Out for the Count - Once Again

Mellow Monday

I had been starting to feel like I might be getting in shape. Temperatures had been much more to my liking, and turnout for the early morning rides had been rising. The Tour de La was rapidly approaching, and we'd been working on nailing down some of the logistics.

Last weekend, the Saturday Giro had been rained out, but by 7:30 am the weather was past us and the roads were starting to dry up, so I went for a levee ride on the old Orbea. Why the Orbea?  When you ride on the levee bike path when it's wet, there's always a 50% chance of a flat. It's something from the aggregate they used for the asphalt. So I wasn't too surprised when I flatted a bit past Williams Blvd. I had been considering extending the ride out to the Spillway, but the flat pretty much killed that idea, so I fixed the flat and turned back at the fence at the parish line where the levee work begins.

The weather for the Sunday Giro was much better, and although we had a good turnout, a few of the usual instigators were missing. That kind of kept the speed down just a bit, allowing almost everyone to get into the paceline at one point or the other. As Giro Rides go, it was a pretty good one, and so I ended the week with a bit over 250 miles despite the shortened ride on Saturday.

On Monday, we somehow managed to get in the full ride before the rain, so that was nice. Then, on Tuesday, we had a good-sized group on hand for the longer ride out to the casino on the lakefront bike path. There was a pretty significant east wind blowing, so the ride out there felt smooth and fast. Of course, that ended when we turned around. Our speed had been around 25 mph all the way out, but was down to around 19 on the way back. Jess was on hand for this one, but somewhere along the bike path on the way out she disappeared. I figured she needed to get back early or something. Well, we were maybe halfway back when we saw her on the side of the bike path struggling with a flat tire. We stopped and got it fixed, of course.

Levee ride - status of the ongoing levee work

Wednesday morning I rushed out to the lakefront to meet up with the WeMoRi. It was dark, warm, quite windy, and humid. A trio of riders, that I had mis-identified as a car, flew past me on Lakeshore Drive. There was no way I could catch that, but of course I figured there would be a group right behind them. I looked back on Marconi and saw ... nothing.  When I got to Toussaint, I rode around in little circles trying to decided what to do. I figured maybe the rest of the group had turned off of Lakeshore Drive early because of the wind, so I had to decide whether to chase, or continue down Marconi to meet those three riders on their way back to the lakefront. Just about that time, a small group of three showed up, which turned out to be the remnant of the main group, so I jumped in with them. There was no way we were going to catch the lead break. Those guys must have been five minutes ahead. We kept up a pretty good pace anyway. One rider turned off somewhere along Wisner. 

Then, on the way back to the lakefront, Eddie C turned off at Toussaint, leaving just MJ and me. I was in front as we crossed Toussaint. It was still pretty dark. Anticipating the big section of missing asphalt that we've been skirting for the past month or two, I was way over to the left side of the right-hand lane with my hands just resting on my brake levers, when I hit a little bump/hole in the asphalt. That threw me forward, and took my hands off the bars entirely, so now I'm in some kind of warped supertuck position with basically no control over the bike. The insides of my thighs were rubbing the front tire as I tried to regain control, and ultimately lost it, going down pretty hard. That did some damage to the almost-new helmet, took some material off of my right shoe, and as I soon began to suspect, broke a few bones. I could barely lift my right arm at all. It didn't feel like a broken collarbone, at least the ones I've broken before, and I suspected it might be the scapula and ribs.  The Garmin's incident detection had been activated, sending a message to my wife who quickly called to see if I was OK, which I was not. MJ hung around until Candy showed up to bring me over to Lakeside Hospital for x-rays. The verdict:

No acute cardiopulmonary abnormality. Suspect nondisplaced fracture of the right lateral 3rd and 4th ribs without pneumothorax. Minimally displaced fracture of the superior border of the right scapula.

So I guess I'll be out for the count for a few weeks. With the Tour de La coming up next week, we are trying to get some additional volunteers since I won't be able to lift anything at all. I have an appointment for next Wednesday at TISM. In the meantime, I'm surviving on hydrocodone-acetaminophen and cyclobenzaprine. The shoulder is still quite painful, making some simple things, like lying down or putting on socks, a long and complex operation. 

For the Tour this year, JoePaul has been a huge help with sponsorship. He also has some T-shirts in the works. I ordered the trophies and bib numbers (going with just one per rider this year), and got some little imprinted tape measures made. The criterium will be at Lakeshore High, where we did the collegiate criteriums some years back. It's not a bad course, actually. The road race and time will be the same as last year. I haven't re-marked the turns and the TT start, finish, and turnaround, yet. I'm hoping I can do that Friday afternoon. Normally, I would have done a ride on the course this weekend and re-marked everything, but that just wasn't feasible under the circumstances.

Here we go again!