In Memoriam of My Knee

Monday, 26 May 2014

Like clockwork, rainy weather rolled in for the long weekend.  With the prospects for a ride all but gone, when Memorial Day Monday rolled around, a hike was decided on.  Chris and I met at Root’s then we headed over to Koko Head district park, then up past the rifle range to the entrance of Hanauma Bay.  We hiked the ridge road, following a large group of beachgoing visitors.  They turned down a side trail assumedly to a bus stop and we continued up to the turnoff to the point.  Descdending along the rim of the first explosion crater, we passed Mojo Dave’s best customer, all decked out in Vertx with an Eberlestock pack.  I asked him how long he had been out there, assuming from the size of his loadout he had been there at least overnight, but he said he was there only a couple of hours.  My knee was fine on the climb up. but this descent was starting to cause discomfort.

After stopping to examine a lone ironwood tree, we passed the second crater, then descended the slope of the point to the odd rectangular shelf where the “natural arch” was.  We knew we were in the right spot when we started to see more and more people.  Chris ran into some work aquaitenances heading back as we were making the final descent.  We interrupted a yoga couple with yappy dog who were self-absorbed in taking instagram shots with their phones.  I was half-hoping they would get doused by a wave.  More and more people arrived.  Our snack break was briefly interrupted by a kid who wanted me to take his picture with his phone.

After watching a passing NYK Leader car carrier ship pass into the grey rainsqualls that were approaching from the Molokai channel, we figured it was best to head back before the rains arrived on Oahu.  Heading directly up the eroded, volcanic rock, we all saw a dropped phone around the same time.  I picked it up and it was unlocked and operating.  It must have been dropped that day, since it had rained the night before, and it was an iPhone 5, so the battery life isn’t that good.  It had a couple of minor dings on the back, but the screen was fine.  I locked it and put it in my pocket.  I figured I could drop it off at an Apple store on the way home and they could figure out who it belonged to.  No sooner had we made the ridgetop then the first person we ran into asked Chris if we had seen a phone.  Even though he passed me first, he just responded to my “hi” and didn’t go beyond that: I must have looked too scary!  I gave him his phone and he was relieved.

After stopping at a water pond to attempt to skip rocks (only about a third actually went in the water), we started up the long ascent to the Koko Head summit.  The descent had indeed worked my knee, as it was now sore.  Luckily I had an elastic bandage in my pack, so I wrapped my knee and continued the ascent.  The wrap helped, but the knee was still sore.  Another thing that was starting to act up was my arches.  At the summit, my arches were starting to twinge on the verge of cramping.  I’m sure the minimally padded approach shoes didn’t help.  The grip was outstanding on the rock, but the lack of cushion took its toll on my feet.  We wandered around a little, looking at the old bunkers, then descended the busy road back to the gate and park.  My knee was in a lot of pain during the descent.  In the last downhill through the park, there was some fairly sharp, intense pain.

We headed to dinner at Zippy’s.  My knee stiffened up while sitting there eating.  I was a bit surprised it wasn’t significantly swollen when I got home and got to ice it.  The pain level was about where it was about two weeks after injury.  The day after, there was still a good amount of discomfort.  After two days of rest, it felt good enough for me to take a spin on the bike to loosen it up, so I guess not major, permanent damage was done.

Pictures soon

D = 10.1 km, Vavr = 3.4 km/h, Vmax = 10.4 km/h, T = 2-hours, 58-minutes, A/D = 717 m

Total trail time about 4 hours