It's that time of year when the morning rides seem a little more stressful, and not necessarily because they're faster. Lately, like since I crashed on a training ride in the dark because I slammed into a block of concrete nobody saw, I've been keeping my headlight on the highest setting a lot more. Man, that really drains the battery fast, though. I'm recharging it practically after every weekday ride. Earlier this week Brandon got hit by a car over on Robert E. Lee near the 17th street canal. I hate that stretch of road, between the canal and West End, where there's no shoulder at all and lots of broken concrete and manhole covers on the right edge. Brandon was kind of lucky, at least as far as injuries to, and got away with a broken thumb and ton or road rash. I've been following Steve Tilford's blog and it sounds like he's having a pretty rough time of it. It's been two weeks since he crashed on his head in a training race after hitting a dog and fractured his skull. Seems like the severe headaches haven't really diminished much at all yet. For someone like Steve, two weeks off the bike, all by itself, is torture. I think it's going to be a lot longer than that before he's able to ride again, though. I'm pretty sure Steve should not be blogging or reading computer screens or pretty much doing anything, since the consensus seems to be that all those things tend to interfere with recovery from a TBI, but I'm really not surprised and can certainly understand his need to stay connected and keep the blog going. I'd probably be doing the same thing.
So I've been trying out a couple of new things on the bike lately. Since I'd cracked my Giro Aeon when I crashed (apparently both times), I got one of the new Giro Synthe helmets. As usual, I got the small size. My head circumference is precisely at the upper limit of the small size and the lower limit of the medium. Comparing the old and new helmets, it's clear that the inside of the styrofoam is pretty much exactly the same shape and size. Problem is, the new Synthe has this kind of plastic band thing that is supposed to create some space between your head and the helmet. Naturally that meant it was too tight since I didn't have any space to spare at the limit. As I usually do, I made some minor field modifications to the back to accommodate my apparently elongated skull, and then another modification to allow the band thing to sit flush against the front of the helmet. That seemed to make it work OK for now, although it was still fairly tight. It was obvious, however, that once winter came and I wanted to put a skullcap underneath it, I was going to have a problem. So, since they were on super closeout sale (I'm guessing there's a new version coming out soon), I went ahead and got a medium size as well. That resulted in a couple of problems. For one, the straps are fixed at the back of the helmet, unlike all of the previous ones I've had. That means that one side can't be shortened at all. Since my head is the smallest for the medium size helmet, that put the buckle so far over on the other side that there was practically no adjustability left for the other strap. I ended up folding the strap over itself and stitching it to shorten it, with kind of solved that problem. The other problem, though, is that the larger helmet comes down far enough on the front and sides that it's contacting my glasses and kind of pushing them down on my nose. Not good. So perhaps I will now have a warm-weather helmet and a cold-weather helmet. We'll see. It's kind of the same problem I've had all my life trying to buy pants!
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| Pretty nice weather for the end of October. |
Unfortunately, nothing seems to be helping with the wrist injury much, although it has changed a bit. Initially, the thing that was hurting the most was around the base of the thumb. Now, that's feeling a lot better, but the outside of the wrist seems to be hurting more. I don't get the sharp pain when I hit a bump any more, so that's an improvement, and just riding along it doesn't hurt very much in most positions. For some reason, though, when I lift it off the bars to change position, it seems to hurt the most. I guess it's just one of those ligament things that is going to take some time to heal.
I've been up on the river levee bike path a couple of times this week and it looks like everything is open now except for whatever temporary closures are still needed way upriver where they are building a new conveyor for the big grain elevator. Apparently when they need to work on that, they have to shut down both the bike path on the levee and River Road. Getting around that is practically impossible.
This weekend is the start of Wes' cyclocross series. I was scheduled to officiate on Sunday in Baton Rouge, but got Ricky to find a substitute so I could either not go at all or at least leave early. Candy is having our annual Halloween party on Sunday evening, and with the last race in Baton Rouge not ending until 3:30 at best, plus probably an hour and a half to get home if I cut and run, that would be cutting things a little close, plus she'd be without a car for the last-minute grocery store trip(s) that always seem to be necessary. I'm trying to decide if I should drive up and help out with the early races with the larger fields and then head back before the Cat. 1/2/3 race starts. I'd kind of like to get in some more practice with CrossMgr anyway. We've had nearly a month of picture perfect riding weather around here, and it looks like it will last through the weekend at least. In fact, it will be pretty warm. Looks for certain we'll make it all the way through October without even having to search for the knee-warmers.
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