Off-Track

Having survived at least the conversational part of the Saturday Giro Ride, along with the ride to and from, with my collarbone still intact, I set about gathering up the items needed for the weekend's volunteer officiating duties.  While this is normally a fairly quick process, doing so with a still-healing collarbone required a slower and more deliberate process.  The heavier items, like the PA system and tent, would have to await assistance from Mark and Graeme who would be going up with me to the Baton Rouge Velodrome for the QDS Systems Track Omnium. I filled a plastic bin with clipboards, paper, stopwatches, bell, megaphone, printer, table, chair, etc., and went upstairs to pack some warm clothes.  The races wouldn't be starting until around 5:30 and the temperature was going to be dropping rather dramatically, and since I would be spending a few hours standing in the wind on the wrong side of the Blue Band, I knew I'd best plan for Arctic conditions.  The night before I had been particularly proud of myself for discovering the "Large" function in Excel which would allow me to build the results spreadsheet for the omnium in such a way that it would automatically total only the top five scores for each rider.  I had also downloaded the "SloPro" application for my iPad.  I had heard of people using it for bike race finish judging and since the LAMBRA cameras were all up in Monroe I figured I'd give it a try.  Of course I knew it wouldn't work once it got dark unless we had some heavy duty lighting on the finish line, which we didn't, but the schedule called for races on Sunday morning too, so that looked like it might work. 

By 3 pm we had packed Mark's new car to the ceiling with equipment and the three of us headed west on I-10 for the drive up to Baton Rouge. By the time we arrived the sky was clear and sunny and there was a stiff north wind blowing.  I was glad I'd brought lots of warm clothes.  The turnout was fairly good by our standards, which is to say there were more than twenty riders on hand for the evening's events.  Everyone was grouped into Cat. 1/2/3, Cat. 4, Cat. 5, or Women since we didn't have enough Masters or Juniors, which is not uncommon.  The events went off pretty smoothly thanks to the LSU team which has hosted a number of track races over the last few years, and we wrapped things up for the evening around 8:30 pm or so, leaving us time to get something to eat before heading over to Dustin's place.  As we pulled up to the house, Dustin was just getting out of his car.  He shuffled over to me and said he had just come down with a bad migraine headache and would be heading immediately for a dark room.  He was in really bad shape and ended up emptying his stomach a few times that night.  The three of us crashed in the living room where I had a decent night's sleep zipped into my trusty old 1983 vintage Marmot sleeping bag.  Sunday morning it was probably in the upper 40s when we headed off to the track, and although I knew it would be warming up a bit, I still went pretty heavy on the clothes.  It's one thing to be racing, it's quite another to be standing around with a stopwatch and clipboard.  Anyway, the races went smoothly despite the usual last-minute rearrangements to accommodate the relatively small field sizes.  A miss-and-out with only three women is really just a very short scratch race, so we changed that to matched sprints.  We also combined some of the categories for the Miss-and-Out to save a little time and make it more interesting.  I was quite impressed with the little iPad and SloPro software which produced quite nice frame-by-frame finish line video.  It's not exactly FinishLynx, but with adequate lighting it was just about as good as our usual digital camera system, plus it was extremely convenient -- no wires, no files or flashdrives to transfer, etc.  Just aim at the finish line, shoot the video, and then view the video in real time or frame-by-frame by dragging a finger along the timeline. While the races were going on, they had someone cooking up a big pot of jambalaya - real jambalaya, not that red creole version you sometimes get here in New Orleans.

So by the time I got home and unloaded everything I could tell that my collarbone and shoulder in general had gotten a pretty good workout despite my efforts to avoid it.  It wasn't so bad as to keep me off the bike Monday morning for another easy solo ride.  This morning I went out and met the 6:15 am group on the levee.  The plan was to sit safely off the back and turn back early, which is almost what I did.  Almost.  Actually, since there were only three or four of us at the start, I went ahead and stayed in the paceline for a while (still keeping a bit of a gap between the guy ahead and myself).  Along the way we picked up a few more riders and by the time we got out to the country club the pace was getting faster.  Of course it was still over half an hour before sunrise.  Just after the country club curve there was a walker on our side of the path and also an oncoming rider or something, so we had to hit the brakes amid much loud verbalizing that practically scared the hell out of the lady who was walking (in the dark without so much as a reflective stripe on her shoes).  At that point I decided it would be prudent to revert to my original plan of hanging a bike length or so off the bike to allow for a little extra reaction time.  That's where I stayed until we go to the parish line where I eased up and rode a few more miles to the dip alone before turning around and heading home.  So I'm still gradually working my way back into a training routine as the collarbone continues to solidify, but I think it will be a couple of weeks yet before I'm ready to jump back in to the big group rides. I'll be heading to Colorado Springs on Friday for the annual Local Association conference at USA Cycling and from there to Washington DC for a research administration conference, so after those six days off the bike I figure I'll be ready to ease right into early Base Training mode for the rest of November and December.  It's a plan, anyway.

