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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.

Auburn / cycling / Friday / iPhone / photo — Comments Off
4
Jan 13

Restaurants, sunsets and the bike shop

We had lunch at Chick-fil-A, which was thoroughly uneventful. We were there because another place in town, where we have tried to visit now on consecutive days, was closed.

Big Blue Bagel, downtown, had a message on their white board yesterday. “Closed for the holidays.” It noted they would re-open on Jan. 3rd. Which was yesterday. I checked. But they were closed.

That’s one way to run a business.

So we visited for lunch today. Closed. The white board had a breakfast special, so someone had been there. Now the place was locked up tight.

There are no hours on the door. No hours on the website. That’s one way to run a business. One of the review sites says they are open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Maybe they are not open in between.

Oh look, they are for sale. And use frames! That’s one way to run a website.

So Big Blue Bagel has now officially broken Smith’s First Law: Don’t make it hard for me to spend my money with you.

I was on the fence about the entire thing, but then I read the reviews on the review sites. They get fairly well panned, which strikes me as a bit difficult to do in a college town. C’est la bagel.

Visited the library. Did library things. Got ran out of the library, because they close the library at 5 p.m. “You don’t need learnin’ that bad, boy.”

That’s OK. We walked out to see this:

We have some of the best sunsets in the world here. I’m biased, I’m sure, but I realized that in undergrad and I haven’t been any place that consistently shows off enough to change my mind since then. Tonight’s wasn’t even trying hard, and I couldn’t get into position for the big finale fast enough, but the sky is just gorgeous.

Orange and blue and all that. Pollutants hanging over Montgomery 50 miles to the west help too.

Picked up my bike. Everyone was in the shop this evening. My derailleurs have been adjusted. Almost everything works again. I can fix the last little bit myself, because I know how to Google this part.

If you know the right nomenclature you can fix most anything yourself these days. If you have the proper tools.

Spoke with the owner about the proper tools. Bicycle maintenance has an improbable amount of specialty equipment — turns out you can’t make every change with a crescent wrench — for most of us this is daunting and unrealistic. I expressed my interest in knowing more.

I’d like to appreciate the art of maintenance a bit. And are there classes for this sort of thing? I don’t want to be a guy who tears down the bike and greases the ball bearings, but I also don’t want to be the guy in the shop every two months with the next thing I should be able to do on my own. It seems counter-intuitive, I know, like that’s asking you to take money out of your pocket, but …

There are classes. He told me about a great one in Colorado, if I’m ever out that way. And he said he’d be happy to teach me more. Make a list of things you’d like to know, he said. We can haggle over rates for a private lesson, he said, using the modules this class in Colorado uses. It wouldn’t be just turning a wrench. This was an important point he wanted to make. This won’t just be “turn wrench here” stuff.

After all these years in school a few hours learning about spoke tension doesn’t bother me too much.

Now I just need to make a list of things I’d like to learn. And ride.

That’s tomorrow.

cycling / movies / Thursday / video — Comments Off
3
Jan 13

Escaping goblins to be caught by wolves!

Saw The Hobbit:

Those are two different trailers. I just saved you the better part of three hours.

People say nothing happened in this movie. I don’t see how they can say that. There was a song. We met particularly stupid trolls. The dwarves were chased by orcs, just like our LOTR heroes. They met a particularly conversational goblin king. And then they were chased by hordes of goblins, just like in LOTR.

There was a curiously coincidental bad weather on a LOTR mountain pass scene. Gollum in a cave seemed familiar. A hobbit had pity on a bipolar monster.

See? Stuff happened. Very familiar stuff.

I found myself thinking “If Bilbo hadn’t listened so intently to Gandalf’s advice about the courage of sparing a life then Frodo wouldn’t lose his finger 60 years later.”

Come to think of it, Gandalf had a few lines that were only barely recycled, too.

I get that it was aimed at a different audience. I didn’t mind that. I get that it was a physical comedy. I like that, and it seems the dwarves have to be that way. Shame there weren’t more women in it, though, but at least there was Cate Blanchett.

