Chad was out of town on my actual birthday, so the kid made me a wee cake in a mug,
and then made a much bigger cake after he got back home.
Friday, August 30, 2019
Made it to April
Once April rolled around, I started riding my bike on the road rather than on the trainer on the back patio. The first couple of errand rides in traffic felt a bit dubious -- I could ride, but not react quickly with power -- but that rapidly improved. By my birthday, I wasn't ready to do all of Mt. Hamilton, as is my tradition, but I did manage to go up 2/3 of it (slowly). And there were wildflowers :)
Thursday, August 29, 2019
Sure sign we are doomed
So we walk around with amazing technology in our pockets every day, and what do we do with it?
This:
No value whatsover....but kitty!
This:
No value whatsover....but kitty!
Wednesday, August 28, 2019
Ski Week for real this time
When ski week rolled around in the middle of February, we hit the usual small amount of snow on the drive up, leaving Downieville looking delightfully wintery.
I settled myself in on a camping chair in my big down coat, wrapped in a big blanket with my book, camera, and ipad
The second day we went up there, it was actually sunny :) Chad had fun skiing; my main accomplishment was to posthole through the snow 50 feet away from the parking area to find a tree to pee behind. With the condition of my knee at that point, that was a major expedition.
I had several books and magazines to read, but also had concept sketches for a project
Over the course of several ski days, I finished two helmet covers. As you might expect, a bunch of people were curious and came over to talk to me. I could have sold them several times over. Especially the cat. Nope, the cat is MINE. Kid gets the squid.
More storming occurred overnight. I chose to ride up the hill with Chad when he drove up the hill to go skiing. Even though I couldn't ski, or even walk around much, I wanted to be outside. The views on the way up paid off.
I made Chad put the chains on before we got to the entrance to the ski trail. The truck does have its limits!
I settled myself in on a camping chair in my big down coat, wrapped in a big blanket with my book, camera, and ipad
while Chad headed intrepidly out on his skis to find some fresh snow.
After getting bored reading and watching a helicopter land in the fire district parking lot, it was time to play with photo manipulation on the ipad. Naturally, one had to make fun of the teenager who chose to stay back in the warm house.
Chad got more heroic treatment, as he was out adventuring.
The second day we went up there, it was actually sunny :) Chad had fun skiing; my main accomplishment was to posthole through the snow 50 feet away from the parking area to find a tree to pee behind. With the condition of my knee at that point, that was a major expedition.
After enjoying Downieville for a few days, we headed over towards Tahoe. Stephan's cabin had truly excellent icicles growing on it.
I could have easily opted to stay and relax in the cabin, but decided to go over to the lodge at Sugarbowl and hang out there while Chad and Kean went skiing. That way, I could stake out a lunch table and guard the hot chocolate!
The drive over promised good conditions on the hill.
While Chad and Kean skiied,
I stayed in the warm lodge watching the storm blow in outside.
and a big bag of yarn.
While my helmet grew demented helmet cover pieces,
Chad's beard grew icicles. (The beard arose starting shortly after Christmas when I made an offhand joke about a "shutdown beard"; Chad took me seriously...)
The lunch, warm beverages, and snacks that I carefully guarded gave Chad and the kiddo excuses to come inside and thaw out periodically.
Over the course of several ski days, I finished two helmet covers. As you might expect, a bunch of people were curious and came over to talk to me. I could have sold them several times over. Especially the cat. Nope, the cat is MINE. Kid gets the squid.
Proof that we had sunny ski days in addition to the most excellent storm days.
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
Ski (or not-ski) week 2019
We managed several day ski trips in addition to our normal ski week in February this year, but alas, I personally only got one day of actual skiing in. How does this happen, one asks?
Chad and I did a day trip to ski in January during the government shutdown while the kid was at school. After doing a few runs, I started thinking about lunch while on a field of wee ice moguls. In other words, the injury happened because I was just not paying attention.
If the bumps had been big instead of wee, I would have *had* to pay attention. If it hadn't been icy, the snow would have been more forgiving. If there weren't any moguls, I wouldn't have needed to pay any attention. As it was, I was thinking "Oh, Chad looks hungry; maybe we should go in for lunch instead of going back to the lift", hit a very hard bump wrong while applying too much force in an unfortunate direction, and felt a disconcerting pop. At that point I hollered and sat down. Apparently I hollered rather loudly, as Chad looked rather alarmed. After a few minutes, I collected myself, got up, and skiied gingerly down to the lodge, all the while thinking it was a good thing that my leg was strong at that point, as the knee felt very wobbly and I was quite conscious of the fact that the only reason I could stay upright was that I was recruiting all possible muscles to stabilize the joint.
