Category Archives: Cycling

Donut. A Hurtz Donut.

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A week later and nary a peep from me here.  It’s become somewhat difficult to write about riding when I’m not riding.  I’d feared this point when I started writing back in the summer, knowing that winter would arrive one of these days, putting an end to my daily dose of the bike.   It wasn’t winter that stopped me admittedly, but the timing couldn’t have been much better as the past week our weather has been miserable to say the least.

My visit to the hand surgeon on Wednesday was fairly uneventful.  I have a bone “flake” – thereby giving credence to the notion that I’m flaky.  This is not any old flake however – it’s a flake from the pisiform bone, complete with tendons still attached.  Or something like that.  The terminology used by the doctor escaped me to be fair, right up until this: “it will take a long time for the pain to go away”.

He poked and prodded my wrist, confirming the conclusion he’d already drawn looking at the X-ray.  He was kind enough to run through things a couple of time though – No pain here?  No.  No pain here?  No.  No pain here?  No.  Some pain here correct?  Yes.  And highest pain here.  The last one was more of a statement than a question.  This was good as the bolt of lightning shooting through my wrist, arm and brain at that moment obscured any more eloquent answer than “mmpphaarrrrgh”.  He seemed to take that as agreement though.

“A cast for 6 weeks is what we normally do” he proclaimed, “but if you’ll promise to be faithful and wear it all the time, we’ll put you in a splint instead”.  I nodded in agreement as he still had his thumb dangerously close to my flaky pisiform.  He ushered me off to the splint lab, spoke briefly with the tech, promised to come back with a card so I could make an appointment for a follow-up in two weeks.  He left and never returned with his promised card which left me a little disappointed.  Not to mention that after showing me how painful my wrist was and telling me I’d be suffering pain long into the future, there was no discussion about pain management.  Thankfully I had several  percs left from my trip to the emergency room.

The splint process was quick and painless but not fully covered under Alberta Health.  Half way through the process she remembers “oh yeah, the splint isn’t covered – you’ll have to pay for it”.  At $21 it didn’t exactly break the bank but it still caught me by surprise.  At any rate, the emergency room splint  was in fact more comfortable and more rigid but lacked the ability to be removed and re-installed.  It was also large enough to make typing a single-hand + single finger affair.  My new plastic splint makes my hand and arm sweat and is woefully uncomfortable but it has two advantages – I can remove it to wash it (and me) and it allows the use of most of my typing fingers.  There’s a catch though – because it’s all plastic and removable, it doesn’t really prevent me from doing the dishes any longer.  Ah well – was a nice break while I had it.

The Plastic Splint

In truth it feels pretty good these days.  I spent a couple of hours cleaning the kitchen and mopping the floor and that left me hurting a little, but not nearly as bad as earlier this week.  I’m no longer driven to distraction most of the time which means I can be at work and actually do something productive.  At least in theory.

I snuck out to the garage last night to grab some tools while hacking a KVM switch and took a moment to gaze wistfully at the Rescue Bike.  Of course I thought immediately about going for a ride.  I swung my leg over and grabbed hold of the bars, checking the fit of the splint to the grip.  Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your perspective) the absolutely freezing, miserable wind and snow made that  a wholly uncomfortable proposition and I quickly returned to the warmth of my basement.  Not without a firmly planted seed.  Must get some studded tires first.  And I bet I could ameliorate any of the more serious fitment issues with an application of my heat-gun and some patience…

This picture makes me imagine I have a neck brace too for some reason. Weird.

Much Ado about a Minor Emerg

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It’s 5:30 on a Saturday night and instead of enjoying a date-night with my wife, I’m sitting in the Emergency room.  I caved, no longer content to sit around the house complaining about my hand I’ve come to get a proper opinion.  I’d delayed taking any action beyond some (ineffective) Tylenol and my hand is displeased with that. The entire back of my hand is swollen and my range of motion is limited, not to mention painful.

Now 6:45 and they’ve had a cursory look and sent me off for X-rays. The three electronic X-rays took no more than 1 minute – more time to walk over there and back than to take them. Now it’s a game of hurry up and wait. And wait. Why do hospitals have the TV so loud?  This TV is so loud I can’t hear myself think.

