collarbone « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

collarbone

Clever title to come

Hey, did you notice? I updated all the photo galleries! I changed the font on the blog! And I added new banners to the top and bottom of this page! There are 36 headers and footers now. Refresh to see them all!

I also changed the site’s links to a server side include system. And I’ve tinkered with some other ideas too. These are productive times.

Rode a few miles on the bike. Not very many because I am still sore. Maybe someone will say differently, but there is a difference in suffering and hurting on a bicycle. I don’t mind the legs and the lungs and the feet and the seat. But my neck — which is connected to my collarbone and shoulder — that hurts. It is something about the necessary posture of cycling and whatever related muscular problems I’m enjoying.

Can’t even stay on the bike long enough yet to suffer, a point of honor when it comes to a bicycle, so I take it easy. Which is a good thing since my fitness is presently lousy.

So I did a little work on a paper, I cleaned out an inbox and made a lot of recruiting phone calls, talking to high school students who are looking for their college. I get the chance to talk up Samford, our journalism and broadcast and public relations programs, the student media, the new MBA program and more. Lots of good fun.

Had a long dinner at an Irish place with a friend, we talked sports and the rodeo and cannons, which just capped off a fine day.

Good thing, since tomorrow will be a lot like it.

Also, Justified, Justified, Justified:

collarbone / cycling / iPhone / photo / site / weekend — Comments Off
5
Jan 13

Return to the saddle once more

Wake up!

Your time of slumber is over, Cateye and Felt. I have many, many miles to start adding back into my routine. And today is the day that slowly starts. Today is my first day on the road since the crash and the subsequent surgery.

Looking back on those helmet photographs in the crash post makes me queasy. Thinking about how that lousy ER wasn’t concerned at all about my head just makes me angry.

Time marches on and now I can pedal on. I have a new tire on my bike, a Gatorskin. Everything is tuned up. I put on a pair of bibs for the first time since June — I’ve been riding the stationary in normal lycra. The bib strap goes right over my collarbone, which I hadn’t even considered, and that was the first thing that came to mind when I pulled on the straps.

Put on a jersey, threw on my new cycling jacket — a lovely Christmas gift this year. Filled the water bottles, put on the bike shoes, noted I was missing a glove and searched that out. Filled the tires with air. Put on my new helmet, which was a gift from my mother not too long after I crashed. Matches my bike almost perfectly and was a great way to inspire. I’ve thought a lot about that new helmet while recovering.

Walked the bike outside. Felt a bit anxious about it. I told The Yankee, right about here:

I don’t normally get too worked up about things, but there are questions. Will I remember how to balance? Can I clip out of the pedals without embarrassing myself? Can I manage to stay upright? What happens the first time I really I have to lean into the handlebars? Will the shifting still make sense? What will I do when I see debris in the road?

That’s what caused the accident, after all.

Turns out, as she said when I clipped in, it is just like riding a bike. So I stood over the frame and smiled and pedaled off to the road behind our house, where I start to warm my legs.

There was a lot of energy in my legs today, but my lungs felt impressively shriveled. That’s OK though. This was just a refresher ride. I have to figure out how it all feels and what I can hold up to. I’m a long way from doing real miles, and that’s sad and —

Ow. My neck is stiff. I’ll blame forgetting the cycling posture. But I did a little warmup ride. I had to climb one little hill. I felt gassed, but not terribly embarrassed should anyone see me. I’ve got a great scar I can use as an excuse and this is just day one.

So a few weeks, I said, of just getting everything back under me. And then I can think about miles and fitness. But I’m riding again.

Riding again.

collarbone / cycling / iPhone / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
2
Jan 13

I actually thought about making a montage

I opened a box that was delivered sometime in September. Inside was a new Gatorskin for my bicycle. So I flipped the frame, pulled on the rear quick release, spun the tire out of the chain and dug for a tire lever.

I have red tire levers, and they get a bit grimy because everything about my bike seems to get dirty. There’s a smear of grease on the hook that got there who knows how. There are nice deep grooves in the plastic at the hook from sliding around the frame, pulling the bead and freeing the tube.

I did all of that today, too. I took out this massive looking Gatorskin and wrapped it around the back wheel. That wheel has been sporting a trainer tire — which has no tread and is designed to spin on a silver drum — since my big crash. Since it is time to ride again the trainer came off. The new Gatorskin, designed to defeat pebbles and glass and things, went on.

