On October 4th, 2020 I crested an eight-mile climb, high above the village of Spitzenberg on a dirt road in a rural part of Columbia County about 10 miles northwest of downtown Scappoose when I stopped and had an epiphany. I was 30 miles from home at that point and was just about to descend even deeper into the woods and logging roads between Highway 30 and Highway 47. With the “bullshit miles” behind me, the ride was just getting good.
But something didn’t feel right. A bump on the inside of my right knee had become too obvious for me to ignore. So I aborted my route and headed home. I had two hours to think about what was happening and I’d been down this road before (literally and figuratively). I knew I’d reached a point of no return. ‘Here we go again,’ I thought.
30 years prior to that ride, when I was 16, I tore the ACL ligament in my left knee in a junior varsity basketball game. I remember going to launch off the gym floor and looking straight down at my thigh while my foot was way off to the outside. That injury cost me an entire year of high school basketball. I spent a year rehabbing. Then just a few games into my final varsity season, I tore my other ACL. I knew I’d reached a point of no return. ‘Here we go again,’ I thought.
Not being able to play varsity basketball was a huge disappointment in my life (I’m still not over it!). But cycling helped steer me out of my funk. When I found competitive cycling in college, I didn’t even care about basketball anymore. I just wanted to be the fastest guy in town. I rode and trained and raced hard for years. Then I buckled down to graduate, got married, had kids, moved to Portland, started a blog.
I started racing again in 2011, doing Short Track at PIR and cyclocross races whenever I could. I raced most years between then and 2019, but I mostly loved big, solo rides. The more climbing, the better. And if it wasn’t hard it wasn’t fun.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was wearing out my knees. Those two ACL replacements and three other knee surgeries 25+ years ago meant I’d been gnashing bone-to-bone all those miles all those years. I remember in 2000 or so, one of my knee doctors told me after an exam, “You should probably not ride out of the saddle anymore.”
I obviously didn’t take that advice. Partly because I was young and arrogant and felt like my body could do anything. But also because climbing out of the saddle was my favorite part of cycling. And isn’t cycling supposed to be good for your knees?!
In hindsight, and in light of what happened at the top of that climb in 2020, I should have chilled out a bit. When most people say, “Cycling is good for your knees,” they’re not necessarily talking about a 100 mile ride with 8,600 feet of climbing.
It’s been nearly five years since I put on the spandex and did a real big ride. It was strange at first to just quit cold turkey. But I love all the extra time I have. Getting away from serious cycling has allowed me to find new perspectives, new parts of my life, and to rediscover old ones I’d sacrificed at the altar of training rides. That’s the upside.
The downside is my health and fitness have suffered. I don’t get much exercise riding around town for work. As my concerns about my knees worsened, I began riding electric bikes almost exclusively, something I’ve done for a few years now. I could feel the spiral setting in: avoid the pain, don’t exercise, get older, feel worse, avoid the pain, don’t exercise, get older, feel worse, and so on.
In 2022 I saw a knee doctor. He basically said there was nothing he could do. I was too young for a knee replacement and I didn’t have a severe injury requiring surgery. Just manage the pain and wear a big brace if I need stability, he said. I didn’t like that diagnosis, but I was too exasperated with it all to do anything about it. I’d given up until a few months ago at Bike Happy Hour I overheard someone (hi Scott!) talking about their knee surgery. It went great, they said, and they were back to riding hard and feeling good. I got the name of his doctor and grabbed an appointment.
After some imaging and an evaluation, this new doctor said I was a great candidate for total joint replacement surgery. We scheduled both knee replacements at that first visit. I go in for the first one tomorrow.
35 years after my first knee surgery, I’m choosing to go through it again. Twice. It sucks to be missing a bunch of bike events this spring and summer, and it will not be good for my business, but I’m tired of having “bad knees.” If all goes according to plan, they’ll be good again (after some hard days and lots of physical therapy), for the first time since I was a teenager.
Maybe I’ll trying dunking again. Just kidding! I just want to ride bikes and not think about how my knees will feel the next day.