7:30 8:00 now and in typical you-might-need-attention-but-you-aren’t-bleeding-from-the-neck fashion, I am still hanging out and waiting. A First-World Problem to be sure but a real damper for date-night just the same. I have run into an old co-worker who’s easing my boredom for a while, regaling me with tales of marital discord and the ensuing fight over the spoils of divorce. Nothing highlights the kindness of the human spirit better than a good-old-fashioned adulterous divorce. Nurse tells me I’m next. Here’s hoping.

I’m looking for a diagnosis along the lines of a dislocated wrist bone, some painkillers and a “go home and no washing dishes for a week”. I’m guessing this is unlikely. I don’t believe it’s broken however – a woman who came in behind me just left with a cast on.  I presume she was worse off than I, hence her quicker move into the ER, therefore it must not be broken.  I’m conflicted about this of course. If it’s not broken and I’m just being a whiner, send me home. Don’t make me spend a long-weekend Saturday night in a waiting room full of sick people so you can send me home half-way through the made-for-TV Tracey Gold special.

8:45 “Ah, you’re the fellow that fell of his bike”.  Yeah.  Well, no.  That’s inaccurate and misleading.  Did I have an accident while riding my bike?  Yes.  Did I fall off?  Uhm…no.  In fact how is that possible?  Well Doc, I was riding along the road when all of the sudden a car came out of nowhere honking it’s horn and spooking my bike.  It reared up on it’s back wheel and then bolted across the intersection and that’s when I fell off”.  No.  I did not fall off.  Quite the opposite really – my bike threw me violently to the pavement when I threatened to take it through the mud.

Apparently if the X-ray has a nifty arrow drawn on it, that's a bad thing.

9:00  It’s broken.  A small fracture they tell me.  Seems that sore spot I’ve been rubbing is sore because it’s broken.  A “wee break” he says.  Result?  Some percocet, a splint and a consultation with the hand surgeon.  Wait…what?  A surgeon?  Uhm…  Seems much ado for a “wee fracture”.  At least I don’t have to have a cast.

The staff have been great tonight too.  The nurses have been friendly and…hey wait…that looks like cast-making supplies on the tray in front of me.  That’s not cool.  Hopefully there’s some mistake.  I’ve managed to escape a cast despite a career in motorcycles and a propensity for pushing things – I don’t want to ruin my track record.  We’ll see.

Anyway, the staff – excellent.  First rate.  Despite being rather busy they’ve all been excellent.  I almost want to hang around and chat a while longer – date-night is flushed for this weekend and it’s late enough now the house is likely quiet.  No worries – I haven’t been splinted or cast or whatever it is they’re going to do.  I’m not going anywhere yet.

It seems a splint is “half a cast” and I’m getting one.  I didn’t understand at first as I watched the nurse wrap my arm up.  From palm to elbow it’s wrapped up and I’m thinking if this is half a cast, how big is a bloody cast?  Now I see – the splint is a fiberglass mold like a cast, but only on the bottom side of my arm.  Base layer, fiberglass support, top layer.  Glad it’s winter.  Almost all of the inconvenience of a cast (rigid and immobile) without the durability.  Splint stays on until after a visit with the surgeon.

So there we are, 5 hours, one lightly broken hand and an uber- fashionable splint later.  On the upside, I can’t get this splint wet so perhaps the “no dishes” thing might work out.  I’m guessing that’s not going to go over well at home.  I also see this putting the brakes (ha!) on my riding for the immediate future.  That and a lack of studded tires.  Or not…  In the meantime I’m going to drive home, get a percocet in me and get some sleep.  Right after I post this.

 

WWTS*?

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It starts out innocently enough, a favour for others, a gesture of appreciation if you will.  Today being Thursday it is of course Doughnut Day.  Day of Sugary Carbohydrate Invasion.  The Thin End of the Sugary Wedge.

They look innocent...

