Crashed My Bike

Update 9-12-21: Still a lot of pain at that one shoulder and for that reason have reduced weight lifting workouts to maybe four or five times a week. That huge, girl-hip-like hematoma bulge on the injured side hip has decreased in size to the point where the leg looks and feels almost normal. My tooth’s still chipped. I guess that’s permanent. I wasn’t being recruited as a male model, anyway.

Update 7-10-21: Still somewhat smashed up from bicycle wreck. No weight lifting for the past 9 days. Plan some cardio at the gym today. Some shoulder rehab work. Still got a knot literally the size of a tennis ball on one hip, but bruising has improved.

Crashed my bicycle on a short neighborhoodish ride last Wednesday 30 June. I was turning left at the bottom of my street on the way home – four to five tenths of a mile from the house. I saw one of my neighbors walking before making the turn and as I got to the turn, he’d got just to the point where I usually cut in to make my turn. I made a wider turn to get around him, recognized him and turned my head slightly to say, “Hello.”

Before I could speak, my bike slid out from under me and, although time slowed down for me, my reflexes were not quick enough to correct and avert the fall. Hit the pavement hard – left hip/thigh the hardest. Helmet kept my nose from getting smashed but did scrape my upper lip and chipped a front tooth. Scraped up both forearms pretty badly. Left shoulder’s bad sore. Some slight injury at the left ankle and left knee but small pain compared to the hip/thigh. Hands got kind of torn up, too, although my gloves don’t have tears in them anywhere. Just blood stains.

I cussed. Shit, I think I said. Maybe something worse. That’s just me, a sinner to the core. When pressed, like a tube of toothpaste, what comes up out of me is the usual foulness that afflicts much of humanity.

My left hip’s been swollen and jutted out the size of a baseball. I feel like I’ve got girl-hip on that side. I don’t know how females tolerate flaring out at the sides like that. My left thigh’s twice the size of my right.

My neighbor stayed and talked me through my initial shock and dizziness, then walked with me up the street to my house. I almost fell out when I first stood after the fall. Back at the house, I took an epsom-salt bath, texted photos of the injuries to my wife (out of town with our son for the holiday week), then talked with her a bit on the phone. Conked out early.

Saw the doctor next morning – palliatives and antibiotics. Glad I didn’t go to the ER. Nothing broken. I’ve made an appointment with a dentist to get the chip sealed. Funny. Chip sealed. Pavement. Har. Not initially intended.

I went to work Thursday and Friday, but left early Friday after seeing my appointments and documenting our sessions. Saturday, I didn’t leave the house. Injury has interfered with my usual weight-lifting regimen, as well as cycling. I’d hoped to paddle the Long Haul this weekend, but it’ll be a while given the state of my shoulder.

My bicycle, the Jamis Supernova I’ve been riding since 2014, is fine. My body served as bubble-wrap, insulating it from damage during the crash.

Life Since June

As my June 2019 post indicated, I’ve been focused much more on living life than photographing or writing about it.

Did I mention it here?  In June, for my wife’s birthday, I got it into my head to bake her a cake.  She requested a cherry chip cake made from scratch.  I ended up more assisting her than making it myself, but she was pleased.  It was good enough to eat.

Frosting also from scratch

Turned out the cake was edible

In July, my family and I motored north to my wife’s family farm in Indiana (I always hate writing ‘in Indiana’ but this time will not find another way to present that data) where my wife was briefly reabsorbed by her family, I spent a lot of time bicycling, and our son hung out with and bonded with his cousins.  I crashed or fell off my bike twice in the same day injuring a different shoulder each time and am still feeling the residual effects of one of the injuries.  Both falls were stupid and each was my own fault – while annoying, that truth actually does help me accept the ongoing pain.   Rode to Muncie, Prairie Creek Reservoir, small municipalities thereabouts.  I saw what looked like a heroes’-gate shrine of some sort.  No hero this writer, I didn’t walk through the gate although I found it open.

Indiana chip and seal road

Nazarene church parking lot where I crashed the first time.  Don’t ask.

Muncie Chic-Fil-A.  I eat there every year.

Only one graffiti snapshot.  Grassroots Christianity is an interesting phenomenon.

Patriotic display in a poor community.  I really liked it.

