Dear Life: will you please stop giving me lemons...

... I've made enough vodka lemonades to last a lifetime. We're all getting sick of them around here. Perhaps some limes would be nice for a change, then we can have margaritas or gin and tonics instead, or Mexican beers with lime...much more variety, and beer does go well with fishing!

   In all seriousness that's an attempt at dealing with my current situation with good humor: a knee injury which refuses to resolve itself, along with jumping through frustrating insurance-related hoops to find out exactly what is wrong. Hopefully I don't sound like too much of a whiner. Supposedly it's a torn meniscus, as confirmed by 3 different PTs. The type of tear is of course a mystery until I can get an MRI, hence the insurance hoops. I'm feeling trapped in a vicious cycle of needing better insurance, which costs more, which I need a better job to get, which I almost definitely need a functional knee to be hired for... I almost got back into vector control, which is a nice cushy summer job, but a neck injury in the spring kept me from completing the required physical exam. The knee is not completely debilitating which is nice and I fully appreciate that. But 3 summers in a ROW of not being completely myself? Well, I'm glad to have enjoyed being in one piece this past winter as much as possible! My mind is trapped in a constant battle between abject misery on one hand and forced optimism on the other--come on now, I still have two legs attached to my body ya know! And they are functional too, hooray! One day I will go a full year without hurting myself and that will be an amazing experience!!

   I am, admittedly, incredibly bummed to not be racing bikes AGAIN this summer. But I'm trying not to dwell on it too much, focusing instead on what I still can do to stay involved with the bike community and SheJumps. It is a totally lame situation for somebody like me who loves to do everything outdoors, but relative to how bad things could be, I'm really lucky that they are what they are. I have actually been able to ride my bike on trails though rather slowly and very carefully to avoid tweaking my knee. I also have done some easy rock climbs, successfully able to avoid any moves that might make it worse. Activity usually makes it feel better; there may be a slight overall improvement over the past months, but then again I might also be getting used to the varying degrees of inflammation and just doing more things regardless. I'm also really starting to like fishing a whole lot more, with a little bit of hiking around or sitting in a canoe. Sometimes quite boring when not catching fish, but when one starts getting fish on the line it becomes a whole lot more fun. I have not caught anything on a fly rod yet this year--that's a whole new mystery that I'm still trying to unravel!