Palm Springs Winter 2022-23
“I Wonder…?”
“I wonder how this winter will be different from the previous ones?” is always the question when approaching our 3-month stay in Palm Springs, but this season was unimaginably different. Becoming hiking club members, then hike leaders, followed by being hike leader recruiters, and then having been introduced to the nearby peaks of San Bernardino and San Gorgonio, had made each season distinctive in the past. But this year, instead of weeks and weeks of seemingly endless, exuberant hiking and biking under predominantly sunny skies, the season became months spent convalescing in unusually cool, damp weather. We never experienced lock-down during the worst of the covid pandemic, but suddenly we were living that hunkered-down lifestyle without being infectious.
“I Wonder…?”
“I wonder how this winter will be different from the previous ones?” is always the question when approaching our 3-month stay in Palm Springs, but this season was unimaginably different. Becoming hiking club members, then hike leaders, followed by being hike leader recruiters, and then having been introduced to the nearby peaks of San Bernardino and San Gorgonio, had made each season distinctive in the past. But this year, instead of weeks and weeks of seemingly endless, exuberant hiking and biking under predominantly sunny skies, the season became months spent convalescing in unusually cool, damp weather. We never experienced lock-down during the worst of the covid pandemic, but suddenly we were living that hunkered-down lifestyle without being infectious.
Fun times on the climbing wall.
The season began like any other, with an all-day recon romp on the rugged Guadalupe Trail with our friend, Margaret. It’s an epic, 15-mile hike with 5600’ of elevation gain and over 2 hours of driving to and from the trailheads. We intended to lead it as a club hike for the first time later in the month and needed reassurance we could still find the always-sketchy route. It was unseasonably cold, but we did well. Additionally, we scaled the climbing wall at the indoor rock gym in nearby Riverside with Margaret, lead a couple of club hikes, canceled 2 hikes (including Guadalupe), and then, things began to fall apart.
A year ago, Bill was diagnosed with an “epi-retinal membrane,” which is a patch of scar tissue formed over the retina. A follow-up visit with the retinal surgeon this December revealed it was substantially worse. Left untreated, he was at risk of losing his vision in that eye. Luckily, he scored a canceled surgery appointment for January 3rd, which just allowed enough time for his post-surgery follow-up visits before we left the valley on March 1. We immediately isolated ourselves as much as possible to prevent a covid infection, or a cold, from derailing his surgery; nearby LA was now the nation’s covid hotspot.
Both Bill and his surgeon were very pleased with the outcome and Bill’s procedure did not require him to flop on his belly 24/7 for days or weeks. He was basically prescribed “watch TV for 2 weeks,” not to rehab his eye, but to keep his heart rate as low as possible. Even strolling was out, so he sat.
Bill’s “Get Out of Jail Free Card” was expected at the end of 2 weeks, but his surgeon urged him to continue under-doing to let those tiny blood vessels in his eye heal after the significant trauma of surgery. And even though his next follow-up visit was perfect, the surgeon extended his “go slow” recovery period for another 2 weeks, for a total of 6 lazy weeks, only leaving 2 weeks for him to begin reclaiming his fitness on the trails while still in Coachella Valley.
Neither of us could cut our calories fast enough to prevent piling on the pounds during our unanticipated hibernations. My net activity level was even lower than Bill’s over those weeks, sometimes only logging 1 mile a week of walking instead of my usual 40 miles, because of an acute episode with a pinched low back nerve.
I’d stopped hiking on December 17th because of considerable low back distress and awoke shrieking in pain on Christmas morning with every slight attempt to navigate the short distance between our trailer bed and the toilet. My usually exuberant NEAT, non-exercise activity thermogenesis, that accounts for burning hundreds of calories a day, also plummeted because stillness was the most reliable way of limiting my pain.
Our photo album told the story: of the 4 subjects we photoed in January, only 1 picture would make it into the album, which would be of Bill with his metal eye shield to protect his vulnerable eyeball while he slept. The other shots were strictly for documentation: my new passport, a worrisome irritation at one end of a basal cell carcinoma removal scar, and the extent of my current lumbar curve. That was it. Nothing to cull. Dullsville, for sure!
Christmas Eve cheer the evening before my catastrophic pinched nerve event.
Our time in Palm Springs is usually the height of our social season, a time when we are leading hikes for the desert club and attending a few social functions. It’s our peak fitness time of the year as well. In the rare years when the mountain snow is exceptionally late, we can hike to the almost 11,000’ San Jacinto peak for which the trailhead is a 20-minute walk away from our trailer. Usually, the weather is good enough all winter for us to lead the classic “Half Tram” hike to the 5000’ level on the same mountain. With the hours of daylight soon increasing, we usually slip-in some 15-mile hikes on our calendar and enjoy weekly bike rides, but not this winter, everything ground to a halt.
Unlike Bill, there were no restrictions on raising my heart rate, but I basically couldn’t walk much for the last half of December and all January and February because of lumbar spinal nerve root pain. I only had 2 days of intermittent, white-out pain on Christmas Day and the day after, but too many days I would carefully calculate if I dared to reach for something at knee height, like the lever on our trailer’s low toilet, or not. I gave up trying to walk for more than a few minutes a day and discovered that even remedial isometric muscle strengthening was too much for my back.