So things will be slow around here for the next week or so as I recover. Hopefully I’ll be back out on the streets in May. Then I go back under the knife in mid-June for my other knee. A shitty summer for an amazing (hopefully) rest of my life. I’ll take it!
Thanks for reading.
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Sounds like the beginning of a new, exciting, and gratifying chapter!
Sorry to hear you’ve been having knee issues, I had no idea! We’re about the same age and like you, I’m finding that all the abuse — er, make that “heavy use” — is starting to wear things down. No knee surgeries yet, but I recently had a surgical repair to my elbow. Surgery is no fun, but like you I have no wish to give in to the cycle you described – don’t work out, feel bad, don’t work out more, feel worse, etc. Best wishes for a good outcome, I’ll hope to compare scars at a bike happy hour sometime soon!
Thanks Dan! I appreciate that. And yes, we should have a “Show me your scars” night at Bike Happy Hour. That would be so rad.
Hope you have a good/speedy recovery!
As a swimmer who got into biking, I’d recommend trying some lap/open water swimming if you want a workout that’s even easier on the joints.
I love swimming Nick! And I’m always looking for something that’s easy on the knees. But it’s so hard to find pools in Portland.
There are also pools for PT if you need. I second swimming for the knees. Yea, Portland isn’t great for pools. Dishman and the East side community center are the better year-round ones.
Also, I’m gonna need corroborating evidence on that dunk 🙂
That photo is legit. We didn’t have AI back then!
That was my favorite dunk court. 9 feet high or so and I could all types of good dunks on it. I’d spend a lot of time there, by myself, just trying new dunks and seeing how high I could get.
And if anyone is curious, I only dunked 2 times on a regulation, 10-foot court. In pick-up games. Core memories for sure!!
So glad you’re able to get the help you need. If you follow local artist and cyclist Lisa Congdon on insta, then you know she’s at the tail end of having both knees replaced. Her posts are uplifting and she’s on the bike again! Best wishes for a speedy recovery!
Thanks for the reminder Maria. Someone mentioned Lisa and that’s great to know. I’ll follow her for sure.
Best of luck Jonathan – never easy to get surgery. Hope you have a swift recovery and are back on the bike soon! I really enjoy looking back on some of the long ride reports you’ve done over the years. The Coos Bay Wagon Road one is of particular interest to me as it relates to my pet obsession of the Oregon & California Revested Lands stuff, so I’m hoping to get down to Roseburg to check that off this summer.
I’d also recommend getting some swimming in as yet another swimmer turned cyclist. If you need a good pool in N/NE, Dishman is pretty nice and they offer a free pass for North Portland residents.
I see lots of guys (mostly older guys) out riding recumbent bikes. Maybe one of those would be easier on your knees?
I’m glad you wrote this article cuz I’ve been thinking that anti-cycling types could use your surgery to argue that biking is bad for people in general. But really it was basketball that blew out your knees and they have never really recovered.
Good luck with the surgery.
Best of luck Johnathan!
Wish you a speedy recovery Jonathan! Hope to see you out on the bike soon!
Please do a follow-up when it’s all over, I’d love to know how it goes and I’ll be hoping for the best! I have a somewhat similar story…I’m almost 50 and had two ACL reconstructions in my early 20s. They held up well until the last couple of years but now the arthritis has set in. I’d love to ride pain free again someday and use my mountain bike more often than I do!
I remember u in the Cyclocross days and more recent sightings on your E-bike (I have same model). Just wondered about the changes and appreciate hearing your story …and sorry to hear of the struggles. Happy and excited for u… wishing u the very best
Jon, you’re describing something I’ve been dreading for years now. Like you, I tore one of my ACLs in my youth. But like, I really tore it up. It was bad enough that the doc had to remove most of my meniscus as well, so I’ve been bone-on-bone in one knee since I was 20.
