Since I have other things to do, I will try to keep this post short. Really short.
Yeah, right.
Over the past several years, I have developed mild to moderate osteoarthritis in both knees. It's really horrible.
I still remember the day that I damaged the cartilege in both of my knees. During the summer of 2010, I decided to go jogging after work. It was a typical sunny day in Sierra Vista, Arizona. The temperature was in the upper 80s/lower 90s with zero humidity. The monochromatic blue sky did not have any clouds. After doing some leg stretches, I left my apartment and started to run. I was feeling really good, so I decided to pick up the pace. About halfway through my pre-planned route, I suddenly started to run slower and slower until I could no longer run. It took me over an hour to walk back to my apartment. Once I got back, I put ice packs on both of my knees. That was pretty painful. However, I thought that everything would be OK in the morning. Boy, was I wrong. In the morning, I could barely get out of bed. For whatever reason, I went to work instead of seeing my doctor. I could just barely walk from my car in the parking lot to the entrance of the building. At the time, I worked as an instructor for the United States Army at Fort Huachuca. Typically, most of my day was spent on my feet. That day, I could barely stand for any length of time. Eventually, I couldn't take the pain anymore, so I called my doctor, who gave me an inflammatory medication. Shortly thereafter, I went in for x-rays, thinking that I had a meniscus tear, runner's knee, or a torn ACL in both knees. Instead, I found out that I had torn the cartlidge in both of my knees. My doctor also said that the tear in each knee would just get worse and worse as time went on.
When I moved to Reston, VA, I could run decently as long as I didn't step on a crack in the jogging path. However, I just couldn't run as fast as I used to.
Eventually, I bought a Trek hybrid bicycle from the bike shop at Reston Town Center, which was a lot easier than running. However, I quickly discovered that if I pushed down hard on the bike pedals to go up hill, for example, both knees would start to hurt.
Since I can no longer run anymore and that my bicycle is at my mother's house, I have rediscovered my love of hiking.
A good reason for my rediscovery of hiking was that, back in February of this year, I went to the VA Hospital in downtown Baltimore and made an appointment for both of my knees. I just couldn't take it anymore. Predictably, the steroid shots that I received for both knees wore off after a couple of weeks. More importantly, I received a pair of really nice Breg knee braces from the VA Prosthetics Lab. I was miserable the first day that I wore those knee braces. I was in a lot of pain. Over time, it got easier for me to wear both knee braces for an extended period of time.
When the summer arrived, I started to walk around the parking lot of a nearby elementary school for 45 minutes non-stop. After doing that a few times, I started walking around my city block. While wearing both knee braces, I could make three circuits around my city block in about 75 minutes. Of course, I would be hot and sweaty.
Now that that's out of the way...
Over the past few weeks, I have made some additional visits over to Leakin Park-Gwynns Falls.
I didn't take as many photos as I did like the first time I went hiking at Leakin Park-Gwynns Falls.
Anyhow, I'm planning on making some more posts about hiking in the Baltimore area.
I have also visited the AllTrails website several times, looking for new places to go hiking.
However, with the change in seasons, I will have to start getting up earlier on a Saturday, so I have a good amount of time to hike. Unfortunately, my Breg knee braces have to be worn right on the skin. These particular knee braces weren't designed to be worn over clothing.
On my most recent hike, I was starting to have the impression that I should consider buying a new pair of hiking boots. The Salomon hiking boots that I bought on sale at the REI in Fairfax, VA when I returned back from Afghanistan in 2011 might need to be replaced. As good as the Salomon hiking boots are, I still miss my pair of Lowa Renegade GTX hiking boots that I wore in Afghanistan. In fact, here is the exact pair of Lowa hiking boots that I wore in Afghanistan. Those were really good hiking boots. Way better than any of the Merrell hiking boots I used to wear prior to going to Afghanistan. Coincidentally, I also bought that pair of Lowa hiking boots from the same REI store in Fairfax, VA.
In addition to updating my blog here on Blogger, I need to write a new review at AllTrails about my recent visits to Leakin Park-Gwynns Falls.
Another thing that I need to do is to learn all of the features for taking photos on my LG Stylo 6 cell phone. There are things that using the camera on my cell phone can do really good, such as portability. I also like the panoramatic feature. I recently discovered that I can open or close the camera's aperture among other features that I did't know about. For now, the photos are good enough for my purposes. Another thing I would like to do is learn how to use Gimp, so I can adjust the contrast or brightness of a photo. I downloaded Gimp onto my computer a couple of years ago, but I have yet to really play around with it.