“Heal” was the mantra for January and February. We had to be nearly motionless in our relentless quest to let our bodies heal. Bill couldn’t rally any helpers to assist him, whereas I had a total of 40 appointments for myofascial release, sports massage, acupuncture, and physical therapy, but without an “Yippee!” moment of liberation from the confinement in my body from pain. Inexplicably, every treatment I received, which were usually 4, maybe 5, times a week, snowed me for hours. It was like having a bad hang-over and little productive time was left in my day.
The beginning of this winter season was noticeably cooler, wetter, and windier than most winters in Palm Springs, so sitting outside wasn’t an option during our healing hibernation. The snow remaining on the surrounding mountains since it began falling in early November, reminded us that those mountains had received the most snow in the first half of December than they had in the last 10 years. And then it got worse. Crestline, a community in the San Bernardino’s that made national headlines with its 100” of snow isolating and trapping residents for weeks, was a short drive from us.
Bill’s eye patch was a nuisance when sleeping.
Bill was generally able to be productive, and I had my moments when my pain level and brain fog was down. We did the usual pandemic shut-in activities, like working on our digital photo albums. We had gotten about 2 years behind in constructing them and, by the end of January, we were up to date. The sad joke at this point was that we knew we wouldn’t get behind anytime soon because we weren’t currently taking photos; we weren’t seeing anything but the inside of our trailer.
We sorted socks, updated our paper and electronic files, and did deep organizing. Each time we learned about another intriguing medical issue; I’d add a test to my list of labs to be done. Bill read that high lead levels could cause hypertension and potentially, several of my other ailments, so I drove to the nearby draw station to rule it out as an issue for me—my levels were unremarkable. Activities like testing myself for high lead levels, were like throwing red meat to hungry, caged animals, though we were in need of novelty, not food.
We listened to health-related podcasts and cringed at the one giving a lengthy pep talk about the importance of strength training, especially at our ages. We were hyped but couldn’t even walk much. I potentially could do resistance training, but even at the end of January, a few minutes of carefully executed moves set me back and it was still disallowed for Bill.
Our foam roller to relax our backs became better than a cane for walking assist.
“Being fascinated” has long been our euphemism for being in search of something to spur our curiosity, to stimulate our brains, when the eye-candy was in short supply. During this slowed-down daily routine, we worked harder than ever to be fascinated.
Delving into the concepts of ethics and empathy were interesting, unexpected diversions. A hiking friend commented about my ethical standards when dealing with hiking club matters. I’d never rated myself on an ethics scale, but it was an instructive exercise to do so. Along the way, I was surprised to recognize once ethics was named, I realized it was my ethicist who was responsible for the shift I felt when I reconciled myself to summoning the patience needed to deal with irksome issues. Without her comment, I never would have seen the relationship in myself between patience and ethics.
Contemplating ethics was foreground entertainment for my mind for days, but empathy became Bill’s topic to mull for weeks. Bill had coped with the huge emotional stresses of his profession by confining empathy to a narrow role and lately, it had been banging on the box to get out to be examined as object of study. Like with my exploration of ethics, Bill would periodically bring the subject of empathy into our conversations to explore together.
Interestingly, it was our unplanned dive into the study of psychopathy that triggered some of the empathy discussions. Apparently, sociopathy and sociopaths, are no longer the proper terms; they are out and psychopathic is the preferred label for the minds of the outrageous recent murderers that filled the news that winter.
It started for us with Kohlberger, the Moscow, Idaho murderer. Neither of us are into gore nor crime, but I’ve always believed that understanding crazy people was an important survival skill. Kolberger’s was a news story that wouldn’t go away, and we quickly settled upon limiting our listening to the psychologists’ and psychiatrists’ explanations of such unimaginable behavior. Brian Walsh, the guy in Massachusetts that murdered and butchered his wife, soon followed, and then there was the Alex Murdaugh double-murder trial that led to a flood of speculation about his mindset.
A makeshift trapeze bar to aid Barb maneuvering in bed.
Low Carb Denver
“Low Carb Denver” is the name of the annual keto conference held in the US sponsored by an Australian group of doctors which always fascinates us. Except for the covid disruption, it is a yearly event that consumes us for the 3 days of streamed presentations made by MDs, nutrition experts, elite athletes, and some who wear all 3 hats.
Many of the physician presenters had pulled themselves back from the brink of obesity and Type 2 diabetes with the controversial diet and were quick to share their personal testimonials along with their subsequent research. They ranged from strident cardiologists believing that everyone should be on statins; to an equally passionate researcher who believes no one should be on statins; to a bad-boy surgeon who briefly lost his medical license because he wouldn’t tow the party-line at his hospital, who only eats meat, and is a top international athlete.
