Missoula's warmest day of the year

Missoula topped out today with the warmest day of the year. The Garden City registered 70 degrees and we even had that foreign yellow orb out in the sky for most of the day. As anyone in the state of Montana can attest to we've had a hell of a winter.

The gray days and almost constant precipitation has worn out its welcome for most folks. I personally would love for nothing more than sun and wear flip flops for the rest of the year. I know it's selfish, but since I can't ski and enjoy that snow that still sits in the hills, I'm done with it.

Looking at the Lolo Pass SNOTEL is still registering 86" of snow on the ground, and it's MAY 2nd! Anything above 5000' continues to get pounded on a weekly basis. I was over in the Phillipsburg area over the weekend and saw it dump 5 inches of fluff in about 3 hours, impressive.

But the relentless cloudy days is what everybody in Missoula seems to be talking about. We've also been 10 degrees below the average high, which means we've been kicking it in the 45-50 degree range, boooooooo. If you're interested in seeing which cities get more/less sun, click in over here. It shows Missoula with 75 days of sun (not including partly cloudy day). Compare that to say Yuma, AZ at 242 days of sun.

But alas, you can either sit around and complain about the weather or get out and do something. I'm mostly in the complaint chair right now, with the knee and all its a bit limiting. I know in a few weeks I should be cleared to mountain bike and that my friends will be a warm welcome.

I've been working on a little project, basically the same thing as I did last year with the Lolo Timelapse. It should be fun, the banks are ridiculously big compared to last year. Just have a look here at these to May photos. Hope you check back in to see the results. Ciao










**btw - the America Fuck yeah picture was taken nearby Ground Zero on our NYC/Bermuda trip a few year's ago**

Skiing with crutches

I had a dream last night that I was skiing with crutches. Now that's messed up. I don't know what is going on in that little brain of mine, but at least it gave me a good chuckle when I woke up this morning. In my dream it actually seemed to work pretty well, dragging the crutches as I turned, almost like a rudder. Huh? I've been off of the crutches for a week or more, but the trauma of being forced to walk with assistance is still fresh on the brain apparently.

You too can get a chuckle this morning by watching some of these videos. A big thanks to Earlyups for finding them and bringing them to the masses.


Quality audio and "I told you so" from your buddy


This guy is kinda like the double rainbow guy, Oh the Quality!


This one takes the cake, you'll be laughing your ass off at the :38 mark...OH MY GOD!

Knee update: the PT told me that I am 3 weeks ahead of schedule on my recovery. Rock on.

Yo bro, I'm done skiing

These xtranormal skits crack me up. This exact conversation is going on in every mountain town right now.

Run Forrest, RUN! 8 days after

That's kind of how I feel today. I had at PT session this morning and found good results. I no longer need 2 crutches and I don't need my post op brace, WOOT! One of the main differences between Forrest and me is that I cannot run unfortunately. But the fact that I'm dropping some gear is a great step in the right directions. My range of motion this morning was up 15 degrees from Tuesday, at 120.

Both the PT and the Doc were impressed at my motion and said I'm well ahead of schedule. The spin biking I've been doing seems to be helping, so I've got to keep that up. Swelling has gone down substantially, although I can still press with my thumb on my shin and the indention stays there for a few minutes, nasty. Stitches came out today too. Now that I'm showering I feel like a much better person. My beard is coming in nicely. I plan to grow it out until I have to go back to work, which shouldn't be for another month and half. Although the crop of grey hairs in there is a little unnerving. Oh well, I guess a set of twins and life in general will do that to a guy.

I've been quite the couch sloth for the last week and since no one gave me any ideas, I had to shoot from the hip. I found that surfing the internet relentlessly and a dozen or so Netflix's kept the boredom somewhat at bay. Although the drugs certainly helped. Oxycodone is some stong stuff and hours morphed into days. If my knee will take it, I'll be out the garage doing a little bit of woodworking. I plan to build a step up box to be used in rehab. Something similar to these appleboxes, we'll see how they turn out. Cheers.

