Comeback Ride

Okay, so the wife just said the most dagger thing in the world to me - "it's kind of sad that we won't be going to Lancaster at all this summer." Yeah, we won't. That eats it.

We have a friend whose parents run a spar building business (the neato carbon poles that are all over the America's Cup boats - they build those - they're pretty good with carbon), who are at the Indianapolis 500 as VIP guests of some hydraulics company. Sounds like a freaking blast.

So, no, I haven't done my comeback ride. Hell, a crit around the condo on crutches was about as deep as I could dig today. It hurts like a beyotch when I stand up and my otherwise constantly elevated leg fills with blood. I swear I can feel the blood rushing down there, and definitely feel the resulting lightheadedness. But a lot of the bruising and soft tissue damage is healing up, so a lot of my movements are better supported and more pain free. It makes a huge difference.

But I have been thinking about my first ride back. It's still a frighteningly long way away. I'd love to think it could be the Marshall Ride, although it would have to be taken at pathetically slow pace. By the time I'm sturdy enough to ride outside, I probably will have done a lot of time on the trainer, so I won't be 100% not there, just 98% or so. It's just good to know that I can still take a next ride for granted, that I will be able to ride, I'm grateful for that.

In the meantime, I've got some other comeback firsts to look forward to - first bend of my knee, first pedaling circle, first step, etc.

Now hurry up and post some race reports from Kelly Cup and RFK 'cause my ass is getting bored and I need something to read.

The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking

Continuing with the pros and cons of having a broken leg:
Pro-
1. My wife can now administer hypodermic needles with the best of them. Hot Lips Houlihan. My blood thinner is administered with a shot to the belly, since it needs to metabolize in fat. So when it comes time to fire up the needle program for next season's campaign, our household will be fully ISO-900o needle compliant.
2. Think of all the dosh I'm saving not racing. No new crap for the bike, no entry fees, no driving to events. On the budget page, this comes out to a couple hundo a month in the summer. In reality, it might be a bit more than that.
3. I'm now pretty much caught up on communicating with everyone in my life.
4. I have time to watch all those videos that people put on their blog posts.
5. I am the proud owner of the world's largest fortune cookie, which is another way of saying that my team mates rule.
6. Work no longer interferes with my training schedule.

Con-
1. Pooping is a big enough effort that it requires a nap after. This really could go into either the pro or con column.
2. I'd rather spend money on Michelin Pro 3s than Flovinox.
3. The thing that the Pony either spends a lot of his flex spending money preparing for or doesn't spend a lot of flex spending money preparing for, depending on where a certain car is parked? It'll be a while.
4. Pain

That is all.

The Little Rollers

Here's my janky leg in its cast.

The blog scene lately has been a bit like a Cat 4 race, with no one wanting to lead things along, so I guess just like when I could ride I’ll hit the front and pull you poseurs along for a while. Kidding. Jesus, don’t any of you have a sense of humor. Anyhow, I have time on my hands and want to keep a reasonable record of this experience.

Ahh, the simple pleasures and tragedies of the modern wounded cyclist. On balance, the situation sucks. I say this not in a bitter or complaining way, but face it – no one would choose being injured and stuck in bed over being healthy. Even if I’ve sometimes succumbed to situations in life and let myself get a bit out of shape, I’ve generally been active in life. Having gone through a week in getting up to take a poop is noteworthy, I am going a little stir crazy.

I finally showered yesterday. Quite an ordeal, and a huge improvement in my situation. My general comfort level has markedly improved with cleanliness. The only times in life I’ve ever been that grimy were during long distance sailing races. Both situations are best handled with massive coatings of Gold Bon Powder.

Today, I shaved. I’m not much of a bear (in fact I have almost zero body hair) but six days of growth was starting to itch like a bastard. I’m a little bit concerned about the itchiness to come as my leg hair grows back underneath casts. Supposedly there is no way to have a cast without itching, and leg hair growing back has proven to be somewhat thorny in the past.

When the Oxycodone prescription showed up, it had 60 tablets in the thing. After taking one an hour ago, I have 32 left. Had I been taking maximum dosages the whole time, I would have about 14 left right now. Certainly I hope that this means I am being relatively hardy, rather than that my pain is really quite small and I am indeed a huge wuss,

Pretty restful sleep last night with just one big wakeup at 330 or so. After that I slept until 6, read about a half page of “Foreign Affairs” and then sacked back out until after 8. I have this feeling that sleep with drugs is worth less per minute than natural sleep. Probably there is no basis at all in this except for my Protestant work ethic purity thing, but I still try to let nature take care of things as much as possible. There are times when I dive headlong into the drugs bottle. After the effort of my shower yesterday, including stubbing my right heel on the bathroom door threshold and rocking myself with pain, I jumped after those pills like I was hungover and they were slices of bacon.