It is an incredibly bloodthirsty movie, but without a lot of blood. It had very familar and, thus, simple themes. Let us all admit that prequels (and for our purposes this is a prequel) will never be what you want them to be, but there’s plenty to work with for the movie’s needs. It also has Martin Freeman, who is wonderful, and Benedict Cumberbatch will do voice work in the next movie.

It also addressed, in part, the biggest thematic problem from the LOTR trilogy. Those hawks could be far more helpful if they really wanted to be. You could make the movie a half-hour shorter with less walking, but you want to see all those landscapes. And you hope they are real places and not just CGI. It is all visually appealing.

Those hawks, though, they could be more useful. Or they could eat you. They are predators, and the only thing they’d need to be is bigger. The middle earth version is certainly capable.

Dropped off my bike at the LBS. There is a derailleur problem and they can fix it. Things are slow, said the guy we want to like, but there’s something about his smile, and I can probably have it back in 24 to 48 hours.

Maybe it is that he says things like “24 to 48 hours.” He has been incredibly helpful, but you also get the sense that yours is a dumb question, or that you might be taking him away from some important bike shop task. That’s unfair, of course. He does a lot of good work on a lot of people’s expensive equipment, and occasionally some fine work on my much cheaper bike.

I’d hoped the owner would be there. He’ll stop everything to teach you something about your chain or silicone. And I have a lot to learn. Clearly, this one little thing yesterday and today stumped me. Maybe, in 24 to 48 hours when I can pick up my bike, he’ll be there so I can ask him questions.

And then, we ride.

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.

adventures / collarbone / cycling / family / Friday / iPhone / video — 1 Comment
16
Nov 12

And now a medical update

I once sat in a doctor’s office while everyone went to lunch. Seems everyone thought someone else had dismissed me. Boy were they embarassed!

It went back to the orthopedic surgeon for a checkup on my collarbone today. I waited for 45 minutes, most of it in the exam room.

And so I read things. Caught up on Twitter, skimmed some emails and so on. If you think about it too much it feels like you’ve been forgotten in the examination room. Fortunately there is that one painting, that one miserable print, for you to contemplate. That’s the one way they’ve left you to pass the time.*

I shot, edited and produced this little video while waiting on the doctor. Still had time to spare. If I’d known I had this kind of time I would have re-shot this to steady it up somehow. I would have brought in a tripod from the car. That wouldn’t have looked odd at all.

They took an X-ray. The doctor spent about five minutes with me. Showed me the X-ray. He pronounced my bones as healing nicely. He said the six screws are hexadecimals. I’ll be sure to pack a hexa-multitool if I ever want to do self-maintenance.

He blew off my muscle spasm issues. I could write paragraphs about them. They are in my left back and shoulder, in the teres minor/infraspinatus facia area. Sometimes it reaches all the way across to the right shoulder. Once or twice it has gotten into my neck. Two weekends ago it somehow got in my head. There is not much up there, but certainly no muscle! I wish this experience on no one.

I blame too much time in the car and not understanding how little exertion I can actually perform. It should seem, though, that after this many months muscle spasms would get better. The doctor has alternately told me six months or a year or Christmas, depending on his mood. A family friend promises this will continue on for some time. These are not the prognoses for which I am looking.

Also, as my mother reminds me: I am not under 30 anymore.

Anyway, the X-rays look good. The doctor says the bones are healing nicely. The heavy wet wool blanket feeling on the front and top of my shoulder has improved recently. I’m pleased with the collarbone.

Nearly — and sometimes entirely debilitating — muscle spasms are a drag. Don’t fall off your bike, kids.

*Also the doctor’s stool on which you can perform wheelies.

For dinner The Yankee and I celebrated with Cheeburger Cheeburger. We read each other trivia questions over our cheeseburgers, laughing and giggling and surely making The Yankee’s student, who was dining a few tables away, think we were perfectly silly.

We walked up the block, where the city had blocked off one of the roads for a downtown festive event. A band was playing. People were dancing, mostly the older folks. All the college kids have skipped town for Thanksgiving, so a special town feels no less special, but a bit less vibrant. It is a great place to be, and so we walked on the sidewalks on a cool November night, looking to harass friends that we might run into.

Finally we walked through one of the town’s two alleys, found the car and headed home. We’re going to watch movies all night. Great night.