Maxchanical Difficulties

Wednesday was knee surgery day for The Wife, which meant arriving at the hospital for 5:30 am.  With impressive efficiency, they had her on the way to surgery by 6:15 or so, at which point The Daughter and I wandered off in search of the elusive PJ's coffee stand at Ochsner Baptist.  The morning weather was nice - not too hot and slightly breezy - so we were able to sit comfortably out on the patio of the waiting room for a few hours.  It was probably 10:00 or so by the time she was out of post-op and in a room where we spent the next few hours waiting for the drugs to wear off enough to take her home.  She has never reacted well to that stuff, and this was no exception.  Her heart rate and oxygen saturation were riding roller coasters for hours until the staff finally got tired of hearing the alarms go off and turned the monitor off.  I guess it was around 2:30 pm by the time we slid her into the car, and even then she was clearly not quite all there yet.  We didn't make it two blocks before I had to pull over so she could throw up.  Cars and Oxycodone don't mix well.  Even so, she's been doing fine since then with few complaints so far.  She'll be in a brace for a month and full recovery is likely six months away, but compared to The Daughter's more complicated ACL repair she has it relatively easy.

Of course all of that meant that I missed not only the morning ride but also the Wednesday night training race.  I know I shouldn't complain too much since I had a pretty good four-month run of good training weeks, but I did hate to miss the training race.  I've been feeling really sluggish since my training went south last week and could have used the forced intensity.

So this morning I rushed out to the levee to meet the group at 6:15, a little surprised to find the streets quite wet from an early morning rain shower.  I was not feeling too sharp at all. Perhaps it was the accumulated lack of sleep or something.  The pace started out pretty easy, so we were a good five miles into the ride before the speed started to pick up.  Jon T. went to the front and put in a long, long pull that kind of set the tone for a while, but then for some reason there were some big surges out nearer the airport and gaps started to open up all over the place. It was a few miles before things stabilized again and as we ride down The Dip at St. Rose I was finally starting to feel better.  I was about midway back in the paceline as we climbed back up to the top of the levee when I heard something behind me.  A quick glance told me there had been a crash.  We all stopped (well, most of us anyway) and I turned back expecting to find that someone had touched wheels or caught the edge of the road.  I wasn't expecting to find a bike missing its right crankarm, however.  It seems that Max's crank had abruptly departed company with his bike as he was climbing and he'd hit the asphalt pretty hard.  His first thought had been that something had happened to his ankle! We had to search the grass alongside the bike path to find the missing crankarm.  I was able to tentatively reattach the crankarm thanks to the little mini-tool I keep in my spare tube bag, so at least he was able to limp back to Williams Blvd.  He lost a bit of skin, but nothing looked serious.  We all stayed with him for that little ride, so the rest of the morning was pretty easy.