I haven’t changed a tire in months, but it comes back to you. Just like, well, you know.

So I put the tube in the tire and mount it all to the wheel. Pick up the chain, set the wheel into the forkend, wedge it through the brakes and double check the chain. All of this felt like a bad sports montage in a Disney movie, the kind where the character is on the way to a significant personal achievement.

Spin the wheel and we’re one step closer to riding again.

Spin the wheel and notice an unusual noise.

After a bit I notice the chain is rubbing on the derailleur. This is peculiar. More work, examining other derailleurs in the house, a furrowing of the brow. Some online research, which was unusually unhelpful. A big, long sigh.

I have to go to the local bike shop, where we can all laugh at my simple questions. Load up the car, drive over there:

Of course.

Cycling insists on teaching me patience.

collarbone / iPhone / memories / Samford / Thursday — Comments Off
29
Nov 12

Much better then

The mind and body are amazing things, really. I complained yesterday, a day when I felt as bad as have since, I dunno, let’s call it the end of August. There have been a few other unfortunate days as I recovered from the crash and the helmet and the medication and the surgery and more medication. Yesterday was high up on the list of lowlights. My mood was off; I hurt. It was generally lousy.

I woke up today a new guy, which is to say, like myself again.

This is important because it remins me how I should feel. For the first time since July I felt like myself again. There I was tapping out miles in Orange Beach and now here I am, finally, me again. In between I’ve just been a fraction of myself, perhaps.

The amazing thing, the mind-and-body-are-amazing-things part, is that it took feeling so much more like myself today to realize how far off I’ve been since July. You have an accident and get acclimated to your new condition so quickly, subtly, that you just accept that this is how you are and forget how you are supposed to, in fact, actually feel.

I still hurt some, mind you. That’s improving on its own slow schedule. I finally learned how to not overdo it. I still have painkillers, but they stay in the medicine cabinet and I don’t have that foggy miserable feeling that I’ve come to associate with modern chemistry.

All of this sounds pitiful, but I mean it to say I feel like me again. And while I can’t move furniture or anything just yet — maybe next year — my discomfort doesn’t dictate every thing I do now. Just some of the things. Most important, I feel like myself again.

Samford is getting ready for the Hanging of the Green and the Lighting of the Way. This marks the beginning of the Christmas season here. The tree in Reid Chapel will be decorated. Garlands will be displayed. There will be hymns and prayers and carols. It is beautiful, really.

And then everyone will go out into the crisp night air for a message from the university’s president, more carols, a concert, Silent Night and then then, in the dark, the Christmas lights will come alive, the Lighting of the Way.

Prior to that, just lots of luminaries:

When you go into Reid Chapel there are just the little white bags. During the Hanging of the Green every one of these on the long quad will be lit. Whoever does that knows how to hustle. There are hundreds of them:

And then everyone goes back to studying, or home, or into Harry’s for hot chocolate. Finals are coming up fast.

collarbone / iPhone / movies / music / photo / Samford / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
28
Nov 12

Where I complain about feeling bad, and also, Meat Loaf

I worked with students. I had a critique meeting with the newspaper staff. We discussed how we managed to leave an entire question, ‘Why?’ out of a story.

But at least we managed to reference something from 1939 in that piece which didn’t really matter much at all to the story today. Z has now happened, which was a logical conclusion of X, which brought about Y. And now here’s a tale of B, C and D.

That’s the way of it sometimes.

I told one funny story. I worked on this for much of the afternoon:

I had a headache and various other aches. This hurt and that hurt and my shoulder was bothering me for no reason at all and my collar bone was weird and on and on. Pretty rough for most of the day. By the evening I was in a foul mood of my own creation and for no good or real reason.

So I watched Memorial Day, which was what a movie that’s not trying to be a movie might look like.

This is interesting. Here is the trailer from the movie’s distributor:

And here is the trailer, YouTube says, “From the actual filmmakers. Not the distributors.”

I wonder what brought that on. Which of these movies would you rather see?

If you like the Cromwells, this movie is worth seeing. Everyone else is just holding serve, but that’s OK. When your film is about a flashback within a flashback the leads are running the show anyway.

I watched the Jackson Browne DVD, Going Home, but it didn’t fit my mood.

So I soothed myself with Meat Loaf:

Tomorrow will be better. Has to be more delightful than this one.