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For the Love of Lasers!

I thought I was done writing and complaining about my warped ankle. My surgery was nearly 4 years ago and the condition of my tendon had stabilized. Leftie wasn’t 100% but it was doing well enough. I could handle its occasional crabbiness and I thought I knew what to expect from here on out. That was until a little rock changed everything.

We had 30 people in our group. That's plenty of targets.

Jason planned another fantastic laser tag party up Provo Canyon for my birthday this year. Thirty friends joined us for this event. You can’t get much better than a bunch of adults running willy-nilly through a dark park wearing bizarre headgear and brandishing plastic weapons like they were Rambo.

The guys from Frontline did a great job keeping our group engaged in the game.
The Timpsons tagged me more times than I care to mention.

About 30 minutes into our 3 hours of play my perfect party turned tender. I was sprinting across a field of grass when I hit a hidden rock just right and rolled my bad ankle. I knew the instant it happened that I had done some serious damage and that I wouldn’t be dashing around the rest of the night. Although it hurt to put any weight on it, I wasn’t going to sit in the pavilion with my foot up while my friends got to dodge each other in the bushes. No, I would enjoy my party if it killed me.

Each game we played had it's own objective and rules. The evening wasn't just a shooting free-for-all. Here we are listening to our next round of instructions.
Drew and I demonstrated the basics of a sibling vs. sibling battle for everyone.

Despite my perseverance, as gimpy as I was I was next to useless to my teammates. I moved as fast as my lopsided gait would carry me but it wasn’t fast enough to avoid being spotted and targeted over and over. Sorry Team Alpha, I wasn’t much of a leader; it’s hard to lead when you can’t even follow.

This is what my ankle looked like when I got home from the party. And yes, its pain matched its appearance.

By the time I got home my ankle was severely swollen and throbbing. It looked like I was smuggling a golf ball under my skin. The next morning I reluctantly pulled out my box of ankle gear and dusted off my crutches. Plenty of bad memories were resurrected by that lot.

Just another unpleasant view of my ankle following the festivities.

I’m not much of one for giving my body a rest but I have made some effort to at least put my ankle up and ice it once in a while during the last week. The swelling has gone down considerably but now the bruising makes it look like I was the victim of a Leprechaun assault.

Four days after my injury the swelling had receded but the bruising was just getting started. It actually looks much worse now.

I am no stranger to ankle pain. Over a decade of tendon trouble has made me as tough as it has made my ankle weak. So while a sprain is inconvenient, especially when it pretty much ruined my own birthday party, my chief worry in all of this is isn’t my current discomfort but the possibility that I might have re-torn my tendon. A peroneal tendon tear feels like a bad sprain, a bad sprain that never heals. I could have a severely sprained ankle or a slashed tendon, the symptoms are the same. In a few weeks if things aren’t feeling better then I guess I will be heading in for another MRI. I can’t tell you how much the prospect of having that awful surgery again makes me want to go hit my head repeatedly against a wall. It took me a couple years to fully recover last time and I’d like to repeat the experience about as much as I’d like to go bodysurfing on asphalt naked.

On a lighter note, a big thank you to all the friends and family that joined me for my birthday celebration gone awry. It was nice being shot by you as I hobbled around in misery. To the birthday girl go the foils!

Rachel July 9, 2012 1 Comment

Onions and Needles

Twice a year Jason and I head to Moab; these trips are nearly as constant as the ebb and flow of the tides. This spring we had a hard time finding an open weekend to visit our favorite adventure hub but somehow we squished it in. How can you not make time for Moab?

Crossing Onion Creek over and over was delightful and messy. I'm not usually that thrilled to be that soggy.
One prickly pear blooming in the desert is lovelier than a garden full of roses.

On this outing we again hit a couple new biking and hiking spots. It seems like no matter how many times we go to Moab there is always new terrain to explore. We biked 20 miles to the Fisher Valley Ranch and back via Onion Creek Canyon. Although this sandy bouncy road definitely wasn’t on the upper end of the technically challenging scale, the unfit would probably find it unfit for cycling due to its persistent climbs. For us though it was as tempting as a cup of hot cocoa in a snowstorm. All those bumpy hills strewn in unnatural looking reds, greens, grays, and yellows practically begged our tires to tread on them and we were happy to oblige. The dreamlike scenery kept our eyes popping but the best part of this ride was its 52 river crossings, and no, that was not a typo. Jason and I got to navigate our bikes through Onion Creek 52 fabulous times. It goes without saying that we did not return to our car dry. And, thanks to a 25 MPH wind that whipped the endless supply of sand into our faces, I didn’t even return to our car looking human. Instead I resembled what would happen if a stinkbug and a sandman produced unfortunate offspring. They really should never have kids together. Despite the gritty gusts that literally picked up our bikes on occasion and turned me into walking sandpaper, we thoroughly enjoyed this ride. I would recommend Onion Creek to those who aren’t super confident in their off-road skills but don’t mind a good workout or a wet crotch.

