Post-Op.

We were at the University of Iowa's awesome hospital bright and early Friday morning, and by 9 am The Daughter was on her way to pre-op. For the next four or five hours we hung around the waiting room and conveniently located Java House downstairs, both of which had wireless internet access. When we finally went in to see her after recovery I was surprised how good she looked. I guess you get better with this post-op stuff with practice. She was taken to her room right away where they started pumping her full of morphine. Actually they just *thought* they were pumping her full of antibiotic. As it turned out, the nurse had screwed up and for the first hour or so they were just pumping fluids into her forearm tissue because she'd missed the vein entirely. That was easy to see because her arm and hand swelled up to about twice their normal size and were getting really painful. So we got that fixed and with the nerve block was still in effect and some extra morphine she was pretty much out for the count last night.

Back at her apartment, she has a little miniature pincher puppy for which the term hyperactive doesn't even scratch the surface. This little dog practically bounces off the walls. He also like to piss on the couch precisely in the locations where I'm about to sit. So I ended up doing laundry last night.

By early morning the nerve block was finally starting to wear off and the pain was ramping up, but anyway she was back home before noon along with a neat space-age electronic "Game Ready" ice pack machine.

As for myself, the ribs seem to be hurting even more, probably from lugging around my messenger bag and computer all day yesterday, while the collarbone seems to be hurting much less. I finally got on the trainer for another hour this evening. I swear, the dripping sweat and all really distract me from actually riding the damned thing. I can't wait to get back on the road.

Far Away

Wednesday we took a little drive, and fourteen hours later we found ourselves far away in Hawkeye country. Other than a near-death experience in Jackson caused by a flooded section of Interstate highway and a raging thunderstorm that left numerous spun-out cars in the roadside ditches, the drive was quite smooth. The Daughter is having some reconstructive knee surgery tomorrow morning up here in Iowa City, so we're here for a few days to help get her through the first week. I was glad that the ribs and collarbone didn't bother me too much during the drive, although as usual I arrived feeling kind of dragged-out. Funny how driving will do that.

So this afternoon I took The Daughter's trainer outside into the cool, dry Iowa air, and spent an hour or so riding, mostly with a cloud of little gnats swarming around my face. It always surprises me how sweat actually evaporates up here. Even the drops that fell onto the concrete dried up before they could form the little puddles that I always get back home. We did spend a little time at the local bike shop, Geoff's Bike and Ski. It's a pretty nice little shop - lots of Specialized stuff, of course, but also a few Orbeas and other interesting bikes, along with things like snowboards. In NOLA, we have Bike and Lawn Mower shops. Here they have Bike and Ski shops. I never cared much about lawn mowers, but I think I could get into skis.

As for tomorrow, we'll be at the hospital for 7 am, and they'll almost certainly keep her overnight following the surgery, so we'll just have to play it by ear for the next couple of days.

Making Progress

So I spent Sunday and most of Monday doing pretty much nothing, unless you count trying to grow new bone as something. It wasn't that there wasn't anything to do, either. I would have liked to make it over to the Bayou Boogaloo on Saturday, which would have involved a visit to Bayou Bicycles, but I reluctantly had to pass. The problem was that it was classic summer weather, which is to say that it was oppressively hot and unbearably humid for normal folks. Not being particularly normal, that wouldn't ordinarily have stopped me, but I have recently learned that staying out in the summer heat while wearing a Velcro vest is just plain miserable. Add to that the fact that I would have had to drive the car to something that I would ordinarily ride a bike to, and it was just too much. So I languished on the couch watching the Star Trek marathon on TV, eating oatmeal cookies, listening to the drone of the air-conditioner and looking forlornly out the window. I did take a short "work break" to replace the broken spring hinges on the porch screen door, but that was about it.