Work on my “ideal job description” continues. This is more or less an academic exercise but I need to crystallize some ideas about how to turn seemingly totally random and valuable parts of my experience into a cogent career goal. The days when I will want to muck around on site 55+ hours a week are finite, and I’m looking for a better balance of hands on versus mental masturbation type stuff. There are some likely outlets for all of this, so it isn’t just howling in the wind, but it’s not happening this month, let’s say that.

Speaking of all the mental masturbation crap I do, it seems like the world is waking up to the jungle drums of a world in permanent oil decline and meaningful scarcity. This is at the heart of a lot of what I want to do professionally. Several years ago, my then boss and I were comparing notes on what types of houses we’d build if it were up to us (I worked in residential building at the time). My ultimate house was one in which he’d lived a few years before – a small, funky, really well built old house near the water in a classic small town. At the time, the average new house size was growing by about 100 square feet a year. His little house had every one of my bases covered – small yard with lots of trees for minimal carbon footprint and maximum natural climate control. Small internal footprint for low energy demands, with additional money in top quality envelope features (windows, siding, insulation and roofing) to further reduce energy demands per square foot and increasing internal air quality. Sure, you needed to be a little efficient about space in the house, but big freaking deal. It was a neat place. At that time, you could never have sold that house en masse. Now, I’m betting you could sell those all day. Instead, we have an overstock of “Escalade” houses, with massive carbon footprints, huge yards, shitty envelopes, the need to fire up an engine any time you need so much as a gallon of milk, etc. All built further and further away from where people work. Lame.

There are some things that have jumped out as being really scary to think about going through when I do get back to riding, and a couple of things I will actually miss about being laid up 9actually just one).

Things that scare me:
1. I haven’t had nerve endings in my ass in about 2 years. Not looking forward to those rides after the first one where I have to rekill all of those pesky saddle nerves.
2. This thing is times such that it will be cold dark and crappy by the time I get back. I hate riding all bundled up clothes, in the dark, or on the trainer. Didn’t I just put all that shit behind me for another year?
3. Clipping in and walking in cycling shoes. If Jay Moglia is to be believed, I will be walking on crutches to my bike, then riding, then walking back on crutches. I suck enough at walking in cycling shoes, now I’m going to have to walk on them on crutches, no thanks. Maybe I will be the guy in MTB shoes and pedals for a while. Also, the torque of clipping in and out scares the daylights out of me. Just thinking about it gives me pain.

The good thing about being laid up:
1. Taking a pee is as easy as picking up my little urinal deal and having at it. It’s easier to pee when you are immobile. Fortunately I never had a catheter or I would be singing a different song for sure. Oxycodone turns your pee the color of a nice porter. Freaky.

My shoulder is finished with typing so I’m stopping. Have fun everyone and stay safe.

The Strangest Season

In an unforeseen development, this season's Chuckwagon programming is undergoing a seismic shift. Hopefully if nothing else this will forestall the incident of my first "So Faux Pro" beat down.

Having spent a reasonable amount of time on bike fit, I finally got my bed position dialled in last night. One throw pillow under the ankle with a down pillow immediately up the leg from that, under the knee. No head pillows, and absolutely flat on my back. This produced my first three-plus consecutive hour sleep. I was also able to stretch out my oxycodone (generic percoset) interval from 4 hours to 6 during the critical "between midnight and dawn" stage, which has thus far been the most difficult one. Some experienced players have warned me of the diminishing returns of pain medicine, so anything I can do to get ahead of the 8 ball there is cool. I feel as though I am sleeping on a playground slide, but having a good position, as we all know, is key.

Speaking of drugs, a prescription card can be a wonderful thing. The antibiotics and pain relievers costs a grand total of around $8 after benefit. The blood thinner, for which there is no generic? $430 for a two week supply. Good thing I didn't spend all of my flex spending money already. Lasik will just have to wait until next year once again.

The side effects of all this time on my back are interesting, as you can imagine. My skin is suffering. Constipation is a joy. Tell the folks at Gold Bond to keep the production line humming. Life is a constant ab workout as I do anything at all.

Instead of wallowing in misery, pain and pity I'm going to try and put these few unplanned free weeks to good use. This is going to encompass some professional as well as personal development. Life hands you a couple of weeks where no one really expects a lot of you, you have to take advantage, you know?

My wife is the best.

