A rock I hate.

I've been meaning to write about my and Brian's last hiking trek/honeymoon. As usual I am late in writing.

Brian and I finally married in December of 2023, but just had our honeymoon because life often revolves around accrued vacation and PTO days from work. We decided to tackle the Superior hiking trail again. If you remember, we ended up cutting that one early a few years ago because of my knee. Which a little over a month later resulted in a total knee replacement.

Brian has pointed out to me that all of our hiking excursions have come to an end due to an injury that happened to me. Well, I continued that trend on our honeymoon.

I was excited to be on the trail again. I freely admit I had not trained and I could tell not far into the first day. Hills were difficult, a level of difficulty I have never had before. At times my legs just would not work. I'm not sure if it was from exhaustion or some new features of my auto immune diseases. An 8 mile trek took us..me..all day. Brian often waited on the trail mapping out things in Gia while he waited for me to rest or move further up the trail. We were on a fairly steep section and it felt good to finally get it over with. The next morning we had a good descent down some steep sections which was tricky and a bit perilous and even still there were trail runners out and about. I admire those people but my knees ache for them.

We finally got to the bottom of a fairly decent descent and we're enjoying a perfectly beautiful day and weather. I was signing a song from an old "Kids in the Hall" sketch from the 90s and Brian asked me what I was singing. I was laughing and started explaining the sketch. I took my eyes off the trail for second and the tiny little rock in the picture at the start of this column decided to roll my left ankle.

Thankfully we were very near a road when I fell. I took my shoe off and put KT tape around the swelling areas and hobbled to the road while Brian took my pack from me. I sat for a good hour or so while he hitchhiked back to our car to pull me off trail.

The rest of the trip we camped at state parks and did touristy things and kept going back to Castle Danger brewery for beer. Brian did some day hiking and I kept my foot up.

It's been over a month since I fell and my ankle is still unhappy. No break but it reminds me a few times a day that it's not healed.

A few days ago an old friend of mine reached out and we had a good long talk. She mentioned something about her mother having MS and how she will never take the ability to walk and use her legs for granted after her mother being in a wheelchair most of her childhood and MS eventually taking her life.

Having autoimmune diseases that cause pain and fatigue make it very easy to want to give up. My issues started in 2016 when my legs felt like someone put glass in my legs. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't sit, moving helped but I got sore and tired and then it just kept getting worse and worse. I went from being able to do squats to not being able to walk. Being diagnosed later with a few different things was a relief and frustrating.

The call with my friend and remembering her mom was a solemn reminder that life is what you make it.

I definitely need to keep training. I don't plan on giving up hiking any time soon despite my perfect record for excursions to injuries. I will do what I can while I can. I'll also keep my eyes on the trail so a tiny f@$&ing rock on flat ground doesn't take me out again.