I had a followup appointment with the orthopedist at TISM Monday afternoon, and the news was fairly encouraging. The collarbone is making progress and coming along nicely. I really wish I'd brought the camera so I could have gotten a shot of the new improved x-ray. It looks like surgery will definitely be avoided and I was told I could start "weaning" myself off of the brace I've been wearing for the last three weeks. As long as I don't do anything stupid, like fall off of a bike, I can start ramping up the use of that arm and shoulder as much as my pain tolerance permits, which right now is just a little bit below the top of my head. I even got a reasonable amount of sleep last night despite the broken ribs that hurt every time I lie down. In fact, this morning I even rode the trainer for an hour without the brace, which made it a whole lot cooler. I guess it would be more accurate to say it was a lot less incredibly hot, because somehow the word "cool" doesn't quite apply here. It was still plenty boring and not entirely pain-free, but it was a significantly cooler kind of boring. Anyway, the timing is working out pretty well because I will be driving up to Iowa City again on Thursday. The Daughter is having some fairly major knee surgery on Friday, so we're going up there for about a week, and yes I'm bringing my bike. At the very least, I should be able to use her trainer, since it's a given that she won't be needing it until she gets into rehab mode. I might even try a little spin around the neighborhood if everything feels OK just to see if I can still ride a bike. They say you never forget..... We'll see. The weekend after I get back I plan on going up to Natchez to help officiate the LAMBRA Road Championships since our head official, Shane, won't be able to make it this year.

The Tour de Louisiane is coming up quickly too, and we've had a flurry of emails this morning about those plans. Keith is trying for a slightly modified criterium course that would start and finish at the new Covington Tammany Trace Trailhead (conveniently located across the street from a microbrewery, I think). Of course, much will depend on Covington city officials, but if we can get it, we'll have improved road surfaces for most, if not all, of the course. BTW, if you look at the little video slide show on the Covington website you'll see a shot from the Tour de La criterium. Anyway, I have work to do and my collarbone is achy, so peace out, y'all.

Little Italian Guy on a Colnago

Slept rather badly last night. Perhaps it was the extra wine I had after (and during) dinner at Café Degas. So I woke up early and after considering the cost-benefit ratio involved in lifting myself out of bed, I went for it and got up. Eventually I found my way down to the basement with the laptop and spun the pedals for half an hour before the live Giro d' Italia coverage started on Cyclingfans.com. An hour later, dripping wet with sweat, I climbed off and settled in to see if the little Italian guy on the pretty Colnago would make it to the finish of the day's hilly stage without being caught. I have to admit, I tend to identify with those 120 pound Italian climbers like Sella. If only those carbon Colnagos were actually made in Italy. Sadly, that was about the high point of my day. The rest consisted of a drive to Baton Rouge to patch up the door of The Wife's mothers house that's been vacant for a few years now and had been broken into. With no electricity, it was a pretty lousy fix and I made The Wife promise she wouldn't tell anyone who had done it! By the time I was done my collarbone was achy, I was soaked with sweat, it was 4 pm and I was hungry.

So a bunch of the club guys are going to ride the Tour de La road race course tomorrow and I'm feeling really deprived about it. Why do these bones take so long to heal? On my way back from Baton Rouge I got a call from Kenny B. who said that the Herring guys were having a lot of bad luck up in ATL. First, the motor home they were driving up there broke down. There have been a number of crashes, and today Kenny crashed and broke his frame. Sounds like he didn't break any bones, at least. Frank and Bain also crashed. Bain crashed twice, once on his bike and once on Woody's bike, and ended up finishing on Frank's bike. Gina V. crashed today in DC. Seems like she just recovered from a bad crash a few weeks ago where she banged up her hip. What is it with all these crashes lately? I mean, we've had four broken collarbones/ shoulders this year just in our little club. That's decidedly odd. Oh well. Tomorrow is another day.....

Spinning My Wheels

Today is "Tulane Day" at the state capitol in Baton Rouge, a little three-ring circus that our office annually coordinates. While three or four separate groups from Tulane travel around to pre-arranged meetings with state legislators to talk about all the great things their projects are doing for the State, the atrium (aka "the rotunda") of the capitol building is decorated with blue and green as specially selected Tulane centers and collaborative projects set up displays aimed at highlighting the university's activities, at least those that relate directly to the state. It's actually a pretty good event that hopefully counterbalances the myth that Tulane is some kind of rich kid ivy league island that's disconnected from reality. We've done so much community work over the last few years that it's very difficult to decide which ones to highlight.


