New Parts Tomorrow

I’m having my right knee replaced tomorrow. My previous operation was a temporary measure to correct for 9.9 degrees of negative camber, and I knew that eventually the arthritis and pain would get to be too much. I just felt like it was a couple years away, so I was a little surprised by how immediately necessary it became.

The reason I’m having it done right now has everything to do with aerodynamics: Car aerodynamics and tree aerodynamics.

My wife went on an African safari for a couple weeks in July, and so I had some time on my hands. I didn’t have anything planned, but I’m also not one to sit around.

So I suddenly decided it was necessary to rent time at the A2 wind tunnel and test aero parts. But my Miatas are out of commission and I didn’t have that much to test on the Veloster, and so I spent the next week building aero parts.

My race barn has a downstairs area dedicated for cars and bikes. The tools, welder, hardware, etc., are all down there. The upstairs is my wood shop, where I build most parts, do fiberglassing and painting, etc. I went up and down those stairs more than 100 times per day building and fitting and rebuilding parts for the aero test. That put a lot more strain on my knees than normal.

And then, while I was testing my car in the wind tunnel in North Carolina, a wind storm 650 miles north knocked down a bunch of trees. A big willow went down, a couple pines and apple trees, and a silver maple put two holes in my roof. Wind storm. Ironic, innit?

So I spent a couple days cutting and hauling wood and cleaning up the yard. After which I had two days of coaching at Watkins Glen with PCA. As a result of all that activity, I had no time to rest my knees and I woke up on Friday morning and couldn’t walk.

I literally couldn’t put even a pound of weight on my foot, the pain was excruciating. I had a friend fetch my crutches while I called around to get x-rays and whatnot. Since it had been a few years since my last visit, I couldn’t even get a orthopedic appointment inside of 6 weeks. Thankfully, motorsports came to the rescue.

Warren Wulf is a fellow member at Pineview (and also a classmate from Cornell), and races a BMW. I reached out to him and he got me an appointment that week with Dr Max Greenky. Max does something like 500 knee replacements per year, and after seeing my knee, said that I could get a new one at any time. So I booked an op as soon as possible, and that’s tomorrow.

This will be my third surgery on my right knee, I’ve previously had a lateral release and osteotomy (plates and screws), so I know what to expect regarding recovery, physical therapy, and such. The osteotomy was not my first Rodeo. For whatever reason, my left knee, which had never given me any problems in my entire life, developed the same problem as my right knee. And so Dr Scott Rodeo has done osteotomies on both knees. I’ll need a knee replacement on the left one sometime in the future as well. Gad’s, I think that’ll be my seventh sports-related surgery. I’m falling apart.

FFS Mario, how old are you? I’m 56. I played lacrosse in high school, college, and in a club league afterwards. Probably worse, I skateboarded and did other impact sports my entire life, and have abused the shit out of my body. I don’t count the broken bones. I also have Ehlers Danlos syndrome, and so my joints were predisposed to betray me since birth.

I’m not sure how long the recovery will be. The plate and screws need to come out before the knee comes off, so it’s not a straight replacement. The literature says I’m not supposed to drive for 3 weeks, but you probably guessed that I’m a competitive person, and that just means I’ll be driving at 20 days or sooner. I’m hoping to get back on track in late October.

This gives me some downtime to write, and so I’ll go back through previous articles and inject some wind tunnel test data. I’ll also have to correct a few things I was wrong about (canards), and put an exclamation point on things I was right about (end plates).

This downtime is a good time to Contact Me and ask me aero questions, or just message me in the middle of the day and say yo. I’m also scheduled to be a guest on the RacersHQ podcast, and maybe the Garage Heroes will invite me back.

Once I’m able to drive in anger again, I’ll go to Pineview and get more Aim Solo data on the new track. I’m not sure if I’ll update the track guide, but I want to put something up on this site in the meantime.

My brother was supposed to visit, but because of injuries of his own (we are identical twins after all), I have four non-transferrable guest passes I need to use this year. If you’ve never been to Pineview and want to check it out, hit me up.

OK, then. New parts tomorrow!