One Week!

I've been trying to pre-plan for the road trip (#FünfTrek) stopping points this year, mainly because I'm tired of fighting with the Sturgis attendees for a place to stop anywhere in a 500 miles radius of the rally. I also know that I struggle to get away from the house to even start the trip, ever since 2018, so I made a reservation to kickstart that as well. 

I should be on my way next Thursday, as I made a reservation in Shenandoah National Park. 

In the meantime, I'll be going through my gear to make sure I'm prepared for all parts of my trip! I also figured I'd sadly review the state of my New Year's Resolutions. 

1) This is the one that I have been able to maintain without fail, despite injury, weather or whatever. Most recently, it was Soldiers Delight again. 

A swollen stream to traverse at Soldiers Delight

2) No, I haven't been blogging once a month. I skipped April which bled into May and June.... I'll go into the why momentarily because it relates to another resolution. 

3) Eesh, no, I've fallen off the book reading wagon, and I need to change that. I think with the road trip coming up next week, it will be easier to get back into it... at least with some e-books. I don't want to bring a bunch of physical books with me. 

4) This. This one frustrates me the most because breaking it wasn't due to anything I consciously (or even subconsciously) did. This one stopped on April 5. I know the exact date because that's the day that I unintentionally walked off the tailgate of Pat's truck. No, I don't know what I was doing; I was just trying to unload the storm doors I'd bought, and I apparently forgot that the tailgate was down or something. I legitimately thought I was stepping down to the bumper of the truck. You ever have that sensation of stepping down, thinking you are going to contact the next step at a certain point, and it doesn't happen when you think it will? Yeah, now, imagine that you never make contact with that step. That is what happened. I stepped down.... and my leg kept going down.... Pat said it looked like I just walked off the end of the tailgate. 

I landed on my left forearm and hip, hard. I don't know how I didn't break something, though the pain was so intense, all I could do was writhe there in the driveway, crying in pain. Pat looked helpless. I hurt so bad. After over ten minutes, I staggered-crawled with Pat's help to the bathroom to try to clean up the wounds and assess the damage. 

It only took minutes to bleed through the wrapping

I could move my wrist and my elbow up/down (flex/extend), but any hyperextension of the wrist, attempts to support something with my wrist extended, or twisting (pronation/supination) of the elbow resulted in extreme pain. I went to urgent care the next day, and they sent me to the radiologist for X-rays. 

My elbow

Nothing showed up on the X-rays, so it was all soft-tissue damage. And it hurt. It hurt so bad. I was taking Advil like candy, and ultimately was prescribed 800mg tablets. 

It still hurts. 

Yeah, you read that correctly. Almost four months later, my wrist and elbow still hurt, though it's not nearly as debilitating it was the first two months. Now, kinesiology tape or a wrist brace will allow me to do things, including exercises that involve the wrist. My left hip still has a sore spot. 

It took three months before I could put enough weight on my left wrist/elbow to do planks or bear crawls or anything else that involved body weight on it. I tried a few times over the course of those three months to pick up where I'd left off (I'd just restarted the Centr Sculpted program again), and while I could many of the moves, I became horribly depressed over the pain and the inability to do simple stuff, like open a door or carry stuff with my left hand/arm. 

That depression was hard to overcome. I'd wanted to do so much during my spring break, and the injury derailed everything. I didn't get to camp, I couldn't exercise, I couldn't tie my shoes, I couldn't even drive. As it was, when I returned to work, I probably shouldn't have been driving those first few days. The pain was still intense, and if I had to move the steering wheel even moderately quickly, the pain took my breath away. That's why I wasn't blogging. That's why my exercising ground to a halt. 

Anyway, over the last two weeks, I've been able to pick back up and recover. I lost some of my gains, but I'm back in the saddle. I was still hiking as much as I could (my first post-injury hike was at Soldiers Delight right after there was a massive wildfire there, and it hurt my hip but I had my hiking poles so I was able to push through). 

Three days after the injury

Soldiers Delight after the fire

So, yeah, over the past two weeks, I've gotten back into the 4+ days of at least 20min of exercise. I plan to continue this.

5) Let's not talk about this one. Depression takes a hell of a toll. 

6) The WRX is currently languishing in the garage and serving as a shelf. Maybe I'll look at this before I leave next week so that I can at least get it through emissions, if not drive it to Boxerfest, which is the Sunday after I return from STEAM in the Park Voyageurs and the road trip. 

In the meantime, I do have the Camaro back after the engine install. Just one bent rod, but I guess that's also because I shut it down immediately when the damage occurred. 

Don't use cheap parts or mechanics. It will cost you more in the long run. Those lifters have 10K on them.

Happy Camaro

I do need to get it tuned, though that will likely not be able to happen until after I return from the road trip. 

So, that's where things stand, more than seven months into 2023! 

Planning

It's just about that time of year. 

The road trip is coming. 

An atlas is the best friend of a road tripper

So far, Pat has booked a flight into Denver, and a flight out of Minneapolis-St. Paul, plus arranged for fishing with RainyDaze Guide Service. Our plan so far is to go to Pikes Peak, maybe Rocky Mountain National Park, Wind Cave National Park and....??? before Voyageurs, where Pat's part of the trip will end.  

Why is Pat flying home on this trip?

Because I'll finish up the trip at Voyageurs at the second STEAM in the Park camp that I'll do this summer!

New River was the first STEAMinthePark camp I attended, and I touched something weird

In preparation for the trip, I've been going through our gear and cleaning, replacing and adding to it as appropriate. I did an "introduction to backpacking" session at Patapsco Valley State Park last month, and learned that backpacking backpacks need to be properly sized to avoid back injury. Since I've been looking at doing an overnight backpacking trip somewhere, this was important information!

This backpack was way too long for me.

After the session, I went to REI in Columbia to get sized and to try out various backpacks. Partly due to Naturalist Sam's recommendation on how well his Osprey packs had worked, I settled on a 65L Osprey Aura AG, then came home to order it since I had my REI Coop coupons and several gift cards from last Yule. 

I've also been streamlining other gear by cleaning up and listing our older Rhinowolf modular tents. We really don't use the original ones any more, since the version 2.0 is easier to set up and take down due to the center pole being outside the tent rather than inside. 

Rhinowolf tents are cool because they can zip together and have integrated sleeping pads and down blankets.

Beyond all that, I've already made reservations to camp in Curecanti NRA the night before I pick up Pat from the airport in Denver. Curecanti is essentially next door to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, so I'll finally check both of those off my Passports list! I figure that will be on the way "back" from the Bonneville Salt Flats, where I won't see Speed Week this time around. 

The Crosstrek looks at home on the Salt Flats

I'm getting antsy to head out. This'll be the fifth year of adventuring in the Crosstrek, so the hashtag we'll use is #FünfTrek (fünf is German for 5). Follow along if you want! 

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