Weekend #8: Water

In a way, this was something of a rest weekend. My weight vest, building weight steadily these past few weeks, was barely worn at all.

Saturday morning came around and the vest went on as usual. Some driving, a bit of standing around, some more driving, some jumping up and down... Then I sneakily swapped the lead-weighted vest for a different bulky vest designed to have very little weight. I may do some stupid things, but white water rafting while wearing lead weights isn't one of them.

It's been a while since I've been rafting and I'd almost forgotten just how pleasant it is to spend a day mingling long periods of exercise, beautiful scenery, shenanigans and patches of adrenalin-pumping excitement together. We were rafting the Esperence. It's not a challenging river by any means and has barely a whiff of adrenalin to be had throughout the day, but it's a fun and pretty river.

There were the usual shenanigans, a few unusual ones, some solid paddling along the stretches of flat water, a couple of fun rapids, some rafters of... limited experience and a few minor injuries. Irritatingly (for me at least), one of those was mine. Dragging rafts out of the water, one struck the side of my knee at not inconsiderable speed. Generally, I'd be knocked over in that situation, but alas this time I was wearing shoes with excellent grip which refused to slide out from beneath me and I was against a rock with nowhere to be thrown to. That left my knee as the only place to absorb the impact. It did, quite admirably in fact. By the feel of it, the joint was momentarily popped open, significantly over stretching the innocent soft tissue on the far side of the knee. In summary, it was rather painful, agonising even.

The initial blast of pain faded after a while, subsiding to a dull throb. I can still walk on it without any dramas, but some movements are somewhat uncomfortable. A doctor determined that he could make it more painful by prodding parts of it. I assume this knowledge was useful to him, and was hopefully necessary for providing the advice not to apply too much lateral tension to the joint. If it wasn't, I subjected myself to a fresh round of pain for nothing...

Unsure of whether it would be a good idea, I didn't wear the weight vest on Sunday. I was later told that this wouldn't be a problem, so no more slacking off. Sunday remained a rest day though, with the only prep being some gear research and locating more maps for my GPS. This had it's first extensive test (ignoring all the short walks and rides) on the rafting trip, logging the trip downriver. It successfully tracked us down the river (while overshadowed by rocks and trees) accurately enough to show the maneuvers performed through each rapid and when I was pacing on the bank while doing safety.