We ate lunch, and then I walked down the stairs to the first aid station where the nurse eventually looked at it and told me it'd be stupid to keep skiing if it felt wobbly. Ugh. I guess I sort of knew that, but it was a nice day and I had wanted to keep skiing. At least I was better off than the two other skiers down there that morning -- one guy had a broken collarbone and an older woman had some sort of warming contraption blowing warm air on her because she had injured herself to the point where she couldn't ski and then started to get hypothermic while waiting for the rescue sled. I could still walk, sort of. Chad kindly collected all my stuff, took it out to the truck, and drove the truck up to the back door of the lodge so we could head back home.
By the next morning, the knee hurt quite a bit and still didn't feel stable -- man that wobbly feeling was weird -- so I called Kaiser. I was surprised that they could not only get me in that morning, but after seeing the urgent care doctor, who agreed with my assessment that there was some ligament damage, they sent me straight over to the other facility to get an MRI. With no wait. Quite surprising; I must have hit a Friday afternoon cancellation. I did have to wait until Monday to see the orthopedist, who showed me the images and pointed out that I was really lucky that I had only *partially* torn the lateral collateral ligament and given myself a gigantic bone bruise, so it would heal up on its own if I stayed off of it for a couple of months.
A couple of months? And what does stay off of it mean exactly? I know skiing is out, but how about bicycling? And when I say bicycling, I mean 40 miles up to the top of the ridge and back. Mountain biking? What exactly is a bone bruise anyway? Does it take longer or shorter than the ligament to heal? The orthopedist looked sort of baffled that I was asking these questions. "Just don't do anything dumb." Yeah right. I eventually badgered him into laying out a more explicit framework of what I should and shouldn't do over the course of recovery by telling him to pretend I was a teenager who might not follow instructions unless they were very specific.
5 minutes on the bike on rollers to keep the joint moving. Add 5 minutes more once you get to the point that the first 5 don't make the joint swell up. Booooring. And not enough exercise.
No skiing or hiking for 2 months. Ligament takes at least that long to heal, so does bone bruise. Boo, hiss. (By the way, the bone bruise was really a set of microfractures, so not surprising that it was going to want the normal 8 weeks that it takes bone to heal.) I was at least able to convince the ski area to roll my mostly unused season pass over to next year after providing a note from the doctor.
Chad set up the bike rollers on the back patio so I could do my 5-minutes-at-a-time rides for the interim, and I promptly also went and found an athletic trainer at the climbing gym to figure out what else I could do to stay in shape. I had lots of perfectly good body parts besides my left knee that were still useable, after all. The trainer was definitely helpful over the next several months, both in terms of finding things that I could do in the initial period where most of the healing happened, and also in terms of pushing me to work on parts of me that aren't as strong. (Being mostly a cyclist, all my strength is in my quads...)
A couple of months is a rather vague recovery time. What actually happened is that the wobbliness went away after a couple of weeks, but the joint was still pretty uncomfortable and would swell up if I did much on it until about 8 weeks in. My suspicion is that that was the bone bruise. I found myself doing goofy things like climbing without using my left leg. By 12 weeks, I could do short road rides (30-ish rolling hill miles) and had started to mountain bike. By June, I was starting to hike, but still had to be careful. Somewhere between then and now, it must have finished healing, as I realize I've been back to bushwhacking boulder-strewn canyons, riding hills with stupid 20%+ gradients, backpacking, bikepacking, pushing myself onto harder stuff at the climbing gym, not being afraid of jumping off the slackline, etc. You know, normal stuff...
But wait -- after all that, you still haven't heard about Not-Ski week. Stay tuned for the next post. More pictures and less text, I promise.
Chad and I did a day trip to ski in January during the government shutdown while the kid was at school. After doing a few runs, I started thinking about lunch while on a field of wee ice moguls. In other words, the injury happened because I was just not paying attention.
If the bumps had been big instead of wee, I would have *had* to pay attention. If it hadn't been icy, the snow would have been more forgiving. If there weren't any moguls, I wouldn't have needed to pay any attention. As it was, I was thinking "Oh, Chad looks hungry; maybe we should go in for lunch instead of going back to the lift", hit a very hard bump wrong while applying too much force in an unfortunate direction, and felt a disconcerting pop. At that point I hollered and sat down. Apparently I hollered rather loudly, as Chad looked rather alarmed. After a few minutes, I collected myself, got up, and skiied gingerly down to the lodge, all the while thinking it was a good thing that my leg was strong at that point, as the knee felt very wobbly and I was quite conscious of the fact that the only reason I could stay upright was that I was recruiting all possible muscles to stabilize the joint.
We ate lunch, and then I walked down the stairs to the first aid station where the nurse eventually looked at it and told me it'd be stupid to keep skiing if it felt wobbly. Ugh. I guess I sort of knew that, but it was a nice day and I had wanted to keep skiing. At least I was better off than the two other skiers down there that morning -- one guy had a broken collarbone and an older woman had some sort of warming contraption blowing warm air on her because she had injured herself to the point where she couldn't ski and then started to get hypothermic while waiting for the rescue sled. I could still walk, sort of. Chad kindly collected all my stuff, took it out to the truck, and drove the truck up to the back door of the lodge so we could head back home.
