Sitka, the Dark Side

As I mentioned in my first blog about Sitka, Mrs Bear and I took separate excursions. My main exercises at home are the gym and walking the golf course. In the warmer seasons, hitting a little white ball is a daily activity. My friends and I typically walk nine holes, which translates to about 2.5 staggered miles. Mrs Bear, on the other hand, is a beast. She alternates her mornings between swimming a couple miles or biking between 20 and 30 miles on-road. After dinner, she usually goes back out for a 4-6 mile walk. A few blogs ago, she hiked, rather than riding, the tram in Alyeska…2,000 vertical feet in a two mile trail.  Such is my wife of 70 that I have always admired and tried to stay within visible distance of her achievements.

So I selected a four mile bike ride and 2.5 mile hike through the Sitka rainforest…Challenging for a senior Bear. Mrs Bear, on the other hand, signed up for an advanced mountain biking jaunt of between 25-32 miles.

She started before me and finished an hour earlier. Our groups also finished in different locales: I in town, she back at the ship. To finally get to the Dark Side, I get a text from her to get my butt back to the ship, PLEASE !!

90 minutes into her ride, Mrs Bear edged toward the right edge of the trail, and slid off onto a softer surface. It sounds like the bike then collapsed away from the trail, pinning her leg inside the frame as she fell. The torque caused her leg to get twisted, and the result is the pic below:

We were seen by the extremely nice ship doctor who had an X-ray device on board. He confirmed a fracture of the larger bone in the lower leg, the tibia, about an inch below the knee (I always confuse the tibia and fibula). Tomorrow, in Juneau, we’ll go for an orthopedic consult at their hospital ER. Decisions about remaining on the cruise, and the seven weeks of driving across the country will be determined after we find out exactly what the story is…