Leathers

If you have been keeping up with my block, you probably read about how friends have been encouraging me to get on the track in light of my need for speed.

Since getting on the track requires full leathers, I went out and found me a set. I must say that I have been pretty fortunately in a lot of my purchases. I've been able to snag pretty good deals on a lot of the high $ items required to ride. Getting a full set of leathers has been no exception.

I went to BuyMoto: A local mail order/hole in the wall parts place. They just happend to have a set of Alpine stars leathers that someone special ordered but it didn't fit them. Unfortunately the guys at BuyMoto forget to tell the customer that he couldn't return it if it didn't fit. Sucks for BuyMoto but it was good for me. They sold me the leathers for about half price.

Yehaw!!!!

I only have had one real opportunity to use them: my first canyon ride, which will be detailed in a future posting.

Stay tuned kiddies.

On the road again

So about 3 weeks ago (I know, I've been lax in posting updates) I finally got my cast off.

I got to the Keiser Hospital to get my cast off and I just could not wait to get it off. I had tried to ride my bike with the cast and it was alright, but I figured it would be so much better to ride with the cast off.

Once they cut the cast off, I realized that the pinky and ring finger of my right hand
were pretty much useless.
It took me about an hour to get my ring finger to move at all. Don't even get me started about my pinky.

When I got home, I tried to ride. But since I hadn't used my right hand without a cast since the accident, I didn't realize how beat up my hand was. My palm was very tender, and my wrist was quite painful. The bumps really hurt my wrist. I rode about 15min before I realize that my recovery was far from over and I was just entering the lastest stage, namely getting my hand working again.

I couldn't ride my bike but it turns out that I could ride my moto. Funny enough, riding my moto actually helped my hand. The suspension sheild my wrist from the shocks and all the twisting and grabbing the brake exercised my hand and allowed it to strengthen.

After three weeks. My ring finger has about 90% range of motion and my pinky still is only about 60%, but my wrist is almost back to 100%. So, I'm happy to say that riding is no longer an issue. It has taken me a couple of weeks till I didn't feel like crap for most of the ride. I'm beginning to finally feel reasonable strong on the bike.

I'm not saying I'm in shape. Far from it. But I don't feel like I've been off the bike for a month.

I rode for a good 3-3.5 hours on Saturday. Pretty easy, but it still left me very tired and sore the rest of Saturday. Yes, I still have a long way to go.

I rode around on the track for about half an hour on Sunday and I felt pretty darn good. The one thing that has really motivated me to get busy training is that Master's National Track Championships will be in San Jose.

FINALLY, Master Natz that don't require me to get used to a complete new state, track, time zone and require a $1000 weekend. I started racing track at Hellyer and got my first upgrade there. It's pretty much the same track as San Diego and the bay area are my old stomping grounds.

I'm pretty stoked to compete there, regardless if I'm really fit or not. I've got 10 months to get in shape and get my speed on. So San Diego trackies, watch out.

Physics is a bitch! AKA Odie and a car collide,

They say if you ride long enough you will eventually get hit by a car. Apparently my number was up. I started riding in the early 80's in my hometown of Brandon, Fl. About one or two years into riding (roughly 1983-85) I got broadsided by a van, but only managed to have a bruised thigh and a bent crank arm.

The intervening 20 odd years have been very uneventful. I have crashed less times than I can count on one hand and can thank my lucky stars. However Tuesday, Oct 16th wasn't so lucky.

At about 4:45, I was heading south on San Diego Ave at the end of a pretty nice ride right past the Thomas Jefferson School of Law and fairly abruptly, a blue late model Jaguar pulled out of one of the staff parking lots and stopped to check for traffic. Unfortunately the driver stopped in the middle of bike lane, right smack dab in my path. I had all of a fraction of a second to react, which as it turns out is only long enough to be able to identify the orientation of the car, the fact that it was stationery and it was as late model, metallic indigo blue Jaguar before my bike collided with said car.
The next image I saw was all black. I didn't lose consciousness, that blackness was due to the fact that my face was right up against the asphalt on the far side of that Jaguar.

I picked my face up off the pavement and let out a prolonged load groan as the pain of a full on face plant alerted my body that sudden stops are quite painful.

As I picked my face off the pavement I noticed something in my mouth. I spat it out (along with some blood) and low and behold it was a part of a tooth.

There were a lot of by standers around and they immediately called 911 and emergency services were on scene very quickly.

I finally picked my self up and turned around to check myself out. The first thing I noticed (other than the fact my mouth was all torn up) was my Tarmac S-Works was done! The impact had broken the headtube clean off the rest of the bike.Once I saw that I started checking my self out. I knew I had broken a tooth, shoved my bottom teeth THROUGH my bottom lip and my right pinky was pointing the in wrong direction, but that seemed to be it. My legs were largely unscathed except for some scraps.

However, I was pretty sure I was in a certain amount of shock and didn't feel much pain. I knew the real pain and soreness would come late.

I had a bystander call Suzy, mainly since by bottom lip was making speaking just a little tricky.


Suzy showed up at the scene within a few minutes and when she got there she started to freak out. The SDPD deputy had to calm her down so she wouldn't loose it.

The EMTs showed up and took one look at the bike and assumed the worst. They had be on a backboard and a neck brace in no time.

After a short ride lated, I was at UCSD medical center ER and one of the most annoying nights in a long time started. Since they were assuming that I might have a spinal injury they had to keep my neck immobilized till some one could look at my X-rays and rule out spinal injury. That didn't happen till noon the next day.
Yep, that's they way I stayed till noon the next day.

Anyway, in the trauma ward they determined that my pinky was broken and a rib was fractured in addition to my lip being cut. They put my arm in a cast and sewed up my lip with 10 stitches.

In the ICU, my best friend Scott showed up with some snacks and a commonly available sedative...a fifth of Captain Morgan's. Both of them need that.

Once they had a chance to calm down, things kind of mellowed out and they stayed with me till the head nurse had to threaten calling security to leave.

As you might imagine, I didn't sleep much that night. In fact I think I only got about 2 hours worth. I looked like hell the next morning.

Next morning was when all the various little injuries made them selves apparent. Boy-howdy was I sore!!! My sternum and left shoulder had taken a huge hit as well as my face. My jaw and all my front teeth were VERY sore. I was pretty much on a puree diet for the rest of the week.

I was hopped up on Vicodin for about 5-6 days just so I could get around.