Heroes’ gate

Sometime during the intervening months, my car hit 222,222 miles, but I snapped the odometer photo at 222,223 – missed it by that much.

Missed it by that much…

Last month, my son and I finally painted the mailbox’s weathered, white wooden post.  My mother has averted her eyes in shame the past 5 – 6 years when she’s come over to the house to visit due to the deficient pride in ownership that neglect has evidenced.  The month before, I finally finished sanding out the damage perpetrated by our yard’s squirrels upon three of my 2005 Pouch RZ96’s cockpit ribs.  I’d left the kayak assembled outdoors and neglected it during a dark period in my life when I worked in an agency maybe best described as the unfortunate-kid-from-the-dysfunctional-family-down-the-street of law enforcement.  About three weeks ago, I re-varnished the squirrel damaged ribs.

I’ve been writing out my thoughts and ideas – working on a conceptualization of a variety of human interaction I refer to as “Shit Room Theory.”  It’s not ready for publication yet and I’m trying to figure out how to manage a lecture on the subject for my YouTube channel.  That said, in its embryonic form, the theory’s been of help to two or three individuals facing a variety of unpleasantness.

After having been in my “new” office since March of this year, I finally last month admitted to myself I was unable to make sense of the room’s shape, its space, for the purposes of hanging my stack of artwork and arranging my furniture.  Once I’d done that, I asked a family friend if she could help me out with the office and within the space of about 4.5 hours, she’d corrected and made sense of my office’s decor – I simply followed instructions and moved things, sorted clutter.  The woman’s a genius.  If it wasn’t a breach of my company’s rules, I’d post a couple of photos to prove it.

Within a couple of days of that, a family very dear to us relocated to Helena, Montana.  Theodore Zachariades has taken a position preaching at a Reformed Baptist congregation not far from that capitol as well as working with a Christian polemics website, Pulpit & Pen.  Although I haven’t had much contact with the Theodore and his family in the past year and a half, my world feels emptier with them hundreds of miles distant.  Not gone, as the Expanded Universe Mandos have it, just marching far away.

Yesterday morning, I assembled the RZ96 and with my son’s help loaded it onto my Volvo’s roof-racks and drove to a nearby slough with a put-in at a rural city park.  I gave the boy the good water shoes and wore a many year’s old pair from Wal-Mart that tore up while we were lining the boat through shallows.  This was his first time in a kayak, and he’d been nervous because he supposed the behemoth unstable.  By day’s end, however, he was comfortable enough to stand while underway to better view the scenery.  I hope you have all been well and that you enjoy the photos.

My son saw what he referred to as a “bees’ nest.” We steered well clear of this hazard.

Second lunch stop.  Dunno whether these were piers from bygone footbridge or part of an equally past-tense dam of some sort.

In the shallows.  That’s a Klepper paddle probably my age.  We did some umbrella sailing early on.  My son didn’t think it would work and was amazed when it did.

This is how I look when I’m smiling.  Obligatory selfie.

Life is for Living

As has been the case for the last two or three years, I’ve been busier and more interested in living life with my family than I have been in writing about it.  Here’s a little of what’s been going on:

A New Bike for 76

Last Thursday, I picked up a 2005 Gary Fisher Tarpon from a Craigslist seller for my son.  He outgrew and sold off his 1990s Giant Talon 7-speed mountain bike a couple of years ago and I’ve kept the money from that to go toward a new bike.  We tried to sell on Craigslist his 1970s Columbia Challenger in ride-able, original condition but got not even one query.  I convinced my son to donate the bike to a local bicycle club’s “reCycle” program for needy kids and told him I’d combine the value of that bike with the money from the Giant.  The Tarpon cost $65 – about 20 dollars over Bicycle Blue-Book’s valuation for an ’05 Tarpon in excellent condition, but the the bike was in such good shape I wasn’t going to insult the seller by offering less than 1/3 his asking price.  At $65, the bike came in well under the $327 the original dealer receipt indicated the seller paid in 2005.

1970’s Columbia Challenger – above.

2005 Gary Fisher Tarpon – yes, I have the original seat and plan to clean it up and install it if my son decides he hates the strange, spongy seat that’s on the bike, now.

