A further change

Michelle and I had a surprising conversation this afternoon, initiated by her, in which she said that she realizes how much riding means to me, and therefore wants me to feel free to continue—as long as it is with strict limitations. For now, I should do no more long rides on the road (such as to Saline), and should ride primarily off-road on bicycle paths or trails, other than the short route to and from work once my broken clavicle has healed up enough for me to resume. I'm certainly good with that, and grateful to her for this show of mercy—and as far as getting to trails concerned, it isn't as if they are right outside our door (with the exception of the Lohr-Textile Greenway, which begins only a few hundred yards from us), but it is not as if they are inaccessible either. So I am certainly breathing easier tonight.

Changing conditions

In the wake of Wednesday's fall where I fractured my right clavicle, I've been thinking a lot about my cycling, and have come to some difficult decisions. I am concerned in light of the several falls I have experienced over the last few months, and particularly because, with this one, I have a clear mental image neither of the environment that led to it, nor of what I did wrong. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground, unable to get up, and someone called an ambulance and away I went.

I have really enjoyed riding very much, but it seems as if it is not a safe mode of exercise for me. So I have listed my bike for sale on craigslist, and am going to investigate the possibility of getting a recumbent bike, which I am told is more stable, or possibly even an adult trike. It's all up in the air at this point—but that's what I'm considering, anyway.

154th ride

Today was a highly disappointing day in my riding career—and even to put it that way is a substantial understatement. After riding to work again this morning, and then working a longer than average workday (until nearly 4:00), I set off to ride to our 5:15 Weight Watchers meeting. I had been planning to ride by way of Saline again, but unforeseen delays in my afternoon work duties ruled out this roughly 13-mile ride for time reasons. So, instead, I planned to ride south on State to Textile, and take it west to Maple, and then back up to the Weight Watchers meeting. But those plans took a detour, when, riding on State, a little south of Ellsworth, I fell. After my August 29 fall and broken rib, I had vowed to try harder to really focus on safe riding. Particularly distressing to me today, though, in retrospect, is the fact that I do not retain a clear mental image of the environment, or of what I did wrong. I am not aware of having taken any chances, or unnecessary risks. But clearly, I did something wrong—someone insisted on calling an ambulance, and they insisted on taking me to University Hospital and on calling Michelle, who met us there.

In the course of treatment through the ER, I was administered a set of x-rays, as well as a CAT scan of my head (since initial reports indicated that I was acting somewhat "goofy"—but then, I think this is just my nature). Pleasingly, the CAT scan came back completely normal—but not so the x-rays, which indicated a rather severe triple fracture of my right clavicle. Upon hearing this, I was happy to note that there was some justification in my having accepted the trip to the hospital (though, initially, I was a bit chagrined that I hadn't found it within myself to get up and keep on riding).

I am happy to have been sent away from the hospital in a nice navy blue sling, emblazoned with a large maize block M.

As I write this, at home some hours later, I am experiencing considerable pain and discomfort in the shoulder. That has increased greatly since the initial event, which was largely pain-free. But as the magnitude of it has set in to my system, it seems to be overcoming me.

In light of all this, it seems almost unimportant to note that I rode roughly 4 miles today, in about 26 minutes.

153rd ride

On another completely gorgeous day to ride, I almost precisely replicated yesterday's ride—all but the last couple of miles before getting home, when I took a slightly varied route. But I rode again to Saline on the way home, for a 13.1-mile ride, and when combined with the morning's ride to work, this gave me 15.2 miles for the day, in 1 hour and 26 minutes.

152nd ride

After giving myself a day off yesterday—a rarity—I was glad to be able to get back to riding today. After riding to work this morning and then working a fairly good full day, I did a long ride to give me my fullest day of riding since returning on September 14 after my August 29 broken rib, going to Saline and coming back up to Ann Arbor by a 12.8-mile route, to total 14.8 miles for the day in 1 hour and 27 minutes.

 

Back in the spring, Doug Franklin and Doug Tidd counseled me, on my rides to Saline, to avoid riding on Michigan Ave. (US 12) and Ann Arbor-Saline Rd., respectively. I have followed that advice diligently since that time. However, today, after careful consideration, I decided to ride a route that included a short stretch on Michigan Ave. My reasons were that it was short (only a couple of miles), and the road there is straight and well surfaced, with excellent visibility, and for the most part broad paved shoulders on which I was able to ride (and also, today, I was riding it in brilliant daylight, at 4:00 p.m.).

151st ride

I rode once more with my friends Kahle Strickland and Dave Palmer this morning, as we did back on the morning of July 4. This time Dave and I both went up to Kahle's house in Brighton, and then we went to ride in the Island Lake State Recreation Area, where Kahle and I have ridden previously. We would all have like to ride farther, but I was somewhat pressed for time, and am also still recovering from my broken rib, so we kept it down today, riding 13.2 miles (to bump me just over 1800 miles for the year) in 1 hour and 11 minutes. We'll surely do more in the future, though!

150th ride

After riding to work again this morning, and then working a relatively full day, I rode to church to do Sunday's projections, and then when I came out to ride home, it was raining pretty good. So I went back in, fired up the computer, and checked the map on weather.com, to discover that the line of showers was just passing by. So I waited a few minutes, and then set off in a light sprinkle (with my flashing lights going) which soon stopped. And by the time I got home I was happy to see that I had done 9.3 miles for the day, in 53 minutes.