At 5:45 am I braced myself, gritted my teeth, and with a loud groan lifted my broken bones out of bed. Damn, those ribs make it hard to get out of bed! Changing into a pair of riding shorts and mismatched full-zip jersey (I have a new found fondness for full-zip jerseys, by the way) I headed down to the basement. As I've done the last couple of mornings, I put in an hour on the trainer spinning my wheels and going nowhere. I still can't really bring myself to push very hard, or for that matter put my hands any lower than the elbow pads of the clip-ons. The velcro wrapped around my lungs, not to mention the broken ribs, makes it hard to breathe deeply, and of course wearing a big velcro vest doesn't do anything good for your ability to stay cool, especially while on a stationary trainer. At any rate, I figure it's better than nothing. Still, by the time 50 minutes has passed I'm looking at my watch constantly, wondering how time can possibly be passing so slowly. Considering the relatively easy pace at which I'm riding, it's surprising to see a little puddle of sweat on the floor.


So up in Baton Rouge we unloaded a couple of cases of green apples, each wrapped in cellophane and tied with a green ribbon. They, along with 144 informational folders that we'd assembled the day before, were delivered to the appropriate offices so that they could be placed on the members' desks in the House and Senate chambers. Other than that, I basically spent four or five hours spinning my wheels wandering around the Rotunda, bored and with little to do. By 3:30 the collarbone was starting to ache, so I was glad I'd already decided to skip the 6 p.m. reception at the Governor's Mansion. Ordinarily I'd never miss something like that, but under the circumstances I just knew I'd be uncomfortable the whole time anyway. So I made the 90-minute drive back home and promptly poured myself a glass of cold Rogue Mocha Porter. Everything was better after that.....

Home Early

Didn't ride the trainer this morning. I guess maybe I didn't sleep too well last night, considering that I fell asleep on the couch and didn't force myself to switch over to the bed until around 3:00 a.m. I had decided on Sunday to see how it would go without the pain-killers, so I'd taken only a couple of Tylenol all day. I learned a few things from that experiment. The first was that the medicine works pretty well. The other was that by far the most pain I was having was coming from a few ribs in my back rather than the broken clavicle. By evening I was quite certain that I did indeed have a broken rib, which I'd been suspecting for a while. The thing that really convinced me of that was an unexpected sneeze. Yeouch! So anyway, after dinner I took half of a Lorcet. Lessons learned. I ended up ordering a couple of cycling movies (The Hard Road and Pro) to play on my laptop while I'm on the trainer. Apparently I become something of a spendthrift when I'm using narcotics, even at low doses!

I find that I'm very grumpy when I don't ride in the morning. To make matters worse, when I got to work this morning, while the levee ride was probably still somewhere in Jefferson Parish, I discovered that Tulane's entire Ethernet was down. No email, no web, no network connectivity at all. I put in a call to the help desk and it sounded like they were still in detective mode trying to figure out what had melted down, so I went to Plan B, which was to use my fax line to dial-up to my Bellsouth (aka AT&T) account. Problem was, it didn't like my password. So after calling their tech services guys, I got my password reset and at least I had Internet access. I'd almost forgotten how slow dial-up could be. At least it was a rest day for the Giro d' Italia, so I didn't miss the live video of the race. Once again, I have to hand it to the BellSouth tech guys, they were quick, knowledgable, spoke English, and this one was actually located in New Orleans too. Class act. So I survived on dial-up until the university system got going again, which wasn't until around 11:00. I was told that it had been a firewall issue at the hospital, which doesn't make much sense to me, but whatever...

So this afternoon I had an appointment with the orthopedist for 3:00 which of course conflicted a bit with a 2:00 conference call that I had to skip out on at 2:30. They took the usual couple of x-rays, and when we met I explained that I thought I had a broken rib because it hurt more than the clavicle. So the doctor finally took a look at the full chest x-ray and came back quite excited to have found not one, but three broken ribs. Whoohooo! Of course at that point I wasn't surprised and besides, there's nothing to be done about that, which I knew already, except to get used to the pain for a few extra weeks. The clavicle, on the other hand, is apparently doing pretty much what we wanted and things are progressing as planned, so I'll likely be in this brace for another week or two before I can graduate to a different one. The appointment went pretty quickly and we didn't have to wait around hardly at all, but even so it was nearly 4 pm when we left, so there was no point in fighting traffic to get back to the office just to have to turn around and come home, so I got home early today. Maybe I'll spend a little time on the trainer this evening. One can hope.....

