Yeah, yeah, I'm still alive.

Model:  Zadie

Yeah, yeah, I'm alive.  I haven't abandoned this blog either; I've just been incredibly busy these past couple of months and haven't had the time to update it.

This past week I've been holed up at home after having knee surgery to fix a torn meniscus in my left leg.  Besides giving me time to finally relax, heal up my leg, and catch up on some editing, it also gives me some time to update my blog too.  :)

The months between May and October are something of a blur.  I'd been running around doing some shoots but for the most part I was really busy with family type events.  During that time I was also getting back into exercising too.  I decided that it was high time that I get back on my road bicycle so I spent a good deal of time (and money) getting my bike back into ride worthy shape... which in turn leads me to how I ended up needing knee surgery.

My road bike isn't anything special; it's a 27-speed 2005 Raleigh Grand Prix.  Since buying it in early 2006 I had ridden it off and on for various reasons.  Initially I was gun-ho about riding it but as my free time dried up it took a back-seat and for the last two years it sat untouched at my parents house.  Earlier this year I took the bike back home with me and gave it a major tune up to make it road safe again.  Due to age and defective materials, I ended up having to replace the factory wheelset and on my initial ride with the new wheelset I had to make an emergency stop while I was in the bike's highest gear.  Thankfully I didn't crash (or damage) the bike... however I did fall off of the bike Wyle E. Coyote style.  I couldn't unclip my shoes fast enough from the pedals, I couldn't gain any forward momentum because I was in 27th gear, and I couldn't switch to a lower gear because I couldn't gain any forward momentum.  In short: I fell down on my left knee REALLY HARD, tearing the meniscus in the process.

That was a little over four months ago.

Since that happened I was able to walk but there was a VERY LOUD click that you could clearly hear from my left knee.  If that was the only problem I'd have lived with it.  Obviously it wasn't, or else I wouldn't have had surgery to fix it.  ;)

The first two months were the worst since I was limping around everywhere, but by the third month it was starting to get a little better.  What wasn't getting any better was that I couldn't kneel on my left knee for all the money in the world.  Best way to explain it is that whenever I knelt down it felt like someone was taking a stiletto knife and trying to wrench off my kneecap.  Yeah it really hurt that bad.  So after a while I decided to get my knee looked at.

Long story short:  the only solution was to have arthroscopic surgery to repair the tear.  It's only been three days since the surgery and I can already feel a difference in my knee (for the better!),  but it's going to be a few months before I can kneel on it again and I'm back to 100%.