Category: Excursions

Good F@#k%$g Grief!!

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Now that was some serious f@%*-ing pain!  I managed to dislocate my knee, my patella, while traveling over the Christmas break. No, I wasn’t skiing, wasn’t biking, I wasn’t doing bloody anything really!  I was twisting and tossing stuff back into my 4Runner (while getting yelled at by some ranch owners for trespassing on their property) when my knee suddenly gave out and I collapsed to the ground screaming.

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Good, f#@k-ing grief, I’ve never felt so much pain before! Or screamed such bloody murder!

Every little movement of the joint would send me incredible jolts of shooting pain. Ugh!  It’s still makes me wince just remembering it.

And this happened while in a remote part of New Mexico, 30 miles from the nearest town and further to the nearest hospital. Luckily I wasn’t alone (or on foot, ugh!) and Adrena was able to get me to a hospital in a couple of hours.  Of course it swelled up monstrously in that time and I became supersensitive to motion and vibration.

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Ahhhh, morphine….

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So, a few minutes after these pictures were taken, the doctor whacked my kneecap back into place.  Then I was given a knee immobilizer and a set of crutches (oh boy) for the following four weeks.  Yeah, and no skiing or biking for a while.

Hey, no matter… at least it doesn’t @$!#-ing HURT like that anymore!

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I suspect what really led to the sudden dislocation was the stress I put my knees under for several days beforehand.  I drove out to meet Adrena in Texas from San Jose, California and did so with very minimal rest breaks.  My right knee in particular was aching more and more over the dozens of hours of driving but I kept at it.

As for why there was a couple of angry women in a truck, in a remote region of New Mexico, threatening me and Adrena as I quickly tried to reload our vehicle and get out of there??

Well, that’s another story… ;-)

Backpacking in Zion National Park

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This was a backpacking trip in July with Hoan, Huy, Corey, and Jason into the Kolob Canyons in the northeastern part of the park.

I arrived a few days earlier and so I wandered up the Zion Narrows for a few hours. This incredibly deep and narrow canyon runs for many miles and the river itself is the trail.  You spend most of your time wading the river to follow the Narrows through. It’s very much fun. It’s also very difficult to photograph — so I want to go back and try again.

You can arrange to backpack from one end to another and stay overnight at one of several designated spots midway through.  I’d love to come back here and backpack the whole length of it someday.

Some views from a couple miles upstream into the Zion Narrows:

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These are the grasslands several miles to the northeast of Zion Canyon proper:

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One of the many towering walls in Zion Canyon:

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Lunch stop in Bear Trap Canyon in the Kolob Canyon area. No bears encountered but this canyon probably could trap one.  It ends abruptly in a tight space with a nearly free-falling creek:

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