On the Shoulder

It was around 9 pm Saturday night when I picked up the phone and called Ed N. We'd just returned from a nice dinner at Vizard's, a small restaurant that recently relocated from St. Charles Ave. to Magazine Street. It was a little crowded and the food took a long time to arrive, but it was really good. I'd been kicking around the idea of going up to Baton Rouge to help out with the Raising Cane's time trial and I figured Ed was a good bet for a ride. Sure enough, he had an empty seat in his borrowed Cadillac SUV (his trusty BMW's transmission recently bit the dust), so he picked me up around 6:30 Sunday morning for the drive up to Baton Rouge.

Turnout for the time trial was typical for this low-key event and I made myself useful helping with registration and we finally got things rolling about fifteen minutes late. There was some sort of blowup by New Orleans rider Jay J. where he demanded his entry fee back and took off. I haven't the faintest idea what that was all about but it seemed a little over the top for this sort of thing. Anyway, with only one fully functioning arm, I got number-caller duty for the start. Once everyone was off, I wandered over to the finish line about a quarter mile away where I walked upstream a hundred yards or so and spent the next hour or so standing on the shoulder of the road calling out rider numbers with the megaphone as they went by.

Afterwards I scarfed down some Raising Cane's chicken and a bit of Cabernet provided by the promoter as we waited for Shane to finish up the results. Ed had to get back sooner rather than later, so once the preliminary overall listing was posted, we headed back to NOLA. That was pretty much my day today. The collarbone is still hurting and I'm just generally uncomfortable anyway. By the time I got home I had a dull headache so I spent the rest of the day eating comfort food, which didn't really help much. Guess I'll spend some time on the trainer tomorrow. Can't wait.....

Who Cares?

The streets were wet this morning at 5:45 am, and the forecast last night had sounded pretty bleak. Out of habit I checked the radar. Three different warnings at the same time. Awesome. Then I thought, "Who cares? I wouldn't have been able to ride anyway."

The weather down in the basement wasn't a whole lot better. There was a steady headwind blowing at fan setting #2, and by the end of the 45 minutes I spent on the trainer even that proved to be entirely inadequate. Definitely going to Level 3 on the fan tomorrow! maybe I'll eventually drag the whole thing upstairs and do my rides in front of the a/c. This brace thing is getting really old. Maybe that's partly because I've been cutting down on the meds again, though. Anyway, 45 minutes on a stationary trainer is pure torture for me, brace or no brace. I don't know if it's more from the boredom or the overheated sweat dripping off my face, but I've never been able to understand how people can do this on a regular basis. And I'm still not pushing very hard at all. Most of the time I'm riding with my hands on top of the elbow pads of the clip-ons and the rest of the time I'm sitting straight up. The collarbone and shoulder doesn't hurt much in either position, but getting from one to the other usually does. I can feel the stiffness in my left arm, including the elbow, no doubt caused by my reluctance to move it very much. Every now and then I think about it and move it around a bit but I guess all that will need to be worked out later in the torture chamber, aka Physical Therapy. I wonder who's going up to Baton Rouge on Saturday for the Time Trial. Maybe I can hitch a ride and lend a hand -- just the right one, of course.

Ouch!

In the passenger seat of the Volvo my right hand clenched with white knuckles the handhold. I've never been particularly comfortable in the passenger seat, and it always seems worse when The Wife is driving, especially when we're running late. I tried to divert my eyes from the road, yet still struggled to relax my death grip on the handhold. Each jolting acceleration, every sharp turn, and all of the bumps and potholes reminded me of the reason for this particular mid-afternoon journey -- a visit to the doctor to check up on The Clavicle.

As I expected, the first order of business was another x-ray photo shoot. I stood this way and that as the radiologist, positioned safely away from the ionizing radiation zipping through my shoulder, directed the poses. For the last, she casually said, "now raise your left arm up over your head for this one." I looked at her to see if she was serious. She was. "OK, I'll try. Just give me a minute," I said. Ouch! Slowly and painfully I got it up where she wanted it. I sure hope it was worth it. The resident (or med student?) came in and asked me the usual questions. Toward the end he flipped through the folder and said something about my earlier knee surgery. I informed him that my knees were fine and that perhaps they had pulled my daughter's file by mistake. He looked confused for a moment and then figured out that they had put some entirely random patient's knee surgery stuff into my folder. Sheesh. Ample enough reason right there to make the extra effort to avoid surgery! Eventually the orthopedist came in, having looked at the x-rays, and said it was looking pretty good but it wasn't quite "there" yet. I asked some questions about the brace - how tight it should be, how exactly the clavicle strap should be positioned, etc. He said it was basically a 2-person job, and as he fiddled with the Velcro he had the other doctor pull back on my shoulder while he cinched down on the strap. Ouch again! I think I saw The Wife smile with gleeful anticipation. I made an immediate decision to, at least temporarily, go back to the full dose of Lorcet Plus at the next opportunity. On the plus side, he wants to stick with this plan of attack in order to avoid surgery, and he said it should be OK for me to ride the trainer.

