The Bread Basket

Some clarification has been asked for in regard to my recent affinity for bodily damage in the region of my crotch. First, the latest accident was NOT car related. I was clocked by another rider and hit the ground with a very efficient transfer of momentum through me to the ground. There was not a scratch on me or the bike. I hit the pavement and busted myself up like smashing a Cadburry Chocolate Orange into wedged pieces. Second, the 9/2006 Cadillac Attack was Pelvic focused and breaks were in the Pubis and Ischium. My current injuries are to the head of the Femur and the hip joint and the shattered elbow (more on that later).

Folks have been confused by the pelvis/hip location since Cadillac Jack and asking about my crotch always seems to come up with dinner guests and at parties. I'm a little embarrassed to explain the differences with personal knowledge of now breaking both. It's like knowing which bail bond guy to go to because of the options, one has experience with all of them.

The pelvis and hip relate kind of like how the collarbone and shoulder function to each other. More Starsky and Hutch than Laverne and Shirley I'd like to think. When I broke the pelvis I tore all the attached tendons and soft tissue. The process of rehab involved among other things, breaking up the developing scar tissue with a stick -called Graston massage; in the top inside edge of my leg just left of my junk. Recovery from rehab was in itself a form of rehab and included a lot of time sitting on ice packs. That lasted from January till June of which time I was able and interested in sitting on a bicycle 2x a week at best.

The current injury is all hip and no ice rockets to the crotch. The break is along the lines of what Floyd Landis went through when he initially broke his hip. There is more to Floyd than just the doping saga at the Tour, a whole timeline of his life that has little, if anything to do his testosterone level one day at the Tour de France. Anyhow, the head of the femur has been bolted, pinned, plated and screwed back to the femur and requires 3-months of no weight bearing what-so-ever for the bone to properly "grow" around the hardware. The issues at hand is to see if the blood vessel in the hip was damaged during the surgery. If so, it will likely show up in the next 2 years as the bone dies. Should this be the case, then we'll be looking at a hip replacement. So keep your prayers on that blood vessel!

The elbow is a different story. Most all the bones that make the elbow joint are fractured. Yet no cast! In my expansive experience of breaking bones, only now have I been recognized for having the maturity to not move what's broke. Casts' don't heal bones; time, rest, cacium and vitamin D heals bones. That means you Ice Cream! The arm is in a sling and the PT comes 2x a week to help me move what little range of motion I have into more and more flexibility to keep the bicep and tricep and rotator cuff from locking up as would be more likely with a cast. The irony is that the broken elbow is what put me in a wheelchair not the hip. Had I only hurt the hip, I'd be on crutches. So the sooner the elbow heals and is strong again, the more freedom I'll have to move around and such. By that point I might have the walker back out for use. Or even better, a baby stroller.

Field Test

I recently test drove Providence Portland's in bed urinal. While better in many ways to a catheter tube with it's far less invasive, storable design, there are limitations when one's hip and/or pelvis flexibility is in question. That said, installation and removal are exponentially easier than the alternative.

Call it a bottle, receptacle or jug, the model tested has it's drawbacks. Keep in mind that this unit was put through quite a rigorous battery of tests, ridden hard and put away wet. What is important to know is to have a place for it after use. Cafeteria staff in their best efforts to serve are far better at waking patients up to inform them that one can order meals over the phone at their convenience than actually clearing dirty dishes and meal trays from ones bedside table. Add to the bed side table clutter a universal bed, tv and nurse calling devise the size of a Vietnam war era Motorola cell phone yet with an electrical cord the capacity of a refrigerator, a similar era corded digital phone, newspaper, assorted magazines and lung exerciser (for another post) and suddenly finding a place for the steaming bidon of piss to settle far enough to not taint anything like say a box of kleenex is suddenly a real estate nightmare on the portable table/entertainment center.

Should one's 6-mo pregnant wife empty the receptacle because lord only knows when a nurse might answer a call light, latex gloves are usually nearby. however, be warned snapping them on Doctor style is great for tv but in actuality stings like a bitch.