Not There Yet

A cool front pushed through overnight and after checking the temperature I decided it would be wise to hunt through the "winter clothes drawer" for the knee-warmers.  Ordinarily I might have just suffered through the first hour of chilly legs, knowing that once the Giro Ride got going I would warm up quickly.  Since my collarbone is clearly not there yet, however, I knew I'd better dress warmly because I wouldn't be riding hard enough or long enough to really get warmed up.  I was glad I did.  I headed out to meet the group straight into a pretty strong north wind, and for a little while even wondered if the two jerseys, arm-warmers and knee-warmers would be enough to keep me comfortable on this first truly chilly ride of what passes for Fall around here.  Since the Voodoo Fest was in full swing this weekend, and I didn't want to have to deal with any early-rising Metallica groupies, I decided to take the Canal Blvd. route instead of my usual route through City Park.  As I was making my way down Canal, Woody and Eddie came by, so I latched onto them for the rest of the trip to Starbucks.  I shouldn't have been surprised to find a fairly long line waiting for coffee this morning.  The other thing I was surprised to find there was Ben, who had gotten his broken jaw un-wired earlier in the week and was out for his first post-crash cautious ride with the group.  This was good because I was planning on riding just to the end of Lakeshore Drive.  The collarbone is still a pretty long way from being ready for action, and it will be another week or two at least before I'm comfortable doing fast group ride.  Ben was being equally cautious, and I could tell that he was feeling every little bump in the road.  The sky stayed overcast the whole time, so I was glad I'd piled on the clothes this morning.

So the collarbone seems to be progressing normally, which is to say that it is getting kind of frustrating.  There was a lot of noticeable improvement between week 2 and week 3, but that has slowed down a whole lot this week.  I guess part of it is that without the brace I tend to try to do more with the arm and pushing the "range of motion" envelope, usually unintentionally, results in a more consistent dull ache, especially when I'm doing things like typing.  I probably should have invested in some kinesio tape last week to ease the transition.  Oh well.  Maybe next time.....

This afternoon I'll be heading up to Baton Rouge with Mark to officiate the track races at the Baton Rouge Velodrome tonight and tomorrow morning.  I'll be bringing a lot of warm clothes with me for sure!

Followup

The Sports Medicine Institute was still going strong at 7 pm last night when I showed up for my followup appointment. I leaned back against the x-ray machine's film plate, which I'm sure doesn't actually contain "film" nowadays, as the technician set things up for the standard two pictures. 

Later, as I stood in the waiting room, I listened as Dr. Savoie discussed another case with the residents just outside the door.  A few minutes later he popped into the room and said, "It's looking pretty good.  Come see." The x-ray showed the somewhat diffuse fuzziness around the break indicative of the early stages of healing.  He said I could stop wearing the brace and start gradually getting back to normal activities as long as I promised not to fall.  I didn't tell him I'd already been back on the bike.  While he was there I described the stiffness and pain I've been having in my right elbow ever since the hurricane. He reached up and put his finger precisely on the spot where it hurts the most.  "Tennis elbow," he said, launching into a description of the problem and saying, basically, that it's a tough thing to get rid of.  He said he'd tried injecting all sorts of things into such elbows and that it didn't really seem to matter what it was. His impression was that the needle itself was what helped the most, causing enough irritation to stimulate the increased blood flow that is what is really needed.  His best suggestion was frequent massage, but he handed me a prescription for something that I could get the pharmacist to mix up.  I suspect it is based on horse liniment. Anyway, I walked out with the x-brace in my hand and a followup appointment in three weeks.