This morning as the 6:15 alarm went off on my Timex Ironman and the Tuesday levee ride got underway, I was already on the bike down in the basement riding slowly into the steady breeze of a box fan and listening to the drone of the stationary trainer's plastic fans. I had rescued this particular folding trainer from the garbage pile in front of someone's house a few years back, and although it had been partially submerged during the Katrina flooding the bearings still seemed smooth so I hung onto it for just this sort of occasion.

The newly tightened brace that engulfs my chest and left shoulder was restrictive enough that I never even tried to get down on the elbow pads of the clip-on aero bars, but I was glad I'd bolted them on because it allowed for a higher hand position that worked out fairly well. I spun the trainer for about 45 minutes at a fairly low effort level, and in spite of my underlying hatred for the contraption and the extra heat and constriction caused by my Velcro overcoat, it felt good to have the legs moving again. I guess I'll get the trainer set up semi-permanently down there so I can maybe watch the morning news on the tiny little portable TV or listen to the radio to minimize the monotony of riding a bike that's going nowhere.

So here I am at work, having just taken another pill. After a fairly productive and caffeine-assisted morning I am starting to feel a little depleted. The Lorcet definitely makes me want to zone out, and after four or five hours in front of the monitor I find my eyes becoming more and more reluctant to focus. I think it's nap time.

Fun Meter Reading Low

It was a long weekend. Really long. Really long with not much to show for it. Chip P. stopped by to pick up the Orbea. He routinely drives up I-55 and offered to drop it off at Frank's place so he can re-glue the chainstay that pulled loose in the crash last week. Wish he could do that with my collarbone, because this thing still hurts. On Sunday I started cutting down on the hydrocodone while maintaining the acetaminophen dosage so I'm not quite so loopy and drowsy. I can still tell rather acutely when the pain medicine levels start to drop, though. I have conculded through rigorous experimentation that the addition of a glass of wine at around 8 pm is of considerable pharmacological benefit. My liver, no doubt, has been working overtime even if I haven't. I have an appointment at the sports med clinic this afternoon, so I guess we'll see where this whole thing is going at that point. In the meantime, I'm feeling pretty useless and my Fun Meter is showing no signs of life whatsoever.

As luck would have it, the week before my latest crash I had bought a few things for the bikes that I'd been putting off for a long time. I finally got a workstand, albeit a cheap one, that accommodates modern bikes, and I got a few things for commuting too. Of course, lifting a bike onto the workstand is a bit of a problem right now. One thing I'd been needing for a long time was a proper seatpost for the commuter. Since it's an old English bike, the seat post diameter was 1", but after looking around a bit I found some of those. The only problem was that they only had the really long ones in stock. So anyway, it arrived the other day and, even though it will likely be some time before I'm cleared to ride to work again, I couldn't resist installing it. Let me just say that removing and replacing a seatpost is a challenge when using only one arm. Even cutting the extra six inches off the end of it took a really long time. Fortunately, one thing I have in abundance right now is time. The other neat thing I got that I won't be using right away is a travel "folder" for my shirts. It's already hot enough in the morning that commuting in my cotton button-down collar shirts won't be feasable again until Fall, and all last year I was wishing I had a better way to pack them for the ride to work. Well, the folks at Eagle Creek had apparently solved that problem, so I'm looking forward to being able to try it out.

So I'm sitting here at the office looking out on some truly beautiful weather and wishing I was on the bike instead of squirming around uncomfortably in this office chair wondering why typing makes my shoulder hurt.

