I hurt my knee a few weeks ago. Bad. Figured the season was over.
\n Virtually cancelled the SkiVt-L party. Burdened my family and friends
\n with crying and whining.<\/p>\n
It still hurts, I feel it throbbing now as I write this. Been sitting
\n around all day, it’s getting stiff.<\/p>\n
But now I’m guessing the pain has more to do with skiing thirteen out
\n of the last 21 days than having dome myself serious injury. By Sunday,
\n I hope to make it 15\/23.<\/p>\n
A timeline:<\/p>\n
Wednesday, March 9:
\n Slammed my knee hard into a tree deep in the Mad River Glen woods. Saw
\n stars and cuckoo birds swirling around my head as I writhed in the snow
\n in pain. Eventually dug myself out and hobbled down the rest of the
\n hill. Took one more run, and the extent of the injury began to sink in.
\n I was in tears as I worked the gas and brake pedal of the Jeep back
\n over the treacherous steeps of Appalachian Gap back to my home, where
\n my wife put me to bed with a bag of ice and a bottle of codeine.<\/p>\n
Tuesday March 15:
\n Still can’t work the brake well enough to drive. Convinced I had torn
\n important knee cartilage, I am taken to visit with Orthopedic
\n Nurse-Practitioner (ONP). He suggests that it might just be a bad
\n bruise. Ice and heat, stretch it out, come back in a week.<\/p>\n
Thursday March 17:
\n Knee bending without pain while executing ski-like moves in living
\n room. Vickie reluctantly suggests that maybe I can join her and her
\n sister’s family for an *easy* day at Bolton, but I must promise not to
\n touch the moguls or trees.<\/p>\n
Friday March 18:
\n![\"At](\"http:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/~waw\/wordpress\/wp-upload\/pdr0022.jpg\")
\n I nervously follow the family pack around the daunting terrain of
\n Bolton Valley. We stop on the way home to get a neoprene knee brace, as
\n recommended by the ONP. Hope springs eternal — My season has not
\n ended, My career is not over. Not dead yet.<\/p>\n
Saturday March 19:
\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/~waw\/wordpress\/wp-upload\/pdr0081.jpg\")
\n I join the Mad River Glen ski school’s Rockin’ Chipmunks program. Spend
\n the day with Steve the instructor, Sierra Salts and her mommy, and my
\n own 4-year-old son, who consistently beats me down the hill.<\/p>\n
March 22-25:
\n Stone Hut, Mount Mansfield. Vickie highly disapproves, but I ignore
\n common sense. Mansfield revives me spiritually, and the skis follow
\n instinctively, all against the better judgment of my higher-reasoning
\n centers. Brilliant sunshine, good grrooming, remarkable spring
\n conditions, and even a little late season powder dumping helps ease me
\n back to form. Thanks to Dan, Scott, Stan, Jim, and a variety of Western
\n and Eastern Medicines, I start to ski like a kid again, even if it
\n means turning back into an undead zombie once the sun goes down. I
\n desperately want to spend another day, but I receive a recall notice
\n from the home front and depart early to rejoin my darling wife and
\n child. And to take a much needed hot shower.<\/p>\n
March 27:
\n Easter Sunday. We get up early and rush around like mad chickens,
\n bundle up the kid and the skis, and just barely make it onto the single
\n chair at Mad River Glen for “sunrise” services at the summit. Later, we
\n forego the parades and easter egg hunts and other distractions to ski,
\n ski, ski. More of those glorious spring conditions — the corn ripened
\n by 8:30 AM and the skiing just got better and better until we had to go
\n home for early dinner with my mother and sister.<\/p>\n
March 30:
\n Visit with Orthopedic Surgeon who rebuilt my ACL. get the same general
\n story as from the ONP: this is a very painful injury that will hurt for
\n a long time, but one which has no serious long-term consequences:
\n nothing torn, nothing broken. If it still hurts in a month, come back
\n for an MRI; otherwise, skiing is OK, if I take it easy. Exercise it and
\n strecth it.Yeah.<\/p>\n
March 31:
\n I wake up and the sun is shining and the air is cold and the slopes are
\n calling. I figure the Doctor more or less advised me to go skiing —
\n Doctor’s orders! Another glorious spring day. Sugarbush North calls and
\n I answer with half a dozen summit to base runs. Lower FIS is
\n spectacular. Brambles has been groomed, seemingly just for me. Thee
\n knee is feeling just slightly better, until of course I stop and go
\n home where it stiffens up like a two-by-four. I can’t be doing it any
\n good.<\/p>\n
April 1:
\n I’m the fool as little Justin Clapp, age 5, drags me relentlessly from
\n one side of Mad River Glen to another. But better to be out-skied by a
\n kid than to not ski at all. And, oh, yeah: more textbook Spring skiing.
\n I can’t remember getting so much spring skiing in one spring. the
\n snowpack doesn’t seem to budge and the sun continues to shine. What a
\n life!<\/p>\n
April 2:
\n The heaven’s open and pour down a deluge — but somehow Mad River pulls
\n a couple of inches of fresh from the sky. I only get to experience it
\n on one run: got on the single at 3:55 PM, skied a glorious silky
\n cruiser, then voted to preserve the charater of the mountain by
\n replacing the 52 year old single chair with an exact duplicate. I’m
\n coming to realize that the sport of skiing carries its own unique style
\n of logic, a logic not understood by the non-skier.<\/p>\n
April 3:
\n SkiVt-L party. Combined with Saturday, The worst weather days of the
\n last month. What better way to enjoy it than racing around Mount
\n Mansfield with a posse of six to twenty equally deranged peers. yes, I
\n promised Denis a mellow day of relaxed skiing, but I seem to have lost
\n all perspective as to what that really means. I realize at 4:05 PM,
\n just a couple of hundred feet down the Bruc3e, that I am whipped — but
\n there is still 2200′ or so of vertical and Dave Guertin’s three kids
\n below me. By trails end, I wander into the Matterhorn looking like Mr
\n Burns of the Simpsons — except much happier.<\/p>\n
April 5:
\n Sugaring Weather has returned, and with it more of that blessed corn
\n and spring skiing. Will it ever end? Hope not. Emails start to fly as
\n competing proposals come in from all corners: Scott is skiing TD that
\n night; Evan is skiing TD tomorrow; Roger wants to ski all day
\n Wednesday. I send off a quick email to Dennis Bogan, suggesting he come
\n to MRG. Too late: he was already there. But we never actually hook up
\n to ski: too much to do, too much to ski. I Ski way too hard down chute
\n and liftline. More snow had miraculously dropped from the sky while no
\n one was looking, and freshened up the top layers of the snow pack. My
\n pleasure centers are overloading.<\/p>\n
April 6:
\n Me and Roger and a bunch of clouds that melt away into — you guessed
\n it: more sunshine, corn, and endless skiing in the trees of Mount
\n Ellen.<\/p>\n
April 7:
\n I go to work<\/p>\n
April 8:
\n Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends, we’re so glad you
\n could attend come outside come outside. See y’all at MRG for FSC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I hurt my knee a few weeks ago. Bad. Figured the season was over. Virtually cancelled the SkiVt-L party. Burdened my family and friends with crying and whining. It still hurts, I feel it throbbing now as I write this. … Continue reading