After a sublime first surf session of individual challenges and glories, we’re asked to do something for the greater good.

And that something involves garbage.

After all the travel and the lead-up, we finally get in the water. And find just what we need.

In hockey, we have a saying: everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face. But life doesn’t confine its punches to the ice rink. You can’t outrun the punches or buy your way out. It can even pop you a good one in a palm-frond-shaded paradise. But it’s not about avoiding getting punched. Everybody gets punched. The question is: What do you do next?

The bro flex is coming. I can feel it. The sorting out, the excluding, the picking of teams. We are here to surf, after all, and surfing is a highly competitive individual sport. I coach myself to just accept my fate at the bottom of the barrel, but then again, that’s not the vibe I got from Rob. Maybe this place could turn out to be different?

You know the feeling of being inside and outside your own story at the same time? In control of no part of it, you queasily sit back and trust the script that you haven’t read. Vertiginous and unsettling, the feeling may later prove prescient. Or not.

Far from the chaos of Managua, Amaru perches on a picaresque plateau and offers a paradisical haven, but I’ve come here with more in mind than taking a break. Be careful what you wish for…

Someday, I suspect that this will all make perfect sense. Maybe in my eulogy. For the moment, I’m just getting out of Managua and heading for the coast. The plan is to film the place where all the pieces fell into place for the featured character in Older & Bolder Episode 1. I secretly hope to find some answers of my own.

Enough with the knees.  And the rare blood disease too. I bore myself. We’ve all got our shit. Not boring myself is why I’ve come to Managua, as one does. 

Strange shifts are stacking up as the editor of the magazine that featured my mug on its cover asked me to write a story of unexpected twists. I have no shortage of those, but this is the one that came to mind immediately. In this little ditty, we witness a crooked cop in a Mexican border shakedown that turns into a thrilling escapade and a lifelong memory that still makes me smile.

Just when I was so down and out that I thought I’d never climb out of the hole, an unexpected magazine story appeared. Unexpected, because yours truly was on the cover, and the story made me sound like I'd figured out something special and crucial. At first, I felt like a fraud, but then something different happened, and maybe the hole wasn’t quite as deep as it seemed.

Seventy-two days ago, my patella calved off a slab of bone and created a malicious, lip-curling wave of suffering that smirked at my feeble attempt to surf the setback. A hold-down set; I’ve been underwater for ten weeks. It’s dark at the bottom, but salvation showed up from a source I’d never seen coming.

Pop is not a sound that a guy with two new knee replacements wants to hear while he’s skiing down the hill. Nor is crack. But whatever the sound is that combines these two, that’s what I heard.

As this is the time of year to make and break New Year’s resolutions, I’ll share mine: I resolve to learn all the trail names of the two ski resorts where I regularly ski. Now, you might scoff. What a lame resolution! However, hear me out. As you might expect, there’s a story behind it, and that story begins yesterday.

I’m scared to ski down Chickadee. As one might guess from the name, the Chickadee Run at Snowbird is not one that good skiers often find themselves on. But there I am, three months to the day after my second surgery, intent on testing the new knees, and quavering shamefully at the very real possibility of calamity.

I walk into the Sandy, Utah, office of Heiden Orthopedics. It’s been 89 days since Dr. Eric Heiden sawed the bones in my right knee and replaced the joint with titanium, 131 days since he performed the same procedure on my left knee. It’s been a long four-plus months. Pain, sleepless nights, and pervading it all, a desperate and confused malaise. But today I feel different.

I make noises now. Grunts, moans, yelps.

The noises are involuntary responses to quick, sharp pains in my knees, calves, and ankles. These little electric shocks are surely due to my nervous system getting back on track after having the bones in both legs sawed off, nerves and tendons and ligaments pushed aside, and then wriggled back into place, new titanium parts installed. The pain is entirely unpredictable. I don’t even have to move. Zing, it just happens. Ping, my brain notes the discomfort as my voice box responds.

Ow, or Eeee, or sometimes Ehhhh.

Ice brackets my days. I start every morning with an ice bath and end every day with ice packs strapped to my knees. Sometimes small cubes of ice float in a glass, melting the last vestiges of the day’s angst. But now, eight weeks after knee surgery number two, I decide it’s time to add even more ice to my recovery plan: an exploratory spin on the hockey rink.

Everyone at Heiden Orthopedics in Sandy, Utah, knows my name. They smile when I walk in and are so pleased with the progress on knee replacement #1 that they’re just dying to know if I’m ready for bone sawing day number two, just six days away.

Bring it, I say.

Of course, it’s all an act.

Four weeks after knee replacement surgery number one and badly needing some positivity to go with the still persistent pain, I venture into the garage, swipe the cobwebs off my mountain bike, and heft it onto the tailgate of my truck.

It’s three weeks after my first knee replacement surgery—the days are already ticking down toward my second—and by most measures, I’m doing fine. But I’m completely failing in one area: pain management.