Hard to Believe

Yesterday, in a state of caffeine-induced optimism, I decided I'd go in to the office for the afternoon. I had to drop some stuff off at UPS anyway, so The Wife picked me up, we took care of the shipping (the medals for the track championships finally being sent to the promoter) and then went to the office. Well, by 4:00 I could hardly focus my eyes any more, even with my glasses on, so we bailed out around 4:30 and went to the drug store to fill a prescription. Naturally they were too busy to transfer the pills from the big bottle to the small bottle while I waited, so I had to go back two hours later to pick them up. By then The Wife had just returned from a long walk so I decided I could make the three block drive myself. Well, somehow when I was getting back into the car and reaching to close the driver side door with my right hand without making my left collarbone hurt I must have pinched a nerve in my right shoulder. You know, the one that works. This was getting hard to believe. So my right shoulder (actually it feels more like my anemic little cyclist deltoid) is now hurting about as much as the left, and since I've done this before with that shoulder I know it's probably going to hurt for at least a few more days.

For the last few weeks we've had a portable toilet stationed right across the street from our bedroom window that is being used by the crews who are working on the gas line replacement project. It hasn't been a problem at all. Well, that is until 4:00 am this morning when I heard a loud noise outside. I looked out and saw a big black pickup truck ramming the thing. It was making repeated loops around the little triangular neutral ground, plowing into the toilet each time. After five or six loops the jackass had pushed it past the intersection and all the way out into the left lane of the 6-lane street behind the house. Maybe he had a fight with his girlfriend and was taking it out on a defenseless portable toilet. Who knows? Hard to believe. I called the Pot-o-Gold folks this morning and I guess someone came out and moved it out of the street, but it's still sitting up on the neutral ground of S. Claiborne Avenue and there's a stray roll of toilet paper left as a souvenir outside my window. I hope none of the workers need to pee today.

So yesterday I bolted my old aero bars onto the Cervelo in order to further reduce my excuses for getting back onto the bike. Maybe later today if this shoulder thing permits I'll see if I can spin my legs a little bit. Baby steps..... It's hard to believe it's been almost a week, but then I guess time flies when you're on drugs.

Home Again

I'm still working, however intermittently, from home and it's getting pretty frustrating. I had originally assumed that the problems would revolve around simple things like pain management and my ability to use my left arm, but in fact the big problem has been the pain medication and its effect on my head, and also the related effect on my ability to get to and from work. It has been a challenge to concentrate, and I'm not particularly comfortable driving in traffic while taking this pain medication, much less riding my bike. I think I will start to cut down on the meds tomorrow and see how that goes. The really frustrating thing about being at home all day is having the time to take care of a lot of little chores around the house, but not actually being able to do any of them because they mostly all require a fully functional left arm. In particular, there are a bunch of bike-related projects I'd love to be working on, but it's just impossible right now. And then there's also the fact that I tend to doze off now and then! Regardless, I told The Wife to come pick me up after lunch so I can run a couple of errands and spend a few hours in the office.

So the damage to the bike looks like this: The carbon left chainstay is pulled out of the aluminum dropout by a couple of millimeters. I talked to Frank yesterday and he said he can fix that since he has the proper glue and instructions and has done it on a bunch of the older Orbea team bikes. All I have to do is get the bike up to Brookhaven at some point. I've got a nice little dent in the top tube from where the handlebar hit it. Nothing to worry about, though. As luck would have it, I had ordered a spare derailleur hanger from Orbea just a few days before the crash. The one that's on there now might be very slightly bent, so when the part arrived in the mail yesterday I thought I may as well replace it. Naturally I ran into a problem. One of the tiny little allen head bolts that holds it in place seems to be stripped (it's probably been replaced before). I'll have to check with the LBS to see if they think they can get it out without doing any collateral damage. Otherwise I'll probably just leave the old hanger on there. Remarkably, the rest of the bike seems to have been unaffected. The handlebar tape and rubber brake hoods don't look any worse off than they did after the crash I had on the levee about a month or so ago. The wheels look like they would benefit from a brief visit with the spoke wrench, although I don't have one that will work on those particular wheels that have the spoke nipples a the hub end instead of the rim end. At any rate, I guess I have a month or so to get that stuff taken care of. That kind of sucks...

