POP! A case of the back-leg blues…

Everything appears slightly askew when you're injured…

A day before my flight, I jumped on my a friend’s boat who was headed toward the airport as an island version of ‘carpooling’…After a lovely passage, we dropped anchor and headed out for a sundown surf at the nearest pass…

The afternoon crowd was thicker than my liking, so I decided to float on the inside and see what scraps I could snatch up…low and behold, a set finally swung too wide for the others and came right to me. I swiveled around excitedly and dropped in, took a speed pump and then came off the bottom to do a zealous, ‘i-sat-on-a-boat-all-day’ top turn. On my re-entry, I nearly fell backwards but used everything I had to right myself. Just as I pulled my upper body vertical enough to center myself over my board, I felt my right knee go, “POP!!

As I kicked out, the guys on the inside cheered, but I didn’t feel very proud. “It’s nothing…just drift for a minute and try to move it,” I thought as I floated out into the channel. Finally, I sided with denial and paddled back up for one more…I quickly proved what I had feared–I was injured. I paddled for the boat.

That night I stayed at my friend Kepi’s house, elevating my knee in bed with a bag of ice in the upper bungalow…It hurt. It was swollen. And I had a plane to catch in less than 24 hours…