08-08-09: Bursitis – Not just for old people anymore!

Dave thrashed around all night long complaining that his elbow was really hurting. In the morning, we took a look at it – and it looked terrible! The swelling covered the area of a football and it was so hot - really hot.

Hey look! It's a pair of drugstore cowboys!

Time to see a physician.



While the wound was not infected, there was clearly some internal gnarly infection raging. In the short time between waking and getting on the road, the inflamed area had spread noticeably. Bishop had no clinic we could find, and because it was a Saturday no doctor’s offices were open, we so we made a visit to the Bishop ER.

In short time, we saw a doctor who diagnosed bursitis and a gnarly infection. We got our paperwork and headed to the local Friendly’s Pharmacy to get some Keflex and an ace bandage. This of course made for some photo opportunities with Kenny and Dave.

Dave said he felt okay to climb so we headed into Pine Creek for more climbing. The climbing started on a 10c sport route. It was here that Dave admitted he was so-so for climbing. Still, he wanted to keep on going. I did a part of this climb although from the ground I could tell it wasn’t something that inspired me. At all.

At this point, I decided to enjoy the day as a belayer. We walked up the canyon a bit where Kenny and Dave did a 5.9 mixed climb further up gully. And finally, we headed to the climb that Dave really wanted; Sheila 10a. It’s quite a pretty climb – it’s easy to see why it was on Dave’s tick list.

Dave headed up while Kenny belayed. Then up went Kenny. It is a very pretty climb – so happy they were able to do it. While beautiful, I did not envy them - with every move, their left foot was either smearing or jammed in a crack. It hurt to even watch it.


Kenny exclaimed that “this is the climb I came to do!” It was fun watching them both climb it so well. With these victories we headed back to camp for a spaghetti dinner and happy hour.


At the trailer, Dave was looking mighty grim. I think he probably doesn’t remember much of this evening other than he felt terrible.

One thing that I did in the evening that was fun is to watch an ant mound that was outside our door. I discovered that they don't care for bread. Just ignore it. But they like nacho chips. The way they all went to work to get these chips underground was impressive. The coolest thing was watching them when I dropped a piece of ice near their mound. They spazzed! And we got a cool photo of them too.

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