Mother’s Day Breakfast

I haven’t really learned how to cook, but I can scramble eggs and am trying to learn how to make an omelet.  I usually arise on the weekends before dawn and head to the gym, then return to the house before my family is awake and make some kind of breakfast – scrambled eggs and tortillas with salsa, for instance.  On Mother’s Day, this year, I prepared a breakfast for my wife and son consisting of scrambled eggs, sausage patties, and biscuits.  I know, three things, right?  I was able to manage preparation times so that I cleaned up as I cooked and had everything on the table at about the same time.  Family was happy with my efforts, so I’ve done this two or three times since.

Water Snake – Poisonous? Probably

Sometime close to Mother’s day, my son and I rode a local greenway and, while looking at a creek from a low bridge saw this snake.  We saw a couple of others that day, as well.

Theis Holsters

For the sake of comfort, I wish we lived in a society where open-carry was the norm.  That said, Theis Holsters serve as a relatively comfortable inside-the-waistband means to concealed-carry my pistols.  I purchased the basic leather version – EZ Clip for my FNS-9c and the Single Clip for my Glock 42.

Lunchtime Rides Continue

Since the weather’s dried up a bit – and it was about the wettest autumn and winter I can recall here in Southern Middle Tennessee – I’ve been keeping the Miyata 610 at the office and riding 3-5 miles during my lunch hours maybe three or four days a week.  Here’s the uphill view from one of the routes I take:

2018 Indiana Tour de Corn

For the first time in two years, I was able to return to Indiana during the July 4 holiday, and it was great to be back.  This time, I only took a few short, 30-40 mile rides, but they were my longest rides of the year.  I took a lot of pictures.  Got my son’s bike properly fitted for him by Mike O’Neal at his Greenway 500 bike shop, got new stem there for my Orbea, and a Dirtway 500 jersey for my son.  My son and I  took two fairly short rides together, one of them on the Cardinal Greenway trail.  My rides were over chip and seal farm roads and incorporated the Cardinal Greenway, two of them were to Muncie where I stopped both times for a second breakfast at the McGalliard Chic-Fil-A.  Super courteous service even for sweaty, slightly overweight, middle-aged cyclists in lycra – I highly recommend this franchise if you’re riding through Muncie.

Indiana’s rural beauty was a daily joy to behold and be about in.  We enjoyed spending the week with my wife’s family and the kids all seemed to play well together.  We stayed out late and watched fireworks in a neighboring town.  I’ll post some photos, generally in the order in which they were taken.  Possibly some commentary about them, as well.

Orbea & Modikoso in their temporary home.

Here is an example of a chip and seal road in fairly good repair.

Fence with wildflowers bordering what looks like a hay field.

A trailside shelter erected w/in the past two years near Blountville.

Trail map near the shelter in the previous picture.

Mystery Quonset hut compound/factory at the intersection of Cardinal Greenway trail and Brady Street, Muncie.  Reminds me for some reason of that Mel Gibson film, “Forever Young.”  Makes me want to engage in urban anthropological archaeology when I encounter buildings like this.

Second breakfast – some kind of egg-scramble bowl with hashbrown bits (in box) and Powerade – at the McGalliard Chic-fil-A near the Cardinal Greenway trail.  Since my previous visit, a convenient sidewalk’s been paved from the trail to nearby businesses.

Don’t say you weren’t warned

Orbea juxtaposed w bike sculpture.

Grime.  Left leg looked just as dirty, but I thought the right sufficiently illustrative.

Did I mention it was hot during the week of 4 July?  As I sat resting after taking the snapshot of my filthy leg, I for some reason found comfort gazing at these trees.

Early on the morning of July 4, I set out by a different route.

I rode through a small town of about two hundred inhabitants.

Some windmills along the route.  Closer to Losantville, I got chased by a pit-bull terrier but came to no harm and enjoyed a pleasant conversation the dog’s owner.

After getting a little bit lost, I eventually found my way to Losantville where I ate a second breakfast of egg, sausage, cheese croissant at the Phillips 66 gas station at the intersection of 35 & 36.  Later that night,  my family and I attended a firework’s display presented by a patriotic veterans’ association.

Next day, in the afternoon, we took the kids to see The Incredibles 2 at the small cinema on the courthouse square about 30 minutes from the farm.