This year, like in the past, the conference was a mix being validating for our choices and thought provoking. We always make some lifestyle change based on the presentations. This year, Bill recognized his drift into grazing at breakfast was triggering 5 insulin spikes every morning. After switching back to eating breakfast in a single meal, he was less hungry while ingesting fewer calories. He wasn’t close to being diabetic, but fewer insulin spikes in a day is a healthier way to go regardless of one’s metabolic status.
One of only 2 club hikes we lead this season was in early December.
This doctor had us scrambling, 30+ grams of protein per meal wasn’t enough, one also needed to consume 2.5 grams of the amino acid leucine at each meal. Back to the drawing board: we had to calculate the leucine intakes for our slightly different meals and nudge it upwards a bit to be doing our best. She also alarmed us by stating that 140 grams of protein per day would be even better than our bold feeling, 100 grams per day.
An ace runner/physician validated our “maximal sustainable pace” strategy when hiking that we’d used for years, which included resisting our previous bad habit of slowing at the end of an outing and instead, picking up our pace. Apparently, what we instinctively do is Zone 1 and 2 training, which is optimal for our fitness goals.
We were startled that the “N of 1” (true for 1 person) testimonials of individuals improving or curing their schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, multiple sclerosis, lipedema, and polycystic ovary disease by going keto that we heard over the years, had matured into research-backed treatment options for those conditions. The keto diet doesn’t solve all problems for all people and is still much maligned by some, but it certainly engenders hope for many with seemingly intractable problems.
Feathering Our Nest
The constant tug-of-war between craving lifestyle upgrades but lacking extra space in our trailer, always haunts us. This season, we added 2 outdoor items requiring indoor space only when we were on the move and a third, invisible item.
Our EMS, or electrical management system, which is a fancy outdoor surge protector, was an early season purchase for about $175. Our favorite place to park our trailer in Palm Springs is our favorite because of the excellent proximity to exceptional trailheads, but is, to put it politely, a deferred maintenance place. The multiple power outages last season trashed our built-in microwave oven, for which a replacement was unavailable for months because of supply chain issues and contributed to an air conditioner fire in someone else’s rig. Some long timers decided to move on, whereas we sprung for the beefy surge protector, which we lock to the power pedestal at each RV park. Like many things, once you own one, you notice how popular it is with others. We had to make space for it in one of the trailer’s outdoor storage compartments when in transit but were comforted by its function.
A Starlink TV satellite dish was another game changer for us that was quickly catching on with RV’ers when we bought ours in mid-February. I had noticed one sitting on the ground in the Grand Canyon’s Trailer Village in October 2022 and luckily for me, Bill knew what it was. Our normally reliable Verizon hotspot was only intermittently functioning for weeks in February, prompting Bill to again research Starlink’s availability. When he had looked last summer, they were unavailable to RV’ers and were only sold to folks with a constant location.
Starlink between snowstorms at the Grand Canyon.
Bill only gambled on the Starlink purchase because it had a 30-day guarantee and we’d be at 3 of our major venues in that month’s time to field test it. It took about 24 hours for Bill’s many concerns to transform into love for our new Starlink. Starlink’s instant effectiveness at the 2nd of our 3 venues was enough to have Bill recycling Starlink’s shipping box—it was ours to keep.
We were terrified by the thought of leaving our tidy-looking, $600, very portable, satellite hardware on the ground or on a picnic table, so Bill started by sticking it on our rig’s roof while in Palm Springs. He promptly bought a lock for it, but after chatting up other Starlink “parents” in the park, didn’t use it. At least for well-informed, discriminating thieves, the receivers had no resale value. Because they are individually coded, it’s impossible to link a stolen one with the precious satellites and there is no street value for parting them out. So, like the growing number of other RV’ers, we plop ours where it’s convenient for us in a place that looks like it has a good line of sight to the sky and hope for the best.
The Starlink quickly became another silent member in our family of inanimate objects. It quietly sat in the backseat of our truck like a well-behaved passenger when we were in transit. Grabbing it by the neck when we arrived to remove it from the truck was only a little faster than the physical set-up at our new venue. In a matter of minutes, Bill threaded part of its very long power cable through the pre-existing slot in our trailer’s exterior to connect it to its small modem inside, then he instructed the Starlink unit to start scanning the skies for its satellites with his phone.
Palm Springs Modernism Week: an event hostess dressed in a retro outfit in tribute to Nancy Sinatra.
Unfortunately, our upgrade to Apple TV wasn’t as simple as either our EMS or Starlink, but at least it doesn’t take up any space. It’s a work-in-progress.
Moving On
By March 1st, when we moved from Palm Springs to 29 Palms near Joshua Tree National Park for a few nights, Bill was on track to hike his first 40-mile week in over 2 months, whereas I managed to crack 20 miles by breaking each day’s effort into 2 slow segments with a long rest in between the segments.
Our stillness-oriented healing journeys had now diverged. We were hiking separately so Bill could reclaim his vigor; my best pace was at least 4 minutes per mile slower than his and I was doing half the distance. We were pleased with our individual accomplishments, and I gradually accepted that I would hurt whenever I was active, and my recovery would not follow a straight path. I was basically 100% recovered in performing the “chores of daily living” though estimated that my athletic performance was less than 20% restored from where it had been in early December.