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...