149th ride

This morning, I had to forgo riding to work, since I need the car to get to handbell rehearsal at 6:00 today—then I'll pick Michelle up late, since she has to stay at school for curriculum night. After getting out of work on the early side of average, I had hoped to leave at 3:30 and do a 13.5-mile ride to Saline. But at that hour, the Tigers will still in the final stretch of an exciting matinee game against Seattle. So I stayed until they finished it, a little past quarter to four, to take the four-game series from Seattle 3-1, and in the process reduce their 'Magic Number' for clinching the title to 4. (That is, any combination of four Detroit wins and Cleveland losses will guarantee us the Central Division championship.) Now we hope that Cleveland cooperates, so that we can clinch the title at home this weekend before the home fans, in our final home series of the regular season (unlike 2011 and 2012, when we clinched on the road).

Anyway, as a result of this late departure, I did a considerably abbreviated ride, of 7.6 miles in 40 minutes, so that I would not arrive at handbell rehearsal all out of breath.

EVENING

Since my ride this afternoon had to be shorter than I had planned, I was delighted when our handbell rehearsal finished this evening in time for me to work in another short ride before picking Michelle up from her marathon day at school. So I rode the Lohr-Textile Greenway, that broad paved path that parallels Lohr Rd., running down as far as Textile. This replicated my first ride when this journey began, back on January 19. (Though it took me 61 minutes then, as opposed to 29 minutes tonight—so I'm glad to see that I have made some improvement!)

And, given the dramatic decrease in daylight since I last rode in the evening, I was very glad for my flashing headlight and flashing taillight, and to be doing the bulk of my ride off-road. This 5.6-mile ride (in 29 minutes) gave me a total of 13.2 miles for the day, in 1 hour and 9 minutes.

148th ride

Today I rode to work again in the morning, but then had a 5:00 store meeting to attend at the end of the workday. Due to this, I was unable to do a longer ride to Weight Watchers as I usually do, and so rode directly there after the meeting, for a day's total of 4.9 miles in 31 minutes.

147th ride

This afternoon, I did what was easily my longest ride since my fall and broken rib on August 29, and then resuming riding this past Saturday. I rode to work again this morning, noticing that it's really cooling down—my memories of riding to work just before my injury were that it was frequently in the seventies, even at that early hour, but this morning I believe it was 33°! However, I'd better get used to it, if I want to continue to ride through most days this winter, as I hope to.

Then after work, I rode the shorter (slightly) and less demanding of my two routes to Saline. I wanted to hurry because Michelle and I are going to a big concert, and treating ourselves to a dinner date first, and I wanted the chance to spruce up before she got home. Anyway, even with this short(er) route, my daily total was not inconsiderable—11.6 miles in 1 hour and 2 minutes. (Not a very good pace, but at least I met the goal I like to aim for of riding at least an hour a day.)

146th ride

Today was a good day, in that it represented my return to riding to work for the first time since my fall and broken rib on August 29. Going out to the garage to get my bike, I felt a combination of novelty and old familiarity.

After work I felt conflicted—on the one hand as if I could and should do a long ride home via Saline, but on the other hand remembering Michelle's expressed desire that I work back into it gradually and just ride straight home today. Two of my best friends among my work colleagues, Robert and Craig, both expressed the opinion that I should do the shorter ride and let a longer one wait until later in the week. In the end, I compromised, and did a ride slightly longer than a direct route home (5.6 miles vs. 3.4), but less than half the distance it would have been had I gone to Saline. This gave me a total ride of 7.7 miles for the day, in 41 minutes.

The brief stretch I have to ride on State St. south of Briarwood, where drivers are making their way onto I-94, is an area about which Doug Tidd has expressed reservations about me riding it, calling it "dangerous" (particularly in the late afternoon, with people in a hurry to get home from work). Well, it lived up to this billing today. As I was riding in the lane leading up to the ramp onto the freeway, a hurrying, careless drive in a dirty older white 'muscle car' came zooming up behind me, then squealed on its brakes, and swerved to my right around me, the young male driver screaming at me from behind his still-closed window, and throwing me a one-fingered salute. Yet, again I thank and praise God for His protection, and continue to ask Him to help me to employ all the care and good judgment I can in my attempts to ride safely.

145th ride

After Michigan's putrid first half against Akron, I allowed myself to be tempted by the gorgeous weather on this resplendent late summer/early fall day (brilliant unbroken sunshine, and a temperature in the mid sixties) to go out and do my first bike ride in a little over two weeks. The broken rib I experienced in my fall on August 29 is not yet 100%, but it was easily good enough for me to ride easily (and carefully). Michelle said that she was going to go ride, and I asked her if she'd like company. So we did a slow, easy 2.8 miles together through the subdivisions near our home—a route which is familiar to her—and then, when she felt she was done, I went back out and tacked on another 6.7 miles, doing twice a loop that kept me fairly near home, to give me a daily total of 9.5 miles in 55 minutes. Feels great to be back at it!

                    

I got home to find Michigan losing 24-21 to Akron with about 3 minutes left—but I was just in time to see them engineer a touchdown-scoring drive, and then barely hold off Akron from scoring to win it themselves.