Tomorrow will be two weeks since the fateful crash that fractured my hip – and trying to live with no weight bearing on that leg is everything I thought it would be. Boring – Painful – Frustrating. Did I say boring and painful? As it turns out, the fracture itself can be made to stop hurting with medication and staying off it. But – what they don’t tell you is that trying to keep that leg lifted while hobbling on crutches causes every muscle in that leg to cramp uncontrollably, and nothing seems to help that.
Oh well, I’ve managed to start putting some of my pictures onto Flickr this week, which reminded me of the numerous hikes in the Finger Lakes area we did last summer. We managed to do Buttermilk Falls, Taughonnock Falls, Watkins Glen, and Lower Tremain. I think there might have been a couple of more, too, but since I can’t find the photo CD’s I can’t quite remember. However, it did make me think about how lucky we are to live near the Finger Lakes.
If you don’t know, the Finger Lakes are a series of eleven long lakes in Western New York that were created by the retreating glaciers a couple of years ago (OK, actually a couple of million years ago, but who’s counting) Personally I like the local Seneca Indian legend that says the lakes were formed when the Creator touched the earth to bless the land. I like the areas between Seneca and Cayuga, which are the two longest lakes in the picture. For one, the area between and around these lakes produces outstanding wines. It should, in theory, take about an hour and half to drive from Rochester to Ithaca, but when the Mrs. and I do this in the summer it has been known to take all day, with the number of wine-tasting stops we make. At the southern end of each of these lakes are a number of beautiful State Parks with easy to moderate family hikes. Most of them either meander past or terminate at a waterfall of some magnitude – for example, the Watkins Glen hike has far too many waterfalls to count, and the trail winds around and under a number of them. The kids love this hike until the end, when the trail ends with what the sign calls “The Steep Stairs”. They are definately leg-burners, especially for the one who carries the only pack with the camera, and food and water for everyone. This coming summer – they start carrying their own!
We also did some of the hike last year at Robert Treman State Park, a bit southwest of Ithaca. We started with the hike that was to have gone to Lucifer Falls, but never made it, for two reasons. One, there was an apparent suicide there the day before, and I didn’t think we needed to bring the kids that close, and two, several hikers we passed on their return told of a “mad raccoon” along the trail near the Falls. Not wishing to investigate further, we turned around and spent the rest of the day ‘swimming’ in the natural pool Treman maintains in the summer. I put swimming in quotes because there wasn’t much actual swimming done – most of my time in the water was spent trying to simply catch my breath – as the water was only 61 degrees! As soon as your body goes off the board and hits the water, your head aches and your lungs start to slow down at that temperature. Naturally, that didn’t stop us, but a few more degrees wouldn’t have hurt.
So the plan for this summer is to do more of the same, with a bit more on the moderate side and less on the easy side. I hope to be able to push the hip rehab enough to be out there again – today it seems possible. Yesterday was so painful I doubted I’d ever walk again.
Funny, I chose the Winter Warlock alter-ego last November after watching “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” for the upteenth time – but I never expected that I would have to be thinking about just putting one foot in front of the other for real. Ain’t life funny like that!?