best views came on the road walk to the trailhead, where clear skies revealed the entire Tetons skyline.

 Snowline consumed the trail at 8,500 feet and then it was a slog. We should have brought snowshoes to Wyoming. Wide backcountry skis would have been the way to go of course, but even snowshoes would have greatly improved our chances of getting to the places we wanted to see.

 Beat inadvertently volunteered to be the trail-breaker, and carefully tested every step. At this point were were all frequently collapsing into hip-deep crevasses.

We decided to turn around when we found ourselves on rotten snow atop table-sized boulders, where falling through might end in a head injury. This was also a nice lunch stop — Goodwin Lake.

 Beat's colleague Ben in one of the many leg-swallowing holes.

 Ben penguin-ing downhill. This helps solve the postholing issue, but it also results in a face full of snow.

All in all, it was a pleasant holiday weekend with lots of relaxation and hardly any exercise. I don't know why people assume we don't like to have fun.