By the next morning, the knee hurt quite a bit and still didn't feel stable -- man that wobbly feeling was weird -- so I called Kaiser. I was surprised that they could not only get me in that morning, but after seeing the urgent care doctor, who agreed with my assessment that there was some ligament damage, they sent me straight over to the other facility to get an MRI. With no wait. Quite surprising; I must have hit a Friday afternoon cancellation. I did have to wait until Monday to see the orthopedist, who showed me the images and pointed out that I was really lucky that I had only *partially* torn the lateral collateral ligament and given myself a gigantic bone bruise, so it would heal up on its own if I stayed off of it for a couple of months.
A couple of months? And what does stay off of it mean exactly? I know skiing is out, but how about bicycling? And when I say bicycling, I mean 40 miles up to the top of the ridge and back. Mountain biking? What exactly is a bone bruise anyway? Does it take longer or shorter than the ligament to heal? The orthopedist looked sort of baffled that I was asking these questions. "Just don't do anything dumb." Yeah right. I eventually badgered him into laying out a more explicit framework of what I should and shouldn't do over the course of recovery by telling him to pretend I was a teenager who might not follow instructions unless they were very specific.
5 minutes on the bike on rollers to keep the joint moving. Add 5 minutes more once you get to the point that the first 5 don't make the joint swell up. Booooring. And not enough exercise.
No skiing or hiking for 2 months. Ligament takes at least that long to heal, so does bone bruise. Boo, hiss. (By the way, the bone bruise was really a set of microfractures, so not surprising that it was going to want the normal 8 weeks that it takes bone to heal.) I was at least able to convince the ski area to roll my mostly unused season pass over to next year after providing a note from the doctor.
Chad set up the bike rollers on the back patio so I could do my 5-minutes-at-a-time rides for the interim, and I promptly also went and found an athletic trainer at the climbing gym to figure out what else I could do to stay in shape. I had lots of perfectly good body parts besides my left knee that were still useable, after all. The trainer was definitely helpful over the next several months, both in terms of finding things that I could do in the initial period where most of the healing happened, and also in terms of pushing me to work on parts of me that aren't as strong. (Being mostly a cyclist, all my strength is in my quads...)
A couple of months is a rather vague recovery time. What actually happened is that the wobbliness went away after a couple of weeks, but the joint was still pretty uncomfortable and would swell up if I did much on it until about 8 weeks in. My suspicion is that that was the bone bruise. I found myself doing goofy things like climbing without using my left leg. By 12 weeks, I could do short road rides (30-ish rolling hill miles) and had started to mountain bike. By June, I was starting to hike, but still had to be careful. Somewhere between then and now, it must have finished healing, as I realize I've been back to bushwhacking boulder-strewn canyons, riding hills with stupid 20%+ gradients, backpacking, bikepacking, pushing myself onto harder stuff at the climbing gym, not being afraid of jumping off the slackline, etc. You know, normal stuff...
But wait -- after all that, you still haven't heard about Not-Ski week. Stay tuned for the next post. More pictures and less text, I promise.
Monday, August 26, 2019
Merry Christmas
Maybe I was thinking about holidays, just having booked some travel for the end of the year.
Maybe Christmas in August is inherently funny.
(Maybe my brain broke after seeing Christmas stuff displayed in the craft store.)
Maybe the vague sense of guilt from having not posted anything in ages reached a tipping point and is now larger that the natural disinclination to report what we have been up to.
Maybe school finally started so I have fewer distractions.
Maybe my iCloud account is full and I need to clear pictures out.
Or maybe, I'm just feeling charitable today.
At any rate, expect nine months of catch-up posts.
Maybe.
Holidays are a good time to spit-roast a bird in the front courtyard. I'm hoping it will cool off a bit so we feel like doing this again soon. 90 degrees here this afternoon, so not today!
Hiking at the dish, while I was off at a rehearsal.
Kid sleeps during air travel, in this case to WA just after Christmas.
When you sleep, you miss the volcano views! (Shasta, in this case, but I strategically picked seats on the correct side of the plane and saw most of the chain of Cascade volcanoes as we flew north.)
Upon arriving in WA, we got the traditional Christmas cookies. The theme this year appeared to be synonyms for laughter. They say one becomes more like one's parents as one grows older. I am doomed. (Of course, so are you!)
Car travel is less sleep-inducing than air travel, apparently.
Or, maybe the prospect of hunting for waterfalls inspired more energy.
Hunting the wild waterfall.
Dabbing in front of the wild waterfall. This is what teenagers do.
An oddly conventional family picture. Not sure how on earth that happened.
Chad and I took a side excursion up to Whidbey Island to visit a friend who recently retired to the island.
Somewhere in there, I had a couple of concerts, and the kiddo's flute ensemble had a recital. Happy upcoming 2019! (even though it is more than half gone now)
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