Wednesday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Wednesday

Taking it easy

Those are my orders. Saw the orthopedist today, who told me to my incision looks good. We saw that for the first time today, it is much larger than we’d anticipated.

I am to lift nothing heavier than a glass of water. And I have been given gravity/pendulum therapy.

Bend over at the waist, let your arm dang freely. Move your hand back and forth, left and right, front and back and in circles. Do this daily. That’s my therapy for the first week. He did not tell me how many times a day to do this, or how many reps of each. I’d like a little more precision …

I can ride my bike in five or six weeks he said and a trainer in two. My complete recovery time, he said, was 12 weeks, making this the longest personal recovery of anything I can recall.

Anyway, since I’m sitting comfortably and resting, here is a picture. This is the tangerine bonsai tree that Kelly sent us:

She’s so very wonderfully giving and thoughtful. Kelly says it will eventually yield us dainty fruits to enjoy. Also, I must take care of it daily:

Water daily through hot spells and every other day in the spring and fall. As needed in the winter. A well balanced liquid fertilizer should be used with every 2nd or 3rd watering. Citrus in general are heavy feeders, especially iron, manganese and zinc. The local nursery should have an adequate liquid feed available.

[…]

Prune to shape as you desire, keeping in mind the small- scale size of the plant and its container. Flowers will appear from small shoots that originate where the leaves meet the stem. Flowers sporadically throughout the year, heaviest in the spring. Remove the tree from its pot every 2-3 years and remove about 1/3 of the roots. Re-pot with a blended potting soil. This will encourage new roots and keep it growing happily.

Maybe I can trim a leaf with each week of recovery. Or is that too impatient for bonsai?

collarbone / cycling / Wednesday — 1 Comment
11
Jul 12

The orthopedist says

Saw the local expert. He comes well recommended. We know people that he’s treated.

Everyone in his office was very nice and patient. (The nurse there was impressed by my road rash. I figure if you have to seek out medical help, give them something to admire. He gave me some debridement bandages, which is more attention than they received in the emergency room. He told me to leave them on until Thursday. “You’ll be amazed, bro.”)

The doctor himself did not rush us at all and waited for all of our questions. Told us the options and let us decide everything. He let me ask him the same question different ways, which is my habit when I’m trying to get more information.

The options are basically these: you can let a collar bone grow back together or you can surgically repair it. Letting nature take its course is a slower answer and there are risks of physical deformity and a concern about a loss of functionality. Surgically is faster and you are supposed to bounce back to your normal self.

I’m young, I’m active. I don’t want to be limited. My break, he said, was so far apart that naturally healing was something of a crapshoot. So we’re doing surgery.

This changes a lot of schedules, and will lay me up for a while, but it is better in the long run.

He told me which day his best people are working with him, so we know which day to have the procedure. It takes about 45 minutes, he said.

Until then, ice, rest and keep it still.

Being still isn’t hard. I’ve figured out, for the most part, how to get comfortable so that I can almost forget I’m hurt. Changing shirts is the worst. Getting in and out of bed is slow. Sleeping is a challenge. There are no real big problems, though. I’m just learning to do things slowly, one-handed and kicking myself for getting hurt.

Site note: I will not talk about this for days on end, I promise.

adventures / Auburn / cycling / iPhone / photo / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
4
Jul 12

Independence Day

We let freedom ring on the bikes this morning. Snuck in a quick 30 miles (legs felt great) and made it home precisely at noon, which was conveniently when the sun remembered it was being sponsored by the month of July. Had watermelon for lunch.

We drove to Montgomery for ribs at Dreamland, as is our tradition. Our waiter was an immigrant who talked fast and moved a little slower. We sat outside in the shade, shooed away flies and enjoyed barbecue and banana pudding. We heard country songs next to blues next to Texas blues next to Edgar Winter. I’m no longer sure how to categorize Winter, so let’s make him his own genre. The Founders would have wanted it that way.

We made it back home in time to make it to the high school football stadium for the local fireworks show. Found a spot on the shoulder of the road that fit the car perfectly. We pulled the lawn chairs out of the trunk, where they’ve rested since the fireworks last night and craned our necks into the night, enjoying a peaceful half an hour before the first sparks were flung into the sky.

Here’s tonight’s finale:

The conclusion seemed a bit sudden, in a way, but then a firetruck which had been parked near the launch site suddenly bolted for some emergency somewhere. And it has been very, very dry here, despite a bit of rain yesterday, so we found ourselves hoping there wasn’t a problem with the pyro. I don’t think you could pay enough to cover the antacids for the fireworks engineers. Always a crowd, always in a drought, no thanks.

But the show was great. Kids were playing. Little boys and girls oohed and aahed. The weather was divinely perfect. Everything was.

Hope yours was great as well.

Happy Independence Day!

adventures / family / food / iPhone / memories / Wednesday — 2 Comments
4
Jul 12

Seven Fourths

You have them, we have them. Our Fourth of July tradition involves going to Dreamland, which we visited in Montgomery this evening, enjoying some ribs and pudding and then settling in for an evening of fireworks. So this is a running quilt of summer memories, reading left to right, from top to bottom.

Happy Fourth of July. Hope yours is as good as mine.

adventures / Auburn / cycling / iPhone / memories / photo / Tumblr / Twitter / Wednesday — Comments Off
27
Jun 12

Picture filler

Just working on work things today, writing a bit. Forgive me if there isn’t much here.

Here are some leftover pictures from the Art Walk held downtown a few weeks ago. You’ll remember, if you follow that link, that one full block of Magnolia turned into a road of kids young and old writing in the street.

There’s a crosswalk in the middle, and a couple of young adults claimed that area as their own. They were insistent that you see their art in the right order. This was very important, in the way that art must be explained. So I am sharing the crosswalk art in the proper order.

Nice sentiment, as far as it goes:

Rode 30 miles this evening, up and out through the neighborhood and over the side of one of the big hills, marveling at my dead legs. Then down the hill, reveling in gravity, and turned around to go back up the hill, looking for my legs.

I circled part of the bypass, and then up one of the false flats, past the airport, over the interstate and back into our part of town.

The local cycling club has a time trial course nearby, a road we ride frequently. But now I’m trying to ride the entire thing with time in mind. Today was the second attempt at that, which was not as good as the first. Mostly I’m slow, but also I found myself concentrating so much on breathing I messed up the math involved in timing myself. So I gave in a bit early, feeling defeated when my previous time clicked by just before I made it to the finish of the time trial. I’m just riding against myself here, so there’s no real shame in exhaustion and bad math.

Mostly, though, this ride was not as good as my first attempt because I’m slow.

RIding at a tongue wagging, eye bulging, rib ragged way has a lot upside, the best being that you seem to breathe so much better afterward. After, that is, you can breathe again. And so I doubled up on the course, back down half the time trial course, over that same hill from earlier and sped through a subdivision, chasing an SUV in a sprint I wish I had in that time trial — sometimes the great challenge is putting it all together at the right time, that’s why I keep coming back to this I guess. Finally into some nice downhills. That’s a great end to the route, helping satisfy my last goal of any ride: make it back into the house without sounding like I’m hypoxic.

Such a simple thing, two wheels and respiration. Everything in between needs improvement, though.

But there’s always that next ride. Always the chance to have a great kick up a hill. Always that voice in the back of the helmet: smile when it hurts. Especially when you’re in the middle of the road.

Thanks for stopping by. Come back tomorrow for … something. In the meantime, check out the Tumblr page, where a new picture landed today. And the Twitter account, which had a lot of good reading today. And none of it was filler.