Kind of a Rough Day

So the collarbone has been hurting off and on pretty much all day thanks to this brace that is trying to push it all into more or less proper alignment. This whole brace thing is a pretty imprecise thing, to say the least. For sure I'm already getting a little cabin fever from being stuck at home for two days straight. I'd been thinking I might be able to go in to work tomorrow, but now I think I'll have to wait until the morning to re-evaluate. The Wife won't be back in town until tomorrow evening, and I should probably not be driving myself anyway. At least I was able to get a little work done today. It's kind of strange, though, because now and then I find myself just zoning out in front of the computer thanks to the drugs.

I've found that my desk chair is considerably more comfortable than my bed, under the circumstances, although neither is really very relaxing. I nonetheless did get a fair amount of sleep last night, so that was good. I put the Cervelo onto the trainer this afternoon, which by the way is a bit of a challenge using only one hand, but I think it will be another couple of days before I'm ready to climb aboard. In the meantime I'll need to see if I can find someone who can glue the seatstay of the Orbea back to the dropout. As they often do, it pulled loose a little bit in that crash. Kenny was telling me that he used to just slam it back together and race it like that, but I guess I'd feel more comfortable if it was a little better stuck together! I left a message for Frank M, who I understand has some experience with that. Anyway, I figure I've got at least a few weeks to work on that little problem.

Rearrangements

It's amazing how much one can get done while under the influence of drugs. I slept surprisingly well last night and was up bright and early making one-handed coffee and leaving messages at the Sports Medicine Institute so I could get in to see the orthopedist. It's still kind of difficult to get in to see a doctor around here, so I was really happy when they were able to slot me in at 1:30 today. First, though, I had to get a ride downtown to pick up the CD containing my x-rays from the radiology lab at the hospital. That went smoothly, though, leaving me time back at home to get some work done. Of course I've had to rearrange some things even to be able to do that.

The visit to the orthopedist went fairly well, I think. He got me strapped into this two-part brace and took a few x-rays. It looks like the brace is able to rearrange the broken collarbone so it's in pretty good alignment, so we're going to go that route for a week and then take some more x-rays to see if it's working. It would be nice to avoid surgery. If it looks good, then it'll probably be three weeks wearing this contraption and then another couple of weeks in a more traditional x-brace.

The downside is that, at least for now, it hurts a bit more and the Velcro around my ribcage pretty much rules out any possibility of heavy breathing. I've got a whole different apparatus to use when I sleep, so we'll see how that goes tonight. At any rate, I'll be staying home again tomorrow for sure since driving or riding with one had while under the influence of painkillers is probably not such a swell idea.

I spoke with my friend Gina in Atlanta this evening and we commiserated about our injuries. Last weekend she locked handlebars with another rider in a crit and went down pretty hard, breaking both blades off of her fork, fracturing her handlebars, and generally getting pretty banged up. There's been way too much crashing going on lately!

Ouch! Rashes of Crashes

It was looking like it would be a great Sunday. Clear skies, warm temperatures, nothing on my calendar except the Giro Ride and maybe a haircut. Dan stopped by early and by 6:30 we were headed down Carrollton Avenue to the lakefront. There was a good group on hand and I was looking forward to a good workout as we crested the two bridges and rolled down onto Hayne Blvd. As usual I was in the middle of the group as it slowly started to get up to speed. Suddenly a dog comes running from the right side of the road in a full sprint straight into the pack. There was no time to react, and in fact I don't know if I hit him. I remember the dog running in front of me, and I remember the rider just ahead and to my left braking and coming over into me. I went down pretty hard and from my injuries I guess it must have been mostly vertical because while the road rash is minimal, the impact damage is pretty bad. The right collarbone snapped out toward the end and it was pretty obvious I wouldn't be riding home. I suppose I shouldn't be complaining too much since it took something like 36 years for me to finally join the collarbone club. Big Richard also hit the deck hard, and I guess there must have been someone else too. Howard Luna went to retrieve his car and was nice enough to drive my bike and me home where my neighbor (The Wife is out of town) offered to drive me down to the ER.

So I get to the Tulane ER where they have just received a couple of really sick patients, so it was a bit of a wait until I actually got into the ER itself. Then, as they're waking me to a bed I notice the bed next to it is already occupied by someone in cycling clothes. Turns out it's Roy Tedesco who had been on the same ride. He had crashed later in the ride out on Chef Highway when he pulled his foot out of the cleat. Compared to him, my injuries didn't seem so bad. He had gone down hard with a concussion and impact seizure, broken collarbone and some broken ribs. Looks like he'll be spending the night at the hospital. What are the chances of having two broken collarbones on the same ride in separate crashes? Freaky.