As I climber higher into my 40s, I can feel that knee ‘wearing down’ for lack of a better phrase. I’m sure you know the feeling – I’m sure a lot of readers here do! I haven’t had my point-of-no-return moment yet, but I know it’s coming. When I was 30, an osteopath told me I’d need a total knee replacement by the time I was 40. So every year that my knee still feels healthy is a blessing at this point.
Godspeed on your surgeries and subsequent recovery! Here’s hoping we see you zipping around town in no time!
Thanks Nate. Yeah those ACL repairs always lead to osteoarthritis. That’s what I’ve got. Lots of growth on the ends of my bones. that’s where the misalignment and pain is coming from. My knee I’m getting fixed today is starting to collapse on one side and it’s expanding a tendon on the other side, which is sore to the touch and if I let it go, the knee would collapse and I’d be knock-kneed, and so on. Anyways, thanks for the kind words and don’t let your situation get so bad before you do something.
OK, since we do the same thing for ODOT reports and PBOT PR pieces, I gotta ask, was the second doctor, the one who is going to do surgery, going to get paid for their work? Were they really unbiased? Or were they trying to sell you a bill of goods?
Like anyone else with a chronic age-related ailment, I too prefer to hear good news from the happy doctors that everything is going to get fixed in no time, and I like to avoid hearing the penny-dreadfuls from other doctors that my condition is more or less for the rest of my life, that I’ll need to make lifestyle adjustments and so on, that I may never fully recover, that my pills are pretty much permanent. We are all like that. It’s a lot like hearing that ODOT will always be focused on highways, that we will probably never see Portland with a 25% bike mode share no matter how much we hope for it, certainly not by 2030 at any rate.
According to many doctors I’ve talked with over the years, invasive surgery is generally pretty bad for the body, any kind, best avoided if possible. Sometimes its necessary, even vital, but never something to take lightly. It’s a lot like building freeways, it permanently ruins everything else, but especially the environment. If I were you, I would have gone back to the first doctor, the negative one, and find out precisely why they thought it a bad idea.
Making judgments about the medical care that people seek for themselves sucks, no matter their gender identity and the purpose of their medical care. If you wouldn’t do it, that’s fine! You don’t have to make the same choice! Maybe you and Jonathan know each other in the real world, but why are you judging his medical choices on his blog? Getting a second opinion on a major medical decision is 100% a great idea.
Best of luck Jonathan! My dad had a total hip replacement several years ago now, and while it did take him a year to get down to minimal pain, he’s back to walking and hiking for many miles. The mental toll of compensating to deal with pain is awful and I’m glad you found a doc who can help you do something about it!
Thank you Paige. And just FYI David and I know each other a bit from his days doing advocacy here in Portland. I found his comment a bit off-putting, but I also know his commenting personality and I was more like, “classic david!” than anything. I’ll reply to him as well.
Hi David,
I’m a person, not a state agency, so it’s odd you’d compare me to ODOT! But really, I understand your questions. I’m not naive and I understand the power of profit motives. I didn’t like that first doctor for other reasons. He barely listened to me, he didn’t even acknowledge my two-knee problem, and was just in-and-out. His idea was that I would wear out my new knees so I should just sit and wait and buy some time. But that logic makes no sense to me: Why waste my good years now so I can have better knees when I’m really old and don’t need them as much? And the tech will keep improving in the future so who knows what options will be available when I’m 80 and my new knees are wearing out. (and FWIW they will be titanium, so they should last a long time)
And FWIW my new doc is really really well-reputed, he was “Doctor of the Year” from Portland Monthly a bunch of times and I got him on a referral from someone I know and trust. And what Paige said! My knees are f’d and it’s hurting my quality of life right now. This seems like a great remedy. Thanks.
JM, I really appreciate your response. As this is your blog and to a large extent reflects your personality and your views on life, I expect and hope that as you age further there will be more frank discussions of aging and our responses to it, new technologies to reverse its effects, surgeries and drugs to cope with aging issues, and so on. You’ve always had commenters who are older than you who themselves are dealing with various issues, but now I dare say you can sympathize even better. I interact with many people older than myself who find that they can’t bike like they used to, that even raising their leg to get on the saddle is a serious hassle (aren’t dropper seat posts great?), that they are losing their sense of balance; others are wondering, should they get an ebike, if so which one, and if not, maybe a Swytch front wheel instead? it would be great if you could produce a series on bicycling for those who are no longer as mobile as they used to be, those who no longer feel they are 16 unless they are on an ebike.
