The Chances: Goodnight Irene {or more appropriately} Death to the Patella Ginglymus

A little time spent hiking in the Smokies always gives you an appreciation for nature, calf muscles, the absolute beauty and intimacy of God's creation, slow-twitch muscle fiber and your own physical health (or lack thereof), and our little gallivant through the Smokies, or more precisely up Mount LeConte was no different. During our family escapade to Gatlinburg, while the women were shopping, my brothers-in-law (Chase and Clay) and my pappy-in-law and myself decided to retire to the Smokies for a little hiking. They decided to hike up the Rainbow Falls trail to see the magnanimous waterfall (something like a 6 mile round trip), and being the adventurous over-achiever that I am, I opted to take the 6.3 mile trip from the parking lot to the Bullhead trail all the way up the mountain to the trail junction and then run back down to the bottom of the mountain via Rainbow Falls (another 6 miles). Nobody knows why I possibly thought I could hike 6 miles up Mt. Leconte then run 6 more miles down in 2 1/2 hrs without either dying or losing a limb. Anyways I took off from the parking lot in high spirits and realized 20 minutes later as I was asphyxiating that I may be cutting my time really close. Snapped a few pics on the way up, and about 4 miles deep onto the trail I passed a couple coming down and they generously informed me that I still had over 2 miles to go (keep in mind that for the last half hour or so I had been telling myself that I would at any moment be at the top of the mountain taking a break at the trail junction). So I kept on bookin' it (death march came to mind) and after 2 hours finally reached to trail junction.

As I stood there with my hands on my knees trying not to kill over and realizing that I was going to literally have to run 6 miles down the mountain to keep the rest of the family from having to wait forever in the parking lot (at this point we were supposed to be meeting back at the car) I hear a faint pitter patter of feet coming up the Rainbow Falls trail. I focus my gaze down the pathway to see an ole' Brit running up the trail. The only thing I could think to say was "Don't tell me you just ran up that." And in his heavy British accent he gave a simple "Yea sorry 'bout that". After a little more dialogue I found out that my boy had ran from Gatlinburg up the mountain and was about to run back down the trail I had just come up and then back to Gatlinburg (he'd ran a couple of 100 mile races so I wasn't too worried he'd make it back). We said our goodbyes, hugged, did the British kiss on the cheek thing and parted ways down the mountain. So I start running. The trail turns out to pretty much be one huge rock after another so after about 3 minutes my patellas felt like they were going to pop out of their ginglymus joints. I knew I had 3.3 miles down the mountain to the actual Rainbow Falls so I decided I would run to the falls, take some pics and take a break and try to breathe. My knees and ankles were swollen within the first 400 feet and I realized that 1) I am getting old; 2) this was not very well planned out; and 3) I may never see my wife again because at any moment I could literally have a coronary. I made it to the waterfall (it was pretty darn cool by the way) and I threw some water on my head and then kept on truckin' the 2.7 miles I had to go down the mountain. I was overjoyed about 7 or 8 minutes later when I saw my brethren making their way down from the falls, apparently they had decided to stay a while at the falls and were also getting back to the car later than they thought, so I got to walk the rest of the way back. On a side note, I was extremely dehydrated and almost died. But that's a minor detail. What's really important is that I got to kiss a Brit on the cheek. Sweet.