Stupid Freaking Knee

With less than three weeks between now and the STP (Seattle to Portland bike ride) I've been side-lined. I've had bad knees since I was a teenager, and when I was at University I finally learned how to deal with them. As I've gotten older I've learned to pay attention to the warning signs and slow down when I think I'm going to have a problem.

Until last week.

I woke up Wednesday morning and my knees were feeling a little off. As I laid in bed I thought, "Oh no, this could be bad. I'll ride in anyway and see." And hopped on my bike and off I went. By the time I got to work I could hardly walk. Honestly, I don't know why I question myself.

Fast forward a week. I haven't been on the bike since Wednesday evening and if I don't do 50 miles this weekend, I'm sitting it out. I don't trust myself enough to listen to my body when I'm on that ride. I'll need to finish, even at the risk of long-lasting damage. I'm disappointed, but I'm afraid I'll do something dumb. Better, as they say, to build a fence around temptation to keep it out than to see how close you can get.

Until It's Gone

This weekend a bunch of my friends took a short trip up to Lopez Island where a friend of one of us has a yurt she let us borrow. It was to be a bike trip.

We drove from Seattle to Anacortes, parked our cars, and boarded the ferry with naught but our bikes and change of clothes strapped to either ourselves or the bikes. We had been told the island was flat, so imagine our surprise when the first thing that greeted us was a huge hill.

After a scrumptious dinner we headed to the yurt. We nearly immediately hit a huge hill, and 3/4 of the way up I had a massive asthma attack. It was pretty bad, especially since I don't carry an inhaler. The rest of the ride through rolling hills that normally wouldn't cause me much difficulty was torturous. Each breath wasn't deep enough, and the expanding of my lungs just ached. By the time we hit the yurt I was sapped of energy. I changed into clean clothes and sunk into a chair, determined to move as little as possible.

As I sat there, half wallowing half trying to just breathe I realized that the one thing I wanted above everything was Bill. I wanted him to take care of me the way I didn't realize until just then that he does when I need it. A couple of the girls insist that he's in love with me, and they cite as evidence the way he dotes on me. I honestly never really saw it until he wasn't there when I needed him to be. And none of my friends who were there were offering the comfort that I knew he would.