Rode out around Prairie Creek Reservoir and stopped here at Harris Chapel Church of the Nazarene to snack, sip Gatorade, and snap this picture.  The building’s got a water spigot around back that I’ve used in the past when I’ve run low on water.

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This is my favorite house near Prairie Creek Reservoir.

Later, I took pictures around the farm buildings while my father-in-law showed the kids the grain bins, gave them tractor rides.  The dads (me included) and my father-in-law got the sweep auger out of one of the bins using home-built jig fit to the old Ford tractor’s bucket and some chains.

That’s my father-in-law carrying the chains for the tractor bucket jig.  He is a man who knows his work.

That’s the Orbea alongside the White River at Muncie

Former train station at Muncie, now a Welcome Center or something of the sort associated with the Cardinal Greenway Trail.  That fat blob reflected in the leftmost window is me.

As of this writing, there’s still time for you to participate in this activity.  http://www.cgbikefest.com

This year, I for the most part resisted the impulse to photograph interesting homes along the trail.  I decided to respect the privacy of those who have no choice but to share frequently up-close views of their residential property with trail users.  This view’s not a close-up, though.  Remembe that movie, A Christmas Story?  It’s set in Muncie during the 1950s – these houses remind me of the neighborhoods in that film.

Here are a few pictures of graffiti from part of the Cardinal Greenway Trail as you enter (or leave) Muncie.

The flower in the image below reminds me of some of the graffiti I saw a few years ago under a freeway or other bridge while paddling downstream from Daleville to Anderson on the White River.

And this devilish, voo-doo image

On the way home to Tennessee, I saw an odd message on the back of an 18-wheeler’s trailer.  Drive like a boss as opposed to, say, a minion?  the unemployed? a musician?  I’m sure it makes sense to its target audience.

 

 

 

 

Mountain Goat Trail

Last Sunday morning, my son and I rode the Mountain Goat Trail at Sewanee.  This was his first ride on a Rails to Trails paved bike path, and he very much enjoyed the largely motorway-distraction-free experience, as well as the opportunity to ride through wooded sections that felt “like the middle of nowhere.”  The trail starts near Woody’s Bike Shop in Sewanee and ends at the Dollar General Store in, I think it is, Monteagle.  No more than five miles, probably closer to 4.6, each way.

The route includes a few gentle hills, maybe two secondary road crossings and one crossing at Highway 41.  Parking’s available at the Sewanee trailhead where there’s also an informational marker discussing the history of the former railroad as well as a topographical map of the trail.  At one point, there’s a 90 degree turn where the trail is constructed of wood and elevated over a declevity and around a property line.  In another place, gravel and sand tends to wash across the bike path from an adjacent gravel/sand pit or quarry – that’s the property around which the trail turns with the wooden elevation.

My son managed managed all of the trail well on his Modikoso superbike except for the gravel and clumps of sand across the path from the quarry.  He had to dismount and push the bike over it.  I rode over it on the Jamis Supernova with no real concern.  On the way back, oddly enough, we found the hazard had been, it looked like, completely washed away.  Odd, because although there’d been slight precipitation during the intervening time, nothing that would clear the trail.  Maybe somebody from the quarry hosed it down?

 

 

Lunchtime Bike Rides

While it’s not ideal for beachwear-model levels of personal fitness, full-time employment and a positive orientation to family is not entirely incompatible with good health.  Most days, weather permitting (that is, if precipitation’s no more than a gentle mist or drizzle and the temperature is above, say, 50 degrees Fahrenheit), I’ll ride a bike on my lunch break.  My usual course is no more than 3 – 4 miles and doesn’t take very long to ride, depending on headwind and sometimes traffic.  The pictures included in this post are from yesterday’s lunchtime ride.

Another Post Without A Picture

As the subject line says, another post without a picture.  Today, I changed the blog’s About page.

This weekend, I’ve made it to the gym twice – Sunday and this morning.  Early morning workouts when the gym’s nearly empty are good for me.  The Planet Fitness in Stepford finally installed a bike rack, but it’s outside and not visible from inside the facility, so that’s not going to be one of my cycling destinations.  The shopping center where the PF’s located is high traffic and I’d be bummed to lose a bike to a drive-by thief.

