No Pain, No Gain!

I received good news today at an appointment I had with my Doctor. About a year ago I injured my knee in my kick boxing class, and then re-injured it playing paintball this past summer. It was causing me more and more pain as time went on so I had decided to get it looked at, fearing that I had done severe damage to it. After months of waiting for an MRI they found that I had bruised the cartilage, something which I had not known was possible until today. The good news is that I do not need surgery, the bad news is that I will have to find new ways to get into shape for the paintball season while my meniscus heals up. 

Safely back on campus I found myself a pair of cross country skis, anxious to start the low impact path to a new, and healthy me. At the time, I had pushed the horrid memories of skiing as a kid far from the front of my mind. To my dismay, seconds after snapping the skis to my feet, I was lovingly embraced by those memories, like a 2 x 4 plank embraces you when it hits you between the eyes. All too vividly did I recall the experience of falling on my back with two long greased sticks strapped to my feet, the wooden monstrosities seemingly repelled in opposite directions as if magnetized with the same polarity. What I could not remember however is if I ever discovered as a child how to get back to my feet after wrapping my ankle around my neck, with my head impossibly close to my left hip, because that is the position I found myself in now. Surprised at the fact that I seemed to be buried in several feet of snow, without gloves, It became very clear that I had not thought out all of the details of this venture. After falling in this fashion half a dozen times, I turned back, bruised but not beaten. I was able to follow my trail back toward our house using the braille method, as the sun had set making my beautiful surroundings all but invisible. 

The entire adventure was intended to be a low impact excursion, which very quickly turned into a high impact beating. I don't think my Doctor or I had originally envisioned such an outing. The entire experience has lead me to reconsider my methods, instead of the suicidal strapping on of skis, perhaps I will take on something a little less intense, like bull riding.