A few more things about me and my bike.

Speaking of bikes, I've hardly been riding. Since October 24th, when I was officially cleared to go back to doing things that normal human beings do, I've only put about 220 miles on the bike. Of the 23 days that I've been back at work, I've only biked in for six of them.

The first week back I tried to do too much too soon and had to take a few days off. The second week back, I had some other problems. The last two weeks I've had this really nasty head cold that refuses to go away once and for all. It's really annoying. I think the cold is mostly gone now, though.

I'm planning to celebrate Thanksgiving by waking up early and going out for a ride of some decent length. I hope to do the same thing on Black Friday while most people are out shopping. To that end, I'm going to have to be careful not to get run over by any crazed bargain hunters. I'm also going to have to be careful to not overdo it and get myself all screwed up again. I really want to get back into the routine of riding to work every day.

Driving is annoying.

I've got a bike, you can ride it if you like.

Dear Diary,

It's been a long time since I've written. I can only offer heartfelt apologies and try to assure you that a delay such as this won't occur again. Anytime in the near future. Maybe. It's tougher to write on a regular basis when you're not just sitting at home recovering from a bike wreck. Although when I look back at October, it does seem like I did a fair amount of posting the first week that I was back at work. So I guess I don't really have any excuses. I'm just lazy. I think of things all the time, I just never actually end up getting them down.

Since I only ever talk about my bike, that seems like a good place to start. It's a road bike again. If you recall, I switched out the drop bars for flats when I bought it back at the end of April.

Well, Chainlove kept putting up Ultegra triple brifters (along with all of the cables and everything) for only $145 (retail is like $400 or so), and I couldn't hold back any longer. I bought them. Which meant that I had to get a road bar. Two days later, Chainlove conveniently provided an Easton EC90 Equipe Pro for a very good price. I found the front derailleur I needed on eBay, also for much lower than retail and took the whole box of junk over to Pro Bikes (Honestly, when are these guys going to update their website? Maybe I should offer to do it for them in exchange for a nice new mountain bike) to have them install all of it. All I had to buy from them was the bar tape and a set of Salsa Cross brake levers.

So why did I get it converted from road bars to flat bars and then back to road bars again? Well, I initially went from road to flats because that was what my first bike was, and I wasn't sure I'd like road bars. I didn't think I'd be into the narrower steering surface. But I had these Ergon grips with nice magnesium bar ends, and I found myself wanting to use the bar ends almost all the time because it was just more comfortable. Not coincidentally, this would be essentially the same hand position as if I was riding with a road bar/shifter setup. I figured if I wanted to have my hands like that for the majority of the time, it would probably make sense for my fingers to be in close reach of my brakes, as opposed to having to shift position to get back to them like I had to do with the flat bar setup. When Chainlove started putting up those Ultegras at that price, I decided to just go for it.

Did I spend more money doing it this way? Of course! That seems to be what I do best. Back in April, I had to pay for the labor to switch from road to flat. Now I had to pay for all of the new components. Then I had to pay for the labor to switch from flat to road again. On the plus side, the Portland originally came with 105s for the shifters and front derailleur and now I'm rocking Ultegras, so at least I have that going for me. And... the stock road bar on the Portland was a $50 Bontrager Race which pales in comparison to the glorious carbon fiber of the Equipe Pro. Would I have ever considered upgrading if I had kept the road setup to begin with? Probably not. But I really shouldn't be thinking about that, right?

One other thing to note is that the majority of this upgrade was subsidized by me selling a bunch of CDs on eBay. I have more at home that have to go up, and those should cover the balance. I also have all of the parts from the flat bar setup that I need to try to sell. Probably also on eBay. So it's not like this upgrade put any sort of dent in our finances. It's just that if I had been smarter, it never would have had to occur in the first place. Oh well.

I apologize in advance for only ever talking about my bike.

The ride home last night went really well. No complaints from the left knee, although the right quad was a little noisy, but nothing like the knee had been earlier in the week. The quad provides a teeny bit of pain, the knee made it hard to even keep pedaling. I'll take the quad over the knee any day.

My friend Chris met me, and in a pleasant turn of events, he didn't have to call an ambulance or anything to pick me up on the way home. It was pretty nice. The hills through Schenley didn't feel anywhere near as bad as I thought they would. It's so good to start getting back into the swing of things.

I've been riding with some 700x23 tires this week, which I thought would feel faster since I've been riding 700x28s since I started riding a year and a half ago. The thing is, the 23s have a recommended pressure of 100 with a max of 110, whereas the 28s were 120. I've been keeping the 23s at about 105, and I just feel slower. I'm sure most of that is due to me not riding for a month and just generally getting out of shape, but I'm going to throw the 28s back on tonight and see if they feel faster/slower/any different at all.

No problems on the ride in this morning, either, except for one minor technical issue. I bought a new light the other day since it'll be dark on my way home starting next week, and I'd like to have a better view on dimly lit trails. Anyway, it seems that when I have the light in the blink mode, it interrupts the (wireless) signal from my computer down to the magnet on my fork. When the light is off, or on a steady beam, it seems fine.

I have a few options. I can try moving the light a little to the left to see if it's a proximity thing. Maybe I can move the computer a bit to the right, as well. I could also switch the data transmitter from the wireless thing to a wired setup. I already have the stuff at home, so that wouldn't be a big deal, but I really do like having fewer wires/cables.

Some would say I could just deal with the fact that I won't get data while I'm running the light on blink, but those people wouldn't know me very well. I'm pretty obsessive about knowing how long it took me to get somewhere and how fast I was going in the process.

I think I'll run over to REI at lunch today. I need a pair of liner gloves to go with the windstoppers I wear when it gets cold. The windstoppers are good, but even in the low 30s my fingers start getting numb. I'm going to need more once things start getting a little colder than that.

It looks like I'm going to be able to get 100 miles in for October by the end of today. I'm pretty happy about that since I wasn't allowed on a bike for the first 24 days and it rained all day on the 25th. It'll be interesting to see how November goes.

Okay, let's talk about magic.

The two day break seems to have helped. While having to drive to and from work kinda sucked, my left knee was pretty happy about it. I rode in this morning and received no complaints from anyone. My face was a little cold, but when it's 29 degrees outside and you go down a hill at close to 30mph, that's going to happen. The good thing is that the hill isn't unbearably long or anything like that.

I need to give a shout out to my physical therapist Jon Conley Dr. Ricoh Aficio 3260C, who was able to give me some stretches to try out before riding today that should have also helped. I didn't get to do all of them, because I just didn't have enough time, but I was able to try some of them.

I really need to get an earlier start when I'm riding in. I didn't actually pull out of the driveway today until 7:45, which is about thirty minutes later than I should have left, especially since I'm still a little slower than I was pre-concussion. It'll probably take a few weeks until I'm all back in the swing of things. Either way, I need to be out of bed earlier, and on the road earlier.

It's great to be able to ride in again. The sun came out in full force this morning, and everything was so gorgeous and bright that I just wanted to keep pedaling past my building.

Yawn.

Drove in this morning. It wasn't completely terrible. Could have been a lot worse. I hope my knee appreciates it, although it was still busy working the clutch. There's no such thing as a free lunch, you know.

The good thing about driving today is that I need to run to some sort of office supply place at lunch to buy some padded CD envelopes so that I can then go to a post office and use them to ship stuff that people bought on eBay last night. It's nice to see some things go out the door. Nicer still to get a few dollars for them. Too bad there's still a lot of stuff that didn't sell.

Man, this whole being back at work thing is a drag.

Such a letdown.

As much as I hate to do it, as much as I feel like I'm failing my country when it needs me the most, I think I'm going to have to break the streak tomorrow. The number of consecutive days that I've ridden my bike to work will stop at 65.

My left knee is just too unhappy with the way things are going right now, and it's going to need at least a day of rest, maybe two or three. I rode in today, and it wasn't so bad on the way in, because that's mostly flat or downhill, but there was steady pain on the way home, and climbs were pretty unpleasant. I tried lowering the saddle a little, but that just changed the focus of the pain from the back of the knee to the sides of the knee, which actually felt worse.

I was really hoping that I was going to be able to get 100 miles in for October, but I'm not sure if that's going to be a possibility at this point. I'm at 46 right now, which means I'd need another 54 by the end of Friday. I suppose if I take tomorrow and Wednesday off and everything feels better, I might be able to ride on Thursday and Friday, and then I'd hit 100 without too much trouble. We'll see.

Having to take a month off to recover from major head trauma was a real bummer.

My legs still work!

I rode 23.5 miles this morning. It went pretty well, but the back of my left knee was pretty annoyed with me about the last ten or eleven miles. I hope it's feeling better by tomorrow morning, because I'm planning to ride into work.

Weather's supposed to get crappy as tomorrow goes on. Oh well. Guess that's why I bought waterproof shoes. And why I already have a helmet cover, rain pants, and a water/windproof windbreaker. Should be a blast.

Wow. Tomorrow will be my first day of work in over a month. It's going to be weird. And I'm going to have a lot of stuff to catch up on. Fast.

Whee.