I would think of it more like this: if I have to replace the knees “too young” and I get 15 more years of activity, enough that they need to be replaced again at age 60 or 70, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The alternative is decreased activity and enjoyment, which can lead to many problems.
Of course surgeries can go wrong, but the risks of doing nothing seem so much higher in your case.
If you have the insurance and the money to do it, I think it’s the right call.
Best of luck. I understand that knee ligament surgery has improved a lot in recent years. I am much older than you and know a lot of “old athletes” who share your experience. A lot of them have had different types of knee and shoulder surgery and everyone went well.
I’ll be thinking of you. Good luck, and here’s wishing you a speedy recovery. —Lisa
I went on a mountain climb with a local mountaineering club years ago. I was in my early thirties and the leader was in maybe his late fifties/early sixties. He’d had knee replacement surgery recently and kept joking about his new bionic knee… while putting in a successful 5,000 vertical day.
I’m optimistic for your surgery!!!
Good luck with your recovery, Jonathan. Once your on the other side, we’ll need to get out for a ride in the hills.
Oh, if I could only get a referral for a replacement hip, elbow, and spine. I’m only asking for L1 down, is that so much? Kayaking, not basketball got me. Sit cross-legged and drop 10 feet to a hard floor. Yup, I am measurably shorter.
and thumbs up on the e-bike love, of course! Heal well and fast.
Always appreciate your reporting and perspective. Hoping you have smooth and speedy recovery. Sounds like you’ve got a good doc too. My dad had both knees replaced and he went from not being able to get off the couch to hiking all the way to Everest base camp. I’m sure it’ll feel good to get back out on your acoustic bikes again 🙂
My left knee has been a problem for several years. It would painfully “go out” leaving me with weeks of recovery, use of a cane and painkillers. One thing I did to relieve pain was first, to wear an elastic knee bandage on my left knee and secondly to wear a matching elastic knee bandage on my right knee. The two knee bandages together helped me return to my normal walking gait and pace.
Hey Jonathan,
I had both my knees “scoped” in the 90’s…much less serious than ACL, but after both the doc said “we got the loose Cartlidge, but now you haven’t got any!” Same for my 84 year old sister who’s X-rays show bone on bone. She does 20-30 minutes every AM on a stationary recumbent; I do ten minutes plus of “bicycling” on my back with weights. “Motion is the lotion” with as little impact as possible.
That said, good luck with the replacements, and from all I hear, PT is still the key to a speedy and full functioning recovery.
Thanks for the insights Lenny. Just keep moving is always the answer right? Hope you are doing well.
A hard choice for sure, and I’m definitely wishing you a smooth recovery (and patience about being off bikes while your body heals). I was in a very different situation years ago w a ruptured disk but managed to avoid surgery with an excellent physical therapist (after seeing five or six NOT excellent ones) . My takeaway is that for prevention and also for rehabilitation after surgery, a good PT is sooo important. Mariah Frank at SoundBody is great. They are smart, compassionate, and empowering; basically I now see them several times a year for “aging fiercely,” meaning they make sure I’m keeping my body strong and agile to minimize problems down the line. I am hoping to be in this body for a while, so PT as I go is like keeping the bike chain oiled!
Thank you Lois. Glad you found a great PT person and this is great advice. I’m excited for PT and am already doing exercises at home. My surgery went well and I’m feeling good so far.
I had a total hip replacement when I was 49 (approaching 64). I recently tore my medial meniscus and am slowly rehabilitating that. Sucks to get old, but the alternative isn’t better. The best advice I got from a (now retired) occupational therapist was that when the physical therapist comes to see you shortly after the surgery muster all the enthusiasm you have and get to work because the quality of your recovery has a lot to do with what you do right after it.