Saturday took a 21 mile ride and today 24.  On the way home today, I ran into a fellow I know from the bike club and we rode a couple of hill loops near his house.  Got rained on just a little.

In a recent post about the local Ride of Silence, I may have implied that most of the folks in the bike club are on the snooty and effete end of the spectrum, but truth is there’re a lot of people in the club I like.

This afternoon, I drove over to the county seat to have lunch with some friends there. My wife and son had driven over earlier, while I was still riding.  The women were doing hair-coloring and, as I found out when I got there, assembling garden furniture in the living-room.  Theodore and I played a couple of games of Sequence against his wife and Caution-Lady.  They won a game, we won a game.

Back home, I’m getting some of my laundry done for the coming week.

And yes, on my mind today those who have lost their lives in defense of this country and our God-given freedoms.

What I Want to do Today

is take a bike ride this morning instead of a gym workout, so that’s what I’ll do.  Before today’s scheduled thunderstorms hit.  I wore lycra last weekend for the first time in a year or two.  Man, I looked pretty awful, but the comfort was worth it.  Maybe will again, today.

Bike Days

I think this last Thursday or Friday was Ride Your Bike to Work Day and last week was Bike to Work Week.  Something to do with Bike Month.  Because I work about 30 miles from the house, riding to work wasn’t something I was going to do, however, I take a bike to work most weeks, leave it there, and ride at lunch.  I’ve established three or four different routes, changing them as various subnormals* leave their pitbulls unchained in front of their domiciles.  Shooting the dogs would unnecessarily complicate my workday, so I’ve found other places to ride.  Usually about three to four miles, maybe 15 minute rides depending on headwinds.

Last Wednesday was the local bike club’s Ride of Silence to honor those who’ve been killed while cycling and to raise awareness among motorists that cyclists share the roadways with them.  I’ve ridden along on one other Ride of Silence two or three years ago and had found the experience unpleasant but one that also proved valuable in terms of insight gained.

This year, I brought my young son along because it was something he said he’d like to do.  I wanted my son to ride with me so he’d have some experience riding with a group and some safe experience riding on the street with traffic present.

This year, I’d adjusted my expectations based on my previous experience.  My son and I showed up only a little bit early.  I didn’t bother trying initiate talk with anyone beyond a distant “Hello.”  Not surprisingly, a couple of kids with whom my son’s slightly acquainted from school did not speak to him.  Three people I really like spoke to me, and it was good to see them – it’s been over a year, maybe closer to two, I think, since I last did anything with the bike club.

My son had trouble riding slowly – about nine miles per hour – and some impatience with riders ahead of him slowing unpredictably.  He did a pretty good job of keeping his bike’s wheels from overlapping those of other riders.  He found the Modikoso uncomfortable at first, and I may need to get him a bike-fit appointment one weekend soon.  Amazingly, he was able to maintain total conversational silence during the entire ride.  Afterward, back at the house, he told me it’d been VERY difficult to remain silent during the ride.  He also expressed some disappointment that our police escort rode bikes instead of the cars with flashing lights he’d expected.

Overall, this was a much better experience for me than my last Ride of Silence, because I’d adjusted my expectations regarding the other participants and because I got to ride with my son.

*EDIT: I call them subnormals not because they live in mobile homes, have several junky-looking cars parked in their driveways, possibly perform shift-work through temporary agencies at the area’s few remaining factories, or even because they have pet dogs some of which are pitbulls. I call them  subnormal because they fail to responsibly keep their animals confined.  $.02

Modikoso So Far

Turns out I was able to find components around here beyond reasonable priced.  Ancient, road-rash, big Dura-Ace crankset plus Shimano 600 side-pull brakes.  NOS 105 9-speed shifters.  Seatpost and stem purchased from the frame’s seller.  Dura-Ace 9-speed RD I already had.  Same for handlebars.  The entire thing assembled at Woody’s Bike Shop.  Bike still needs a different front fork – carbon fiber, probably.  Also junky plastic bottle cage I had in a parts bin in the garage.  This frame will never make a cyclocross bike – rear stays clearance w brakes installed allows for maximum width 28mm tires.  Panaracer Paselas 650c in that width allow for a little surface versatility, but lack of clearance contraindicates success in muddy conditions.  My son loves the bike.  Here are a few pictures of the Modikoso so far: