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adventures

adventures / collarbone / cycling / Friday / photo — Comments Off
23
Sep 22

Visited an ortho this morning

Last night was a fairly sleepless night, I think. The painkillers seemed more like pain ticklers. But we had an early morning appointment, and that brought out two trips to the biggest pharmacy in town — and several phone calls with the doctor’s offices and the insurance company because, the best I can tell, American healthcare — and drugs that can get the job done.

The Yankee had more X-rays following her bike crash last evening. And they all confirmed how lucky we are.

To recap: some jerk cut her off and she crashed her bike to avoid hitting his red pickup truck. There are witnesses. So we spent most of the night in the ER, and the rest of the night in the drive through of the pharmacy.

She has a few broken bones. This we knew. Two ribs will heal on their own in time, and we knew that. The particular ribs were an initial worry yesterday, because they often lead to other damage, but that’s not the case here. Today’s doctor visit was to consult a specialist about her collarbone, which is also broken.

More X-rays were taken. After several painful rounds of that, the doctor thinks that she might be able to avoid surgery. (Which, having had that surgery myself, I say “Good!”) We’ll go back for more scans next week. And, for the next while we’re just gritting through everything, moving slowly, using one hand, and finding out that there’s no position that is actually comfortable.

And counting our blessings.

Let’s look at her helmet.

By the way, never buy a used helmet. Not all helmets are made the same, some are better than others. Like most anything these days, there are tiers to modern helmets in terms of price and tech and protection, but all helmets on the market have to pass certain minimum standards. The Smith Ignite MIPS Helmet you see here is a good aero helmet.

And should you crash your helmet, retire it and get another one. Also, depending on who you ask, it’s a good thing to upgrade every three-to-five years because of age or heat or sun damage. There’s no real consensus opinion on their lifespan, but three-to-five years are the most agreed upon windows.

This is the left side of her helmet. All of the scratches on the polycarbonate shell came from this accident.

This part is important. The shell on this helmet is molded to the expanded polystyrene foam, but you see where that got ruptured in the crash. This would be just above the left ear.

Here’s the overhead view, with the rider facing the top of the shot. There are some impressive gouges and scratches across the crown of the helmet. All of this, of course, means the helmet is doing it’s job. The helmet gets eaten up by the road so your cranium doesn’t.

See this cracking in the EPS foam? That’s not supposed to be there. That’s crash damage.

Again, better the helmet than the head. Here’s another view of where the EPS foam was destroyed. The green stuff, the straw looking stuff, or the honeycomb stuff, is called Koroyd. This stuff is designed to crumple on impact and absorb crash force in a controlled manner, minimizing energy to the noggin.

The point of this is plastic deformation. Look at how it got squished up. The Koroyd did it’s job.

Altogether, it seems the many bits of technology in this helmet worked. You can see a fair amount of damage, and no head trauma.

A guy in a truck caused this wreck. A helmet very well might have kept it from being a life-changing wreck.

Be kind to cyclists; wear a helmet.

adventures / photo / Thursday / windshield time — Comments Off
8
Sep 22

So much driving

The problem is that this trip involves a full day. The good part is that we stopped for good barbecue along the way. And, also, the weather was much better than our Saturday drive.

The other problem is that I already miss the pool, but what can you do?

This is the Rockport Generating Station is a coal-fired power plant. It features two of the largest coal units built, and is connected to the grid with the largest lines allowed in the U.S. (It is scheduled to be shut down in 2028.)

Also, this is apparently the tallest smokestack in Indiana, and, indeed, one of the tallest in the world at 1,038 feet. Wikipedia says it is the 33rd tallest, globally, the sixth tallest in the U.S. and seventh tallest in North America.

Shoutout to whomever compiles this data for the rest of us.

This, meanwhile, is a 17-foot tall fiberglass model of popcorn. It sits outside of a store that pops 90 different varieties.

It isn’t closed, but that’s one scary parking lot.

Some of the corn you can get in that store may have come out of these bins.

Or maybe these, which were just up the road.

And, look! That’s the field that fills that bin.

Just kidding. This corn goes way up to the other side of town, I bet.

Corn produces something like $3.28 billion a year in Indiana which, as a state, ranks eighth in the nation in ag exports, and is the 10th largest farming state.

It would be easy in these quiet little parts of southern Indiana to think that’s the economy, but not hardly. Indiana produces more steel than anyone. And the chief economic driver is manufacturing.

Someone has to make the popcorn, after all.

adventures / Alabama / family / Wednesday — Comments Off
7
Sep 22

What do you know?

I was right.

Much like yesterday, this is also where we spent this afternoon.

I spent the morning at a bank, because somehow a simple task required the full morning. This is fun, though: the woman on the other side of the desk, is my step-cousin-twice-removed-in-law.

Yes, that’s a thing. I’ve just typed it into existence because there’s a chart and I have verified the information.

It reminds me of something a professor once said about hometowns and mobility. His general premise was that if you stay in that place, and your family is from there and you marry there, you’ll likely find yourself with someone in your own clan. Well, I’ve never lived here, but all of my people are from here and they married people. All it took, in this case, was finding out her husband’s name. That man’s grandfather was the brother of my step-grandfather’s grandfather. We’ve never met at reunions, the banker and her husband, but we know about the summer stews.

Small bank, smaller world.

adventures / Alabama / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
6
Sep 22

The water’s (more than) fine

If you were looking for me today, and couldn’t find me, that’s because you didn’t look here.

There are pretty good odds that I’ll be there tomorrow, too.

adventures / Alabama / cycling / family / Monday — Comments Off
5
Sep 22

Happy Labor Day

We had a short bike ride on Saturday morning, dodging raindrops until I couldn’t. I wanted to get in a quick 20 miles to reach the next round number for the year. (All of the records are falling this year!) And in the early going we went by this familiar corn field, which almost made it to Labor Day before turning.

And then, up the street and up a few hills, The Yankee was creating some big distance. See the little red dot on the side? I had to cover all of this ground to get her wheel again.

Eventually I did, and then we rode together for a while. She turned for the house and I added on a few more miles to get to that goal, and then found myself in the rain. It was foreshadowing.

We got in the car, pointed south and drove through every storm cloud that a third of this great nation can provide. My car hasn’t been this clean, nor my shoulders this tense in the car, in some time. This is just the beginning.

You know how, sometimes, you people stop under an overpass? When my wipers were going full blast and I was slowing down to about 35 on the freeway to let them keep up, it seemed like a good idea.

I always liked overpasses in the rain. That constant rattle on the roof interrupted, however briefly, by a bit of human engineering. It can be a sudden and stunning change, and then just as quickly, the rain returns, because the overpasses are only a few lanes wide. Sometimes you want more overpasses, I guess, if only to park under them.

We did not wait out the weather, but pushed on carefully through. And one of our rewards was this site.

You can almost see it there, but in the heartbeat before I took this photo, and those trees in the foreground crept in the way, you could actually see the place where the rainbow was hitting the ground. It wasn’t off in the distance, or beyond a hill. It was right there. I did not see the pots of gold, however. It is a busy interstate, maybe someone beat me to it.

We made it to my mom’s for a nice little vacation. We had dinner there Saturday night, and a quiet Sunday. Today my grandfather and a great-aunt and great-uncle came over for dinner. This was the first time I’ve seen my aunt and uncle since before the pandemic began. They were, and are, a hoot.

I could tell you stories, but it is a light week here, and you’d need to know them and hear them, anyway. But I will jot this down, just so I can remember it. Someone was telling a bit of a family story and my great-uncle didn’t hear who was the subject of the story. He said, “Who?” He heard the name. There’s a half beat where the name sinks in and you can see the gears readjusting to the new information. And then the man, who is in his 80s, giggled. It was him and them and perfect.