The bottle itself is simply designed like many things of PRO caliber. While Sven Nys might ride certain heavier but more durable pieces of equipment in liue of lighter but less resilient bits, the jug tested is more CHEAP than PRO. The polyethylene terephthalate material that disposable water bottles are made of and also suspected of causing cancer; is what our test bottle is made of and more importantly where I was stuffing my junk for regular re-use. Good thing the Mrs. is already pregnant! Our next kid may just end up going to Community College. I'm not dissin the CC after all I had 3 1/2 wonderful years there. I'm just sayin that like most bike racers if my kid wants to be PRO -that's alot of scratch for white bar tape, white shoe covers and Assos kit. The road from the CC to the world is more Arranburg than plaza San Remo and unbeknownst to the American cycling consumer, the road to Roubaix ends at a coal mine not an office tower.

Much how a Freshman English class is the same but different at Harvard or the CC, this bottle has similar but different features to other receptacles used in the past to cleanly retain urine whether on a plane or a train, in a hospital gown or around town. The handle has a glued seal across it. this seals the handle from functionable liquid storing capacity. In the moments when calculating rate of flow, distance from edge of the opening and angle of the bottle, having an extra 2 oz overflow reservoir can't be a bad thing. A guy works hard to start the race at all, there are few things worse than racing past the finish line for another lap after it's all over.

The opening is rough like a Flemish climb and of course smells about the same. Flanders and this bottle were rough on my wiener. The lid has a major recession that screams out liability in the event of fluid displacement like a teen-ager in a puffy coat wielding a disposable camera on Alpe d'Hueze cries MORON. All in all, I rate the Prov Portland in bed urine receptacle a 3/10 for things I can and have pissed into. The PRO solution is ceramic -like all things it's all about ball bearings these days.

This however is UroPRO!

Le Saison 2008

This season started like all others on January 1st but first came the end of last season.

2007 began with a walker and had high points with some rare smart riding on the track, a few big pulls at PIR and a 2-up break in Bend at High Desert to tease myself of what once was. Then came cyclocross. In the day, I did some cross training rides with an aging PRO who learned the skills in France. Rob taught me how to properly install toe straps and clips so as not to break them. Skills I wouldn't need in the new millinium. But I never raced cross with any sense of purpose or consistency until 2007. Suffice it to say I am the crappiest cyclocrosser in town. The proverbial white guy dancing or shirtless red head at the beach. I'm the guy you look at and say, "Damn, he'll feel that in the morning!"

Cross ended at the Portland USGP in early December. A just found out she was pregnant. I got a new job. I travelled for about 6 weeks living primarily on martini's, rare steak and tirimisu. After all the rehab, all the ice packs to torn tendons, and all the pain of a healing pelvis on a bicycle seat, the padded hotel chairs were a welcome relief. Then my pants quit fitting.

Fast Forward to today the official start of the 2008 season. There's no bike races on Wednesday's in town till June you say. The season started today because when I got word the Mrs was not feeling well and needed me to take care of the evening duties and chores, I looked at the darkening skies and decided that mowing the lawn would be the better choice than going for a ride.

In the prime of my fitness at the peak of summer I drink one beer for each lawn I mow. There is the tiny lawn between the street and the sidewalk. Then the main front lawn from the sidewalk to the house. Then the back lawn and of course the alley. The alley is key to keeping up as I need the space to practice my cyclocross dismounts and remounts where no one will witness the furry I call skills. At anyrate, Lawn care works out to 4 beers and I don't drink the diet crap in a can!

But I'm a long way from peak fitness and this is only the Primavera Classic of the season. The first time the shed get's it's ears lowered. Really, this event was more to test the work of the mechanic who maintains the equipment. Make sure the bar tape is wrapped without holidays or that the spark plug is clean and that the bag won't derail and spill clippings. This is PROTour stuff.

How is the 2008 season different than previous seasons? Today, no beer. This might just be my first clean season. There is a new track bike in the basement and few miles in the legs. The last time I started a season this out of shape I had a phenominal summer on the track.

The catch? The NewmaNugget is due just after LeTour wraps up and we find out if the winner blew a dope test or not. Smack dab in the height of crit and track races and infact during the weeks P-Town is like a poor boy's Super Week in that a master's rider can race 5-nights a week and even a weekend day or two. Just when a focused cross racer simmers down from the road racing and begins to prep for mud and muck use that well maintained alley to stumble over wooden barriers with a perfectly good bike on his shoulder.