The Waterwoman Chronicles (Continued)

Oh, who am I kidding? It should be "The Sore 45-Year-Old With the Arthritic Knee Chronicles". For some reason unbeknownst to me, even though I was there—I mean we are talking about one of my many internal conversations with myself—as both participant and observer, I decided I should swim in the ocean today. The L.A. City pools are all closed right now for maintenance. I haven't gotten my swim on in a bit and felt the need to do so. I sometimes swim at a pool in a neighboring city in the afternoons, but I couldn't make it there today. Then, Soul Brother #1, who's been cleared to resume all activities now that he's seven weeks past the cancer surgery, decided we should skate today. Hmm. I want to swim. He wants to skate . . . with me. There was only one solution: I'd do both.

Well, damn, the water is cold. I was in my speedy triathlon wetsuit (that I got for a song directly from the manufacturer last year) swimming not so speedily. I'd opted to get a sleeveless suit; I hadn't expected to use the wetsuit in the winter. I figured sleeves weren't necessary in the summer, fall and spring. Let's put it this way: sleeves would have been nice. I swam out to the buoy and back. As I was doing my swim, I kept thinking they'd moved the buoy further out. Now, I know good and well that buoy hasn't moved and doesn't move unless they remove it altogether. But it sure seemed like it was farther out there than it was when I did my last buoy swims during the serious heatwave we had in October. The wetsuit definitely helped. Damn if it wasn't buoyant as hell. I'm really not used to that. So I did my swim and headed back to the car to do the quick-change into skating duds.

See, we don't just skate. Oh no, that would be too pedestrian for us, wouldn't it? We're speedskaters. You know, custom boots, five wheels, crouched down in a little paceline skating in unison. I started out as the one who was hurting. Then I warmed up and SB #1 was lagging behind. Nevertheless, we still did our skate at a rather good clip.

Now, a couple of hours later, my knee is hurting. I was told years ago that I've got osteoarthritis, to stop running and to hope that I can stave off knee replacement by babying the knee and allowing technology (which might find a way to help joints such as mine without replacing them) to catch up. Or something like that. I don't know what that doctor said. All I remember is him throwing Celebrex at me—Dude, I didn't ask for that and don't want it!—and pissing me off. Anyway, I mention this because my knee has hurt quite a bit of late. When it does that, I always think it's finally time for a knee replacement. Inevitably, the pain will subside after a few days and I'm back to normal (which means the joint constantly hurts a little rather than constantly hurts a lot).

What is my point? I'm not sure. I think I'm trying to say, See what lengths we're driven to when there isn't any surf?