Geez! What A Day!

Last night when I climbed into my hammock, my knee was in 8 or 9 out of 10 pain with movement. As you can appreciate, getting in a hammock and situating yourself in a sleeping bag does require a lot of knee movement. Fortunately once I stopped moving the knee the pain subsided. But, minor repositioning created major pain.

I did finally settle in for a long night, made longer by it being the 4th of July. Most of the fireworks started around dark, about 9PM. Even though there was a fireworks ban in effect, that did not stop the patriots from having their fun. Some of them had their fun until well after 2AM. Don’t ask me how I know.

Somehow, between the knee pain and the random explosions, I did get some sleep. I woke up about 5AM and all was quiet. I carefully moved my knee and the pain was only a 3 out of 10. I hobbled over to the bathroom about a 100 yards away and did ok until I had to step up on a curb. That was painful. So I could kind of walk, but climbing up or down was not in the cards for today.

I deranged my left knee in more than a minor bruise kind of way. I think I may have torn the medial collateral ligament (MCL), a fibrous band that holds the knee joint together on the inside of the knee. My knee seems stable so it is not a severe or complete tear, but it will need rest to heal properly. In any event my knee has spoken and it says your hike is over for the moment.

I texted Nancy about my situation. I am comfortable in camp, I have food, shelter, water, etc. Could she come pick me up sometime soon? She is crazy busy, right now, so if possible could I wait until tomorrow or Friday. Well, I could, but let me see if I can work out something myself.

No Uber along the coast. Very few taxis. Plus both would be crazily expensive. Buses are probably the way to go. Manzanita, where I am, to Eugene requires 4 buses, three transfers, and a 0.6 mile walk from one bus company to another and only 16 minutes to make that connection. All this on a bum knee. I don’t think so. No trains, no planes. What about renting a car!

Astoria, where I kind of started this trip, has car rental. So if I can get a bus to Astoria… YES! There is a way, two buses, to get me to Astoria and the first one leaves in…30 minutes. Yikes! I break camp and toss everything in my pack and hobble the mile to the bus stop. I get there with a few minutes to spare. I finally pull into Astoria three and a half hours after starting. I hobbled another 0.8 miles to the rental car place and head home.

I can not express how disappointed I am to be leaving the trail after only 4 days. I was feeling strong, not have any big issues with the climbs or descents. I had lined up boats for two bay crossings in the next few days, and the tide was even set to be extra low for the day I was going to ford a problematic river. But all of that has to be put aside while I get my knee taken care of.

I’m optimistic that I can resume my hike in a couple weeks. This would be possible if it is a minor tear of the MCL. All of this is part of the journey, and as I always say, “The Journey is the Reward!”

I will do some brief updates to this blog occasionally over the next couple weeks as I get everything figured out and will resume my daily blogs when I return to the trail.

Stay tuned,

Happy Trails