Mawwage
July 26, 2009 at 10:25 am | In Life | Leave a CommentIt brought us together yesterday…
Family and friends gathered …
To see the Happy Hiker marry Goggle Girl.
It’s not just the Mars rovers that leave tracks in sand – so do portable “fire pits”.
The sunset completely overwhelmed the occasional raindrop.
Have self timer. Will travel.
175.8
July 21, 2009 at 11:20 pm | In Ankle | Leave a CommentOne-footin’ it with a soggy wet bathing suit! Ankle was unhappy on and off all day, so I was pretty surprised when my right foot lifted off the ground as I slowly loaded the left foot. Going to have to find a new observable for progress soon.
Choice quote from today’s news: “Something’s going right if there’s a banjo in the White House.”
Sounds like Franklin Gutierrez escaped his collision with the Detroit ballpark’s wall with only contusions. Hope so!
OneThirty
July 20, 2009 at 12:13 am | In Ankle | Leave a CommentThe scale actually flickered up to 140, but I’ll take the conservative number. Surprised myself with some single-crutch walking on the way home. Only the pool can get me loose enough to stretch the gastrocnemius (who invented that word?), nothing else works.
Exceptional
July 20, 2009 at 12:10 am | In Life | Leave a Comment… Is the only way to describe this game of Catan.
Click on the photo for a full-resolution image.
The game lasted more than two hours with four players. Orange took the early lead, reaching nine points in less than an hour. White incited, aided, encouraged, abetted, and supported a road building war between Orange and Red, while Blue made the best of a bad situation by occasionally extorting resources from everyone. Red reached nine points next just after Orange locked up the longest road for good. With a little more stalling, White reached nine points as well. When Orange again could not seal the deal, Red laid down the cards for a city, celebrated and began to stroll away. Without noting that Red didn’t have any more cities, Orange asked for finality in an already amazing game with, “I’d like to see you place that city.” When Red couldn’t, pandemonium ensued.
It was next White’s turn, who parlayed his considerable port positions into one final city. The game was remarkable for many reasons, but its longevity was largely due to a complete absence of dev-carded victory points. The deck was properly shuffled, but the first of them was about ten cards deep into the initial deck. 34 of 37 possible victory points were earned before the game would be forced to end. Only Orange had a spot left to build a settlement; every other location was blocked. Red could build no longer road, due to space limitations, and White could not build a road long enough to trump Orange.
OneTwenty
July 19, 2009 at 1:30 am | In Ankle | Leave a Comment… I was surprised, but it didn’t hurt ’till then. An hour plus on the bike with resistance to 7-10 in the arbitrary units of the bike, cadence averaging 90ish, 10+ (I forgot… might be almost 20) in the arbitrary distance units. Effortwise, I’m guessing a little less than 20 miles on flat ground. Pool felt good too, except for an errant flipturn. Finally got loose enough in the pool to nicely stretch out the gastrocnemius (sp?). Looking forward to that again tomorrow.
I think I’ll hold the effort/weight here for a day or two before pushing onward, for fear that I’ll push too hard too fast. I’d still much prefer the guidance of an actual PT, but it seems very strange to play a doctor off against the OS to get it…. hmm.
Bedtime, as others have sensibly done already.
Sixty
July 16, 2009 at 10:52 pm | In Ankle | Leave a Comment… pounds felt comfortable today.
I checked out the cardio room today and hopped on a recumbent cycle. Exercise feels good. After a little while warming things up, the ankle was willing to tolerate my usual cadence of 80-90 against minimal resistance. A brief trip up to 110 felt fabulous, but ankle complaints slowed things back down for the rest of the hour. A few laps and moseys in the pool, followed by a bunch of arms-only water treading tuckered me out some.
It’s nice to be tired. Time to ice the foot and do some sleeping.
License
July 16, 2009 at 1:22 am | In Drivel | Leave a CommentI got my progressive-weight-bearing-as-tolerated license today. It felt mighty good, but unexpectedly strange. My body now naturally prefers being on crutches. It requires a surprising amount of mental effort to get it to try something “new”. I’ve got too many things I’d like to do that require two feet to let that slide.
An exploratory trip to the pool yielded my first unassisted consecutive steps since walking Tahoma’s crater rim. To my surprise, I nearly cried, just as I did when the eleven-year-old in me realized we were nearly on the saddle with Point Success. The freedom of slightly negative bouyancy felt good. Losing the support of a weighted crutch on the wet pool deck tile afterward thankfully only brought a cautionary note.
I’ve never really explored all the cool toys at the university’s gym. Among them, perhaps unsurprisingly, is a nice scale in the locker room. After verifying that the ten pounds I’ve unintentionally lost in the last couple months are still gone, I realized I could figure out how partial my weight bearing really was. I put the fractured ankle on the scale and gradually transferred weight until it felt like I was supporting about half my body….. twenty pounds. Pushing down as hard as my muscles would let me? Thirty-five. Crazy! I’ve not worried about applying too much weight since.
The cardio toys at the gym look interesting too. Tomorrow, the legs and I will do some spinning before another trip to the pool.
Crutch-assisted walking is way more efficient for distance walking than crutching alone. The only impediment is the rockered sole of the Aircast, which feels as though the center of the rocker’s in the wrong spot. Scarpa Invernos have a much better rocker profile (and a somewhat articulated ankle).
The prescribed plan is to be crutch-free in two weeks and boot free in four. It’s going to be so fun to try to beat those estimates by 30% or so. I was worried I’d have to hold myself back to avoid injury, but it looks like I’ll have to work hard at the sensible exercises to hit the prescribed estimates. Neato.
PT wasn’t prescribed (apparently I’m already “sufficiently motivated”), but I think I’d benefit from the advice.
Deep
July 8, 2009 at 9:58 am | In Mountains, Skiing | Leave a CommentPowderwhore makes films by and for backcountry addicts. The trailer for their new film pseudo-accidentally wound up on the web before they were ready. I won’t link to it, since they don’t want it out there yet (though it’s probably trivial to find), but it made for fine morning motivation.
Last Winter’s turns.
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