This is an untouched photo, as hard as that is to believe. Onion Creek was really that red and otherwordly looking.
That smudge of dust is not the workings of a camera lens gone awry but rather the sandy minions of an aggressive breeze.
In the narrows of Onion Creek Canyon my bike kept tilting toward the river gorge far below thanks to that tricky wind.

The second part of our adventure took us to The Needles District of Canyonlands National Park. Canyonlands is comprised of three separate sections that are divided by the Colorado and Green Rivers. While we’ve hit the Island in the Sky District before, we’ve never made the 65 mile journey south of Moab to see The Needles until now.

Misshapen rocks littered The Needles' landscape.
We came across this rattler in The Needles just a foot from our trail. Later we discovered that it was a midget-faded rattlesnake, one of the deadliest vipers in North America. Apparently they're quite reclusive so a sighting is rare. Lucky us!

The Needles bore little resemblance to the Island in the Sky or anywhere else for that matter. It was a jumble of strange boulders and outcroppings. Its fingers of rock lined the horizon like ancient stone cityscapes. Everywhere you looked fields of mushroom rock popped out of the earth as if they had sprung up overnight.

This tunnel added a little claustrophobic zest to our Chesler Park hike.

We hiked to a place called Chesler Park, a peaceful scrub brush covered meadow surrounded by spires of stone that stretched toward the infinite sky. There we climbed a random rock blob and ate our lunch with a 360 degree view of the circling sandstone towers while a curious crow watched us from a few feet away.

We came across these unusual kissing petroglyphs at the top of Big Spring Canyon. Okay, so we created them with our cheesy shadows but aren't we clever!

Sunsets in the desert are glorious and not to be missed. So after our hike we relaxed above Big Spring Canyon and watched the whittled stone transform from a dull brown to a blazing red within minutes. Unlike other flames, this fire burned without a sound. In fact the world was so still at the top of that canyon it almost made your ears ache.

The Red Cliffs Lodge is frequently our hotel of choice. It is also home to the Castle Creek Winery...and this cute truck.

That concludes my account of yet another trek into Utah’s southeastern desert. If you’ve never been to Moab what are you waiting for? You could travel the whole world and not find anything comparable to the understated patient beauty of this worn landscape. It may have taken thousands of years of infinitesimal alterations to create this unique masterpiece but I would recommend not waiting that long to enjoy it.

Rachel May 23, 2012 1 Comment

G and the 3Bs

Last Saturday I rode Goldilocks, a women only noncompetitive bike ride, for the third consecutive year. I guess you could say I’m a regular porridge pounder.

While this ride was just as cute and empowering as ever, there were some minute changes this time on my end, specifically with my end, that weren’t so adorable.

Liz and I congratulated ourselves on being awesome with a little high five action.

This year I discarded all dignity and donned a pair of biking shorts, something that I swore for good reasons I would never do. And it gets worse folks. As bad as the average awfully-unattractive spandex leggings may be, the particular high-tech shorts I bought are far uglier. Not only do they revealingly stick to each unsightly body ripple but they also have seat padding that is almost an inch thick. Great. Extra stuffing: just what someone like me who has a hinny large enough to give J. Lo a run for her money needs. I looked completely grotesque in my biker’s getup but at least those stretchy constrictors were quite comfy and did make my rear ache less. I guess if beauty is pain then ugliness should feel pretty good. By the way, it may be too late at this point to warn you to avert your eyes from this post’s pictures if you easily grow queasy at the site of spandexed butt fat but consider you and your innocent children tipped off anyway.

Jason is my biggest fan. He hung out at a spot along our course waiting for us to ride by so he could take some pictures and cheer us on. There's no denying that he's the best husband ever!
The finish line was right where we had left it roughly an hour and 45 minutes before our glorious return.

It was in this shamelessly attired manner that I biked Goldilocks with my friend Liz, one of the ladies that joined me last year. We again opted to do the meager 20 mile ride, which you hardcore cyclist will rightly pooh-pooh. But our frailty does have a silver lining. For although we didn’t muster the gumption to pedal clear across the county, we did shave off about half an hour from our previous finish time without even trying. That’s right, we pedaled faster than last year’s models of us. And next time we’re really, really sure we want to do the 40 mile course. I guess that means I will need to get my bike out and start training in the middle of winter. I can’t say that having the glacial winds of winter wick all feeling out of my extremities sounds especially appealing but I am stubborn and stupid so why not.

Goldilocks, the blonde beast, was conquered once again! And in the same fell swoop any sense of dignity I might have had was also squelched. Next year may my posse and I kick 40 miles in the keister even if that means having to exhibit our hideous keisters all across the valley!

Rachel May 20, 2012 2 Comments
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