Muto Man

I'm pretty sure it's not just the pain meds. But just in case take a few minutes, once you start watching you won't stop anyway. Someone spent what I would guess a lot of time, paint and patience on this creative piece of art. Glad it's not my neighborhood, sorry man.

All aboard the Pain Train! Right Knee ACL....

Well, I'm 5 days into recovery from my right ACL reconstruction. Those five days have certainly had their highs and lows. Mostly lows interspersed with a lot of pain. I came home on Wednesday at about noon and was in a serious drug induced haze until Friday. T has been a saint and been very helpful waiting on me. Not to mention our 2 very demanding twins who also ask quite of bit of their mom.

I met with the doctor and PT on Thursday and got a report of what he saw when he was in there digging around in my knee. Dr. Shutte fixed four things: 1) He found some wear on the backside of the kneecap, some fraying (looked like seaweed in the picture), which is not desired. He was able to trim up the fray and said I should be better off. 2) He also found and removed a free floating piece of cartilage about the size of a peanut that was either meniscus or a piece of the torn ACL. 3) Trimmed (doctor's call it "fix") the tears on my meniscus on the lateral and posterior sides. 4) And last, he reconstructed the ACL using my patellar tendon, affixing it in place with 2 screws.

All in all, the doctor said I had a made a wise choice to have this done as I was "on the road to having a self destructing knee". He commented that my quad strength and ROM was better than expected, which hopefully translates to a strong recovery.

I've been following the PT instructions on exercises and for the most part been able to perform them with out much issue. I was able to get on the spin bike yesterday and make full revolutions, which was not expected until Monday. While in the CPM machine, I'm able to crank it up to 115 degrees.

The hardest part has been the mornings. Talk about pain, oh man, I've seen the PAIN TRAIN and I don't like it. Every morning so far has been brutal with my first step out of bed, my scale of pain spikes to a 9 out of 10. I haven't been that successful in managing the pain medications in the mornings. My full bladder forces me out of bed before I can load up on meds. They definitely weren't kidding when they told me to stay on schedule with the meds.

If you're not familiar with Larry Tate the Office Linebacker, well now's the time. I was introduced to him back in my cubicle days at RightNow Technologies. If you've ever had a job in the office environment, I think you might relate and enjoy these few videos. The pain train's comin! Cu'z when its game time, it's pain time! Don't bring that weak ass stuff up in this humpy-bumpy!

Miniature and not so miniature

Miniature faking is very interesting to watch when it's done right and this video from Jackson is one of them. It's pretty dang entertaining to watch the little ant skier's rip big powder lines. Around the 6:10 mark is classic.

A Tiny Day in the Jackson Hole Backcountry from Tristan Greszko on Vimeo.

On an unrelated miniature note, there are a few things around Kneetopia headquarters that are quite the opposite, BIG. The snowpack around here is monstrous, 130" at Stuart Peak with 46" SWE. Snowbowl also is reporting 120" at the summit and 62" at the base. The storms continue to pour over the mountains dropping more snow weekly, there doesn't seem to be much end in sight. The spring outlook seems to be wettish and cooler than normal.

Blah blah blah weather. Its that time of the year that its a crap shoot on what you'll get. Squalls roll in with no warning. Gail force winds rip through the trees trying to bring in warm weather. I'm am officially done with winter as of this point. I am selfishly wishing now that the sun gods will show their face and begin to warm the Missoula Valley.

Which brings me to the other big thing that's happening around here. I recently decided that it was high time to fix my right knee. I injured it last July, hyper-extending the knee badly, exacerbating an old injury. Result torn ACL and torn meniscus. It's been a battle since then, trying to rehabilitate the worn out joint has not been as successful as hoped. I'll be going under the knife on Wednesday and out of frontline work for 3 months. There's a good chance you may see the frequency of posts go up on Kneetopia. Now, now don't get too excited. If any of the upcoming knee talk get's boring at times, bare with me it might just be the drugs.

Hello spin bike, here I come. The task in front of me for the next year will not be miniature.

If anybody's got some ideas to keep me from going insane on the couch after surgery, feel free to speak up. I'd love to hear'em. Thanks for reading.