Matt Keally's Blog

And then I’ll be incapacitated. I feel basically fine now, except that my knee has been popping a lot more than usual. It’s still more annoying than anything, but I don’t want to risk running on it either. I’m not looking forward to the next few months at all but it’s something I have to go through if I want everything to eventually return to normal. I’ve stocked up on frozen food so I won’t have to mess with trying to cook anything while I can’t move around very well.

It turns out that one of my teammates did have microfracture surgery before and at the end of his 6+ month recovery, he was running and working out again with everyone else. It took a lot of work to get back into shape, but he did it and is still running without problems today. Tomorrow I am supposed to meet with the orthopedic surgeon to sign some paperwork and try to figure out what will happen in the days/weeks/months following the surgery.

My cell phone was slowly breaking down over the last few months and finally seemed to give up the ghost yesterday. Aside from the 10-15 minute battery life, it had gradually been unable to connect with the cell network. For awhile, it would randomly lose and reconnect with the network, but yesterday it was “No Service” everywhere I went while everyone else I saw was yakking it up. Normally I don’t talk on the phone very much, but when I’m out on the bike or driving somewhere and something breaks down, it’s good to have. I’ll have to figure out what to do about this and I am not sure I want to plunk down more money for something that’s intentionally designed to wear out after a few years. I really just want something that can make calls and has a long battery life; all that other crap like pictures, video, unwieldy web browsing, and text messaging I have no need for.

Yesterday my mom dropped by and we took the ferry to Surry and tried going to a barbecue place for dinner. Naturally, it was closed on Tuesdays. An hour of driving and the ferry trip and there wasn’t much else out there, except for the Virginia Diner, so we went there instead. It wasn’t bad, but not all that great either. I’ve seen that place while driving by on 460 several times, but never ate anything there. We’ve stopped a few times to buy some of the peanuts and peanut brittle they have, but never the food.

As we drove through Surry county, I saw lots of signs and bumper stickers reading “No OLF” in giant red letters, protesting one of the potential sites for the Navy outlying landing field for all the planes at Oceana and Cherry Point to practice landings. A much bigger protest has been going on in Northeastern NC for a lot longer since that was the Navy’s first choice. My mom said she couldn’t blame them for protesting it since a lot of people live out in the middle of nowhere to avoid stuff like that, but the funny thing is that is the same reason why the Navy wants to build there in the first place: there’s nothing around. For over 20 years I’ve lived within 5 miles of Oceana and the jets flying around at all hours never really bothered me. In fact, I sleep way better at home than I ever do in Williamsburg, where it’s usually quiet. Sometimes the quiet seems kind of unnerving because I almost expect there to be some kind of background noise of planes flying and cars driving down the nearby highways. It’s probably why Williamsburg seems so tired to me. That said, I can’t really fault the people in Surry for protesting either since they were there first and live there so they don’t have to deal with the noise and irritations of living in the close quarters of a city. If I were one of them, I would feel the same way.

I have only a few more days to enjoy my freedom of movement, and then I’ll be confined to crutches. I’m still biking as much as I can and walking everywhere I can too. Not being able to do much else will allow me to spend more time with school, but it’s good to have a break. Following a few weeks of downtime, then the real challenge of recovery begins. It’s always way harder to recover from an injury than it is to manifest one or take the initial time off after getting one. In the meantime, I’ll try to enjoy what I’ve got.