This morning I decided to ride over to the Reily Center to meet the 6:30 am Tulane group so I could drop off my "recreational" membership dues.  I felt kind of vulnerable riding without the brace, and after a few miles could feel a little soreness around my neck as the muscles that hadn't had to fully support my arm and shoulder got an unfamiliar workout.  I'd expected to drop off the back of the group or maybe even just ride laps around Audubon Park, but the group was doing an easy ride today so I stayed with them for a couple of laps around the park and then up onto the levee bike path, always trying to keep a couple of extra feet of space between the rider ahead and myself.  Although normal steady riding doesn't seem to be a problem at all, sudden braking definitely hurts and any kind of fall would be really painful at best.  Even so, it was a perfect morning for riding -- not too cool and not too warm, with virtually no wind at all.  I finally pulled off on the way back to drop down the ramp onto River Road and pick up Oak Street to go home.  As I came down the ramp I glanced over my left shoulder, calculating the speed and timing necessary to merge smoothly into a gap between the cars.  Then I noticed some guy who was stopped at the bottom of the ramp.  As I was contemplating my options, he picked up his bike and turned it sideways, completely blocking the path.  Sheesh.  Of course I had to hit the brakes and go around him on the grass, which meant I completely missed slotting into the traffic, so I ended up on the edge of the road for a while until a couple of cars went by and I could move away from the edge. No problem, really, but under the circumstances I'd have preferred a smoother transition.

Test Rides

I rode slowly, carefully, down the dark and quiet streets toward the lakefront.  I could feel the cool October air blowing through the new crop of hair on my legs and made a mental note to do something about that. The Orbea was still sporting its Rolf race wheels and 6-Gap cassette, since it really didn't seem worth the considerable effort to swap out cassettes and wheels one-handed at the end of the season. 

It had been almost three weeks since I'd smashed my right collarbone and I had decided it was time from a little test ride out to meet the Saturday Giro.  I figured that the five and a half miles to Starbucks would be a good start, providing I took my time and stuck to the quiet streets.  I was surprised how well it went, actually.  The first broken collarbone, back in 2008, was still quite painful after five weeks, but this one felt quite different.  I rode for a long time with my hands on the tops with no complaints whatsoever, and eventually slid down onto the brake hoods where I was equally comfortable.  The only discomfort came when I changed hand positions, so for the most part I just didn't do that with my right hand. Of course I was still wearing the x-brace.  On the one hand, the brace definitely helps stabilize the whole collarbone and shoulder.  On the other, it makes it difficult to reach upward and forward with my right arm (which is pretty much its intended function).  Riding more on the tip of the saddle than usual seemed to help a bit. So after the Giro rolled out (it will be a couple of weeks yet before I'm willing to risk getting in the middle of a group ride) I headed back home to formulate plans for the next week.

I didn't ride on Sunday, and instead took a long walk and did some work around the house. I'd had the electrician over during the week to change the routing of the house's electrical service.  For reasons lost to history, the main service to the house came in to one corner, and from there three separate wires, in places devoid of insulation, wrapped around the back of the house, through three separate porcelain insulators, across the back shed roof (that used to be the back porch) with only about four inches of clearance, to the opposite corner where they finally entered conduit and came down to the meter located mid-way down the length of the house on the opposite side of the drop.  It was basically an electrical inspector's nightmare.  We are starting on an expensive remodel of the kitchen and this was basically step one.  Anyway, on Sunday I fabricated some sheet aluminum sections to seal off the holes left in the antique aluminum siding where the meter had been.

So this morning was test ride number two. I was aiming for twenty miles on the levee bike path, which is always especially quiet on Mondays. This time I was going to try to get just a little bit of exercise without going too fast or taking any chances.  It worked out fine, although I was feeling pretty paranoid as I rode the last mile or so down Carrollton Avenue in traffic.  I have a followup visit with Dr. Savoie tonight (7 pm!), so I'll wait until I see how that goes before making plans for the rest of the week.

It Was Time

It's been two weeks.  Two weeks of sitting around, eating, sitting around some more, eating some more, and not sleeping very well.  Although the collarbone is obviously not healed yet, it seemed good enough to take a shot at a ride on the trainer. Like it or not, it was time.

As frustrating as it's been to be off the bike all this time, I can't say I was particularly anxious to get on the trainer.  Frankly, I'd rather be under-dressed and riding up the Gavia in snowstorm than ride the trainer inside. But it is what it is, and what it is is time to get back on the bike.  So I set the trainer up in the office, flipped on the old Hunter tabletop fan, and climbed up on the bike ever so carefully.  Reaching out to the handlebar was a bit uncomfortable, and for some reason lifting my right hand off of the handlebar was downright painful, but once in position it wasn't bad at all.  I managed about fifty minutes, which was about all I could take without lapsing into some mild form of insanity, which I figured was sufficient for the first day back.