This particular blog entry, by the way, comes to you courtesy of Oxycodone. This thing really hurts! I'll try and get in to see a real orthopedist tomorrow. To make matters worse I took a look at the bike and discovered that one of the carbon seatstays got partially pulled out of the aluminum dropout. Nothing a little superglue can't fix, right? Too bad it won't work on the clavicle too.

My neighbors Kim and Nancy are taking good care of me, though, picking up my prescription and bringing over a bunch of food and stuff. I'm thinking I won't likely be getting any exercise for a couple of days, and then I guess I'll be forced to dust off the trainer.

Riding Alone

I peered through the slats of the Levelors at the wet street below and glanced at the clock. 6:15 am. Dan Bennett had called on Friday to say he was in town for a few days and we had planned to ride out to the Giro Ride together. I figured I'd better check to the radar, and what I saw didn't look good. It was definitely going to rain. The only question was exactly when and how hard. I keyed in a one word text message "Abort?" After a brief discussion we decided to play it safe, so a little while later I hopped into the rental car (the Volvo is still in the body shop) and drove over to Starbucks in a light drizzle. The Wife's up in DC for a meeting until Wednesday, so I'm home alone which usually means I eat a lot of left-over stuff from the freezer and the toilet seat stays in the "up" position.

Well, the caffeine got me going and next thing I know I'm at Lowes buying a fluorescent light fixture, wiring, switches, etc. As I'm wandering through the store I hear the rain beating down on the metal roof way above my head and think "good decision." I made a dash for the car but ended up soaking wet anyway. It poured rain for a long time, but eventually the weather moved east and the sun started to come out. So the morning was spent installing a new light above the washing machine down in the basement. Of course that little project kind of expanded into a general clean-up session.

Finally, around 3 pm, I went out for a ride on the levee. By then the weather was great, of course. I guess it's been a while since I've ridden two and a half hours alone. I'm sure it must be a good thing of course, but it tends to make me feel a little self-conscious. Anyway, the entire 23 miles of levee were lined with people fishing. The water is starting to come down fairly quickly now and I guess this will be the last weekend for levee-fishing. It's amazing how big the fish these people are catching. They're not the only ones fishing, though, because there are tons of birds - herons, egrets, ibis. Anyway, there were lots of people out since the weather was so nice. I was pretty much just in cruise mode, looking at the scenery in the small ring. Guess I'll do the Giro Ride tomorrow with Dan.

Antisocial Behavior

I rode out to the levee this morning to meet the 6:15 ride and didn't even feel the need for a blinky light. It must be summer. Indeed, the temperature was warmer and a stiff wind was blowing out of the southeast. The river level is finally starting to drop ever so slowly, exposing dead and waterlogged grass and impressive amounts of once-floating flotsam including everything from trees to plastic bottles and Styrofoam.

So the group started out as usual, but for some reason there was a big gap between the trio of Chad, Jeff and me, and the rest of the group. We weren't going all that fast, at least not until Chad went to the front and started ramping up the speed somewhere around the playground. Soon we were rolling downwind at around 27 mph and I remember thinking, "this is rather anti-social behavior" as I looked back in search of the rest of the group. But hey, I was already committed, so I tried to hold the pace when my turn at the front would come up. Even so, I have to admit that we were slowing down a bit every time Jeff or me would hit the wind. After a while Eddie caught us after what must have been a pretty serious effort, and shortly thereafter Jeff dropped back. By then I was already taking shorter and shorter pulls, knowing full well that we'd have a long and mostly upwind haul for the return trip.

After regrouping at the turnaround, things were relatively civilized for a long time, and we were just beginning to get really rolling again when we came across a rider walking his bike who apparently was in need of a valve extender. So a few riders continued on, a bunch of them stopped, and a handful of us just soft-pedaled. I don't know what the hold-up was, but it took forever for the main group to catch back up to us. Anyway, I got in a pretty good amount of exercise this morning before having to rush off to work. I'm not sure what I'll be doing this weekend. There's a lot of deferred maintenance stuff to which I need to attend around the house, but otherwise I'm hoping the weather will cooperate so I can get in a few miles.