The Third Shot

When Tulane sent out an email early in the week offering the Pfizer booster shots for COVID I figured I should take advantage of it. I'd had little reaction to the first shot back at the end of January, and only a minor reaction to the second shot a few weeks later, and since there had been reports of waning immunity from the vaccines it seemed wise to go ahead and get the third shot, especially considering my age and all. So I walked over to the vaccination space at the JBJ building on the 6th where there were a surprising number of people and got the third shot.

Later that evening after I'd fallen asleep on the couch, I awoke feeling achy and warm. Things only went downhill from there and I had a restless night of chills and sweats and a serious headache despite the Tylenol I'd taken. By morning I was feeling no better and decided to skip riding and, ultimately, also skip going in to work. I continued to be a little feverish all day. That night I slept a little better, although I woke up around 5 am pretty much soaked with sweat. Still, I felt considerably better than I had, and of course knew it was merely evidence that my immune system wasn't quite as crapped out as I'd thought. There were things to do at work, so while I skipped riding again I went in a little early. The day went OK, but it was clear I was still running a degree or two above normal operating temperature. It's now 6 pm, so close enough to 48 hours later, and although the headache is gone I'm still unnaturally warm. Hopefully homeostasis will be reestablished before tomorrow morning when I fully intend to do the Giro Ride.

I just installed a new chain and cassette, two new tires, and new brake blocks. I think my current cassette had somewhere in the neighborhood of 12,000 miles on it and was still doing pretty good, but my experience has been that Campagnolo chains like the one I just installed and a bit less tolerant of worn cassette cogs, so I went ahead and put on the new cassette without even checking to see if the chain skipped on the old one. Extravagant, to say the least!