Meanwhile, Jorge Cardona, who used to race here in New Orleans, was down in Tampa visiting his father and posted an old photo of a criterium we had on Canal Street in New Orleans back around 1991 or so.  A little later, when his flight back stopped in New Orleans, they got stuck here for a couple of hours because someone from Miami might have had Typhoid Fever.  Anyway, the riders I can identify in the photo include myself, Jorge, and Rob Konrad. I think the race was tied in with some sort of Latin America festival.  I can't imagine getting part of Canal Street shut down for a bike race nowadays.  For some reason I don't remember much about that particular race.  I have the feeling that I was somehow rushed and couldn't stick around very long.

The Clavicle

So yesterday evening I had my first followup with Dr. Savoie at Tulane's Sports Medicine clinic. He feeling reasonably good about things and so we're going to pass on the surgical option for now since the shoulder seems to be maintaining a good relationship with the rest of me, which is to say it's still out where it needs to be. When I told him that the current x-brace that I've been wearing tends to move farther out on my collarbone than the break we devised a little field modification involving lots of velcro that should help keep some pressure on the piece closest to my neck so it stays close enough to the other pieces that they'll all eventually merge into a big glob of bony matrix.  Naturally, that is making it a little more painful today, especially when I'm on the computer typing, which is pretty much what I do all day.  So I think I'll stop in a minute and take some Advil! Otherwise, I rode the little folding bike in to work again today, which is a lot less stressful than driving and parking, especially since today is Farmers' Market day at the office.  The x-ray above is from yesterday evening and is from a different perspective than the one I posted last week, which is why the gap looks so much more impressive.

A Bike That Works

My ride for the next few weeks!

It was an incredibly boring Saturday, and the worst part was being stuck at the house surrounded by a hundred little jobs that I'd been putting off all summer, but not being able to do anything that required two fully functional arms.  In the morning I went out and trimmed some of the most overgrown of the hedges and bushes around the house.  Of course nothing above shoulder height got trimmed, but at least it kept me busy for a little while.  By mid-afternoon I'd watched about enough Hallmark movies on TV and eaten most everything in the house that didn't require cooking and I started wondering if I might have a bike that would work for my current situation.  There was no way I could reach forward enough to get my right hand onto the handlebar of any of my usual bikes, and even if I could, I probably wouldn't want to.  There was also the issue of starting and stopping.  Getting on and off of a regular bike didn't look like it was going to work very well, and I certainly wasn't willing to risk a fall.  So I turned my attention to the little folding bike I've had for a few years.  It usually gets pushed into service around Mardi Gras and JazzFest when we have a bunch of people who want to get somewhere where parking is impossible. The nice thing about it is that it's easy to adjust the the handlebar and seat height over a very wide range.  So I raised the handlebar up nice and high, pushed the seat down enough so I could touch the ground with getting off the saddle, put it in a low gear and gave it a try.  It worked!  I could sit upright and ride with one hand on the bar (two if really necessary) and start and stop without getting off the saddle.  Granted, I wasn't going to be going any faster than brisk walking speed, but that's OK under the circumstances.

A cool front came through last night and this morning, although it was till cloudy, it was cool, dry and breezy, so naturally my thought turned to coffee.  It was time to give the folding bike a trial run to the coffee shop.  It was nice to be back on a bike, even though I doubt I cracked 10 mph, and after getting back home I had to kick myself for forgetting to log the ride to Strava!  Oh well, maybe next time.

An Unproductive Week

Well it's been a long and unproductive week.  Between the dull ache of broken bones and the side effects of various analgesics from hydrocodone to ethanol, it's been harder than usual to get things done.  I shouldn't complain, though, compared to the last time, when I broke the other collarbone, the pain has been relatively light and I've been doing OK on regular Advil most of the time.  Every now and then I'll reach or something and the pain level will jump from dull to very, very intense, but otherwise it's not really that bad.  Typing with my right hand, for example, isn't bad at all as long as I keep the keyboard very close.  Using the mouse with that hand is more of a challenge, and I've been doing a lot of left-handed mousing at work.  The touchpad on the laptop is actually a lot easier to deal with.  The real challenges are walking the dogs and getting dressed.  Even if I'm holding the leashes with my left hand, it one of the dogs tugs on the leash it gets transmitted over to the other collarbone.  The really fun thing is getting dressed.  This morning was the first time I successfully pulled on a T-shirt.  It's not that the collarbone itself is less painful, it's just that I've refined my technique!  The problem is that I really can't lift that arm above my shoulder -- not even close, actually.  Anyway, it seems to take me half an hour to get dressed, and even then it's not quite up to my normal standards.  Next, I have to put the x-brace back on and tighten the straps, which has been challenging since The Wife has been away at a conference all week and it would normally involve reaching behind my back.  If I stick the velcro just the right way, though, I have enough slack to get the thing on, and can still reach the ends in order to pull them tight.

