My First Outing

It was Road Trip time today. The first adventure for the bionic knee. Christina, Livi and I piled into Christina’s Sequoia for a trip to Northpark Mall. This was the first time I loaded myself into the Sequoia. Christina’s been driving her sister’s Subaru Impreza, which is much lower to the ground and thus easier to enter. But I deftly managed to yank on the “oh, shit” handles to pull myself up to the running boards, before butt-scooting across the back seat. Livi sat in the 3rd row. We conveniently found front-row parking at the mall, or, as a confused former colleague calls it, “porn star parking.” Don’t ask.

It was a pathetically short trip to the mall. I practiced placing 25% of my weight on my gimpy knee, which means octogenarians in walkers sped past me. I half-crutched, half-lumbered my way through Nordstrom’s and about 40 feet to the elevator. Totally wiped out. Livi grew frustrated waiting for my slow ass to catch up. After another 30 or so feet, I needed to rest on one of the wooden benches. I propped up my leg and struggled to gather my strength. 3-minute breather, I told myself. That’s all I need. I crutched another 30 feet before realizing I was done for the day. I felt like I had just finished one of those legendary workouts from the movie, “300.” And all I did was drag my gimpy knee a few hundred feet. Brutal.

The trip back to the car was deliberate and uneventful. Nobody plowed me over, and I didn’t face-plant at the mall. Feeling that exhausted was depressing, but I do feel a slight sense of accomplishment for making it out of the house. Baby steps. This is a marathon, no, an Ironman, and 13 days into the journey isn’t even a blip on the race course. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.