Smack-Crack-FARK! Redux

As some of you may have witnessed, there was a pretty large crash on Thursday night down at the Point. At the bottom of the pile was yours truly. It really started off innocuously enough - the swarm moved left and a rider got a bit too spooked by it. He came across me, crashed into the curb and sent me flying. On my way through the air, I hit one of the traffic sign poles and broke both the tibia and fibia in my right leg. The damage was pretty bad, but the surgery was successful. I will be on crutches for about 3 months, won't be able to drive for about that long, etc. Not bad for the first time I hit the deck, huh?

I've got to say a big thanks to all of the people who stopped to help. Most people probably weren't aware of it as it happened, but the whole group stopped the next time through, only to be shooed away by the cops on scene.

There's really not a whole lot to say about it, except just try and be careful. Also, remember that the whole pack is counting on your skills. For all I know the guy who went down in front of me may have had the skills of Oscar Freire, it just seemed like this was a pretty avoidable incident. Isn't it great that the guy who went down first was able to ride away with relatively minor injuries? Really, I'm just thankful that it wasn't worse. I very easily could have gone headfirst into the pole and been killed, so I have that to appreciate.

My team was incredibly supportive through the whole thing, Mrs. Wagon and I owe them a tremendous debt for all of their help.

Stay tuned for the x-rays. They are NASTY looking.

Cintura Verde

Fun Greenbelt tonight. DC traffic blows. Getting to Greenbelt from Alexandria ain't the easiest gig in the world. But the Nutella makes it all worthwhile.

There are four types of people at Greenbelt: the people who are there the whole race, the people who are there for none of the race, the people ride hard in the beginning and fade out, and the people who show up for the last two laps. The guy who won the B race tonight was one of the former group. Plus he has a really cool tattoo on his calf. Well done. I almost became one of the faders after a bunch of shenanigans early on and having done a big time trial workout last night, but collected myself. I don't really get the last group, but I need to keep the "training" in my training races.

I think I got sixth, with a solid sprint effort melding with really poor positioning to yield a decidely mediocre finish.

Lots of crap going on at work, but looking forward to kicking Drew W and Rob's asses up and down at Skyline on Sunday.

Quality Results

Not cycling results – 401(k) results. I had almost a 16% return in the 1st quarter. The key was a strong position in energy funds. I dumped as much into that bet as I could possibly justify, which in this case turned out to be the vast majority of what we’ve got. I’ve abandoned the textbook diversification/allocation principles. Without any strong reasons to move into anything else, I’m going to stand pat. There’s a pretty good risk that oil prices will fall severely (a risk that most would love to see come true), since a huge part of the run up in prices is more to do with currency fluctuations than anything else, but all energy is not oil.

I’d hoped/planned to make the 8:30 ride on Sunday morning as a reentry after my rest week. This plan was always at risk because of plans to meet friends at Old Europe for dinner on Saturday night. These particular friends are no strangers to a good party and things went according to script – great dinner accompanied by several beers (the Kostritzer is my favorite on their menu), followed by more beers and a relaxing dip in the hot tub. Getting home at 2 am pretty well put paid to any shot I had at the 8:30 ride, but I did make it to the 10:00, hoping for a better turn out than last week. No such. Started the ride alone, detoured up the Mormon hill, then ran into two guys at the CT Ave light and we went from there.

Being particularly hungover and coming off of a week of absolutely nothing, I had no idea what to expect from myself. Sometimes I felt like a million dollars, sometimes like loose change, with no transition between. On the Glen rollers I decided to give it a shot and see what I had, which was enough to drop one guy and make the other sweat, but no kind of decisive blow by any means. We regrouped at Travilah and rolled on. We became a permanent group of two on River and rolled pretty aggressively in from there for a great ride.

Now it’s time to get my act back together in order to be on form for the late June races. I’ll probably have some unpredictable peaks and valleys in the next few weeks, but the plan is to do some solid build period type stuff for 4 weeks and be ready for Tour of Washington County and Reston, with Murad thrown in the middle there as kind of a wild card. TT practice, some trips to Skyline, Greenbelts, all the good stuff.

I'm pretty predictable about how and why I get my head full of grit, which is what happened preceding last week. It's nothing to do with the actual mechanical riding or training. In general, I'm generous to a fault with my time and resources - organizing stuff, hooking people up with rides, etc. I've got an older brother, I know all about waiting for my turn. But then the "to a fault" part of generosity comes in, you realize that maybe everyone isn't willing or able to complement or repay your inputs, and things go badly. A week of keping my finger on the 'reset' button and recalibrating my priorities and responsibilities feels like it's put my head back where it needs to be.

The lady's taking me to the opera tonight. Handel. Maybe that will displace the Rush song ("Closer to the Heart") that's been stuck in my head for the past week.