Anyway, it's been a long week.  On Monday a friend, who was a club member and sponsor, died suddenly.  I learned about it shortly after getting back to work from my neighbor's funeral. Two in one week was really hard. I went to the visitation today, rather under-dressed since putting on a sport coat and tie is entirely out of the question right now, and the place was absolutely packed.  Ronnie was a fireman and a very outgoing one at that, so he had a lot of friends.  Although he never did much actual racing, he really liked being part of the club and up until the last few years was a regular fixture on training rides.  He'll be missed by a lot of people.

So it feels really strange not having any plans for the weekend -- not even the Giro Ride.  I've been off the bike for five days now, and I think that maybe I'll be able to get on the trainer in a day or two, although I doubt I'll be able to put any weight on my right arm for another couple of weeks at best. Fortunately it happens to be a good time of year to take a week off!  The hard part is going to be on Sunday when the cool front comes through and we get a few days of spectacular fall weather.  Now that's going to hurt.  In the meantime I need to replace my smashed helmet, check out the bike, and think about building up a new bike with that Campi 11-speed stuff I got from Matt a few weeks ago.  I don't guess I'll be building much of anything until I can use my right arm, though. Yesterday I made travel arrangements for the November 2nd USAC Local Associations summit in Colorado Springs, from which I go directly to D.C. or the annual NCURA conference.  Hopefully the collarbone will be significantly better by then.

Fun While It Lasted

Last weekend was the annual Six Gap Century Race Ride up in Dahlonega, GA. For the last few years we've put together a number of people from the club to make the trip and kind of cap off the road racing season with this ride.  At 104 miles and five or six long climbs, this ride can be approached as a long fun challenge or as a long hard race.  It's your choice, and for a lot of people the choice changes after the first or second climb.  On Friday we had no fewer than ten people lined up for the trip.  By the time we actually left on Saturday morning it was down to five.  I was driving up with David and Graeme and we would be staying with Pat and Steve at a friend's house there in Dahlonega who has graciously hosted us for the last few years.  The forecast for Sunday's ride was calling for nice temperatures and a chance of rain, but compared to the climbing the weather was the least of our concerns.

The eight hour ride on Saturday was uneventful, landing us in town with lots of time to get registered, check out the Expo, buy a ton of energy gels, and watch one of the criteriums before heading over to our host's place for a great dinner.  Sunday morning we were up early, arriving as usual in the dark to get a parking spot in the school lot with enough time left over to pump up tires and otherwise get our acts together.  I hid the car key in its usual spot and the three of us rolled down the sidewalk past hundreds of other riders, inserting ourselves into the mix just behind the "under 6 hours" sign.

The start was fairly smooth and for the next fifteen miles or so it was the usual battle to stay reasonably close to the front, which in this case meant there were only a hundred or so riders ahead of us.  I lot track of Graeme and Steve right away, but could see David up ahead of me now and then. The first climb is Neel's gap, about 6.5 miles long and 1,500 feet.  Although it's long it feels fairly smooth.  I was just staying among the people around me for this one, and I'm sure a group probably raced off the front, but at any rate I found I was quite comfortable with a 39x23 for much of the distance.  The next climb is Jack's Gap, which is shorter but seems a little steeper. I rode my own pace up this one, and let a lot of riders ride away from me on that one, but as usual I bombed the downhill with a few others and by the end of the descent was back in a fairly sizable group.  Soon we were climbing Gap #3, Unicoi, which like Jack's has some pretty steep sections but is relatively short at around 2.5 miles.  Of course, on all of these climbs I was looking at speeds in the 8-12 mph range. Near the top of Unicoi most of the group was well ahead of me, but I knew that this was one of the longer downhills so once I came over the crest I went straight from the 39x25 to the 53x12. I got together with another rider who was doing the same thing and we flew down the first part together at 40-48 mph, but then we got stuck behind the line of cars that was itself stuck behind the re-forming group that we'd been with at the start of the climb.  It took us a long time to work our way past all of the cars on the narrow winding mountain road, but finally we made contact as the road flattened out and the speed dropped back below 30 mph.  I was really glad to be back with a group leading up to the long 7 mile, 1,800 foot climb up to Hogpen Gap. As the group started to bunch up a bit approaching a right-hand turn I coasted past the rider who had accompanied me on the downhill and commented, "that was fun!"  A few seconds later I was lying on the ground thinking, "Crap, it's broken."  Coming around the turn just a bit before the start of the Hogpen climb, I'd moved to the outside of the group to avoid hitting the brakes.  Unfortunately there was a little patch of sandy gravel right in the middle of the turn and when my front tire hit it, it completely washed out, dumping me immediately onto my head, right shoulder and right forearm. I was still holding onto the handlebar when I hit it was so fast.  In fact, it was almost exactly like the crash I'd had in Lafayette except that this time I broke a collarbone instead of a few ribs.  Yes, I was pissed.  I'd been having a really fun ride and was looking forward to the challenging climb up Hogpen, but there I was, alone in the middle of nowhere.  "Oh well," I thought.  "It was fun while it lasted." 