Most days I shuffle these evil things off my desk and out of my office but today I was invincible – no need to move anything.  I subsequently paid the price for my arrogance.

It started with a Tim Bit – a doughnut hole marketing scheme and as it turns out, an even thinner wedge end.  It is food from the devil.  Evil.  The bite-sized bit lures you into thinking you can have just one but it is truly the gateway drug.  By the time the dust had settled, there was spittle and drool splattered about the place, my desk littered in doughnut-remnants, evidence of the carnage that had just ensued.  The look on my co-workers faces was a mixture of horror and disgust with a trace of admiration.  I won’t add to you, my dear reader’s discomfort by putting an exact number on the victims, it is enough to know it was sufficient to feed a house of aspiring runway models for a week.

Having not ridden for a week I was already enjoying an overwhelming sense of self-loathing before my hubris had been thoroughly vanquished by the devil’s food.  Full of easily-accessible sugary fuel and disdain for my activity level, I took advantage of today’s Chinook – the wind, not my bike – to get out for a ride before the sun went down.  I headed north along the canal path, a section I don’t often get to ride.  It’s been under construction most of the summer and eventually fell off my ride list which is funny because I don’t have a ride list.  From 32nd I headed for Nose Creek Park and its short, steep hills to try to erase some of the day’s earlier carnage that was settling into my waist.

I made it to McKnight before the universe reminded me I know naught about riding in general and less about riding in faux winter.  As I came out from under McKnight, in a gentle right-hand corner, I realized the shadow across the path was in fact a thin layer of wet mud.  Immediately after that realization I learned that it was in fact a thin layer of very slick mud.  The front end washed out and two things went through my head in quick succession:  WWTS and; oh man – these stretchy pants are almost new!  Luckily for me, the slick mud gave way to a skiff of gravel providing a relatively low-friction surface on which to smash my hip without the added insult of melting the lycra to my thigh.

Enter here but beware the trolls

Fall down here (the trolls did it)

Remarkably there was no damage to the stretchy pants and no damage to the bike save for more character on the previously-characterized bar end.  My pride was bruised but otherwise I seemed to have escaped unscathed.  My right hand hurt a bit as one might expect when it’s called into duty to save the elbow.  I straightened my bars and brushed some of the dirt off before I hopped back on to continue my ride.  Get-off or not I was going on a ride.

As I rode out to Nose Creek Park, I couldn’t help noticing that my wrist was in fact much more tender than having just suffered a slap-fest with the pavement.  Putting any weight on it was excruciating but I could pull, break and shift without any drama.  I pushed on determined to get a few kilometres in before the sun disappeared and made things more treacherous than I’d just discovered they were.  I didn’t get far before my wrist, the rapidly setting sun and an unexpected head-rush that affected my hearing <?!> made the decision to turn around a prudent one.

I cycled home nursing an increasingly tender wrist, wary of anything that looked like it might be shadow, mud, water, gravel…I’d lost some confidence in the stiction of my front tire.  As a made my back along the path I’d just travelled, my hearing returned to normal but my wrist did not.  I stopped to take a picture of the offending mud before I made the climb back up to Centre.  I passed another cyclist headed for the mud and tried to warn him as he went by “it’s slippery under McKnight!” though it probably sounded more like nonsensical gibberish.  I imagine him skipping across the same gravel thinking to himself “oh…that’s what that guy was yelling about”.

Upon arriving home nurse Tracey tended to my wrist with a combination of homeopathic  treatments.  I’m starting to think it may be in worse shape than first thought as it’s rather swollen and stiff.  We’ll see how bad it feels in the morning and if it’s worse I’ll get it looked at after the Remembrance Day service.  In the meantime I’m extremely pleased with the performance of my MEC Roubaix stretchy pants – no holes, no damage of any kind.

One skid, no flesh damage, no holes - perfect.

I also have a new appreciation for roadies who turn and flee at the slightest indication of imperfect road conditions.  It’s time to – at the very least – put on the knobbies.  Studded tires – you’re in my future.

 

 

 

 

*What Will Thomas Say?

It's just a flesh wound...isn't it?