I walked over to the side of the road with my bike and leaned over it for a little while taking inventory.  I knew immediately that the collarbone was broken. I could feel the broken ends of the bone grinding against each other.  My head felt OK, although I'd hit it pretty hard, but the helmet, now broken in a few places, had done its job.  The group went around the curve and for a little while I was left alone to contemplate my next move.  I was right at the bottom of two climbs, each with a rest area at the top.  I got back on the bike and figured I'd ride slowly toward Hogpen as long as I could and then hope to flag down someone associated with the ride to get a lift back to the cars.  I hadn't ridden more than a few hundred meters when Graeme and a few others came by asking what had happened since I was riding slowly with one hand on the bars. Just then one of them recognized a car approaching from behind and flagged it down.  It was a woman and her kids who was driving the course supporting her husband who had been in the same group I'd been in.  She offered me a ride to the top, so we put the bike on the rack and took off.  A mile or two later we were picking our way though a long string of riders going 10 mph.  It was slow and tricky passing riders one at a time on the narrow road.  She stopped to hand her husband a bottle and then we continued up to the top where I got out and tracked down someone from the ride to see if I could get a ride back to the parking lot.  Their policy was to prohibit race volunteers from transporting anyone who was injured, so although my bike got a free ride back, I had to wait for an ambulance, which was a terrible waste of an ambulance.  At least I got to cheer on a number of people I know as they came over the top, and just as I was getting into the ambulance David rode up, so I gave him my transponder to return to the event folks.  When they loaded me in I glanced over to see one of them unwrapping a it to start an IV.  Really?  I asked what they thought they were doing that for, and they really did not have an answer, so I told them to stop.  Anyway, it was a long ride to the hospital in Dahlonega.

The ER was fairly quiet so I was all x-rayed and finished before the others had finished their rides.  They had put me in a sling, which is marginally better than nothing, and handed me a CD with the x-rays, so I waited in the waiting room for about an hour until Graeme and David could get over there to pick me up.  By the time were ate something it was starting to rain. I had taken some hydrocodone, so Graeme was put in charge of driving.  The weather got worse and worse as the night wore on, and by 10:30 or so we decided it would be safer and smarter to book a room in Montgomery and finish the drive in the morning, so we checked into a nice Hampton Inn.  By 4:15 am the next morning we were on the road again, but the weather didn't seem much better.  I checked the radar on the iPad and knew we'd have a couple more hours of driving in the dark and rain.  Just to twist the knife, one of the headlights burned out.  Luckily, I had a spare bulb in the car, so we were able to stop at a gas station and, thanks to David's skinny arms, change out the bulb and gas up for the final push.  It was about 9:30 am when I got home.  I rushed off to a 10:00 funeral and then headed to work where I got just a little bit done when I wasn't nodding off from the narcotics.  Yesterday I went to see Dr. Savoie at Tulane's sports medicine institute who suggested we put me into an x-brace and see how things look a week from now.  We will probably be able to avoid surgery for this one if things look like they are progressing.  In the meantime, it's kind of hard to type and get dressed and write, and I've been using the mouse with my left hand a lot, but the pain is not very bad as long as I stay still.  Guess I'll be off the bike for a while.  Naturally the weather should be spectacular.....