Proven Medical Fact: Bicycles Cause Insanity.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a blog entry.  I’ll still get to the Thailand entries, but let me catch you up.

I still have this damn 5k goal.  It’s stupid probably.  My body was not for running made.  But my buddy MC gave me a good suggestion last winter before I left for Thailand.  Maybe I should try a bike.  It would ease the stress on my body, allow me to get my heart rate up and maintain it, and build strength.  Now, I have to admit, I don’t like to give credit to MC for the good advice he often gives me; but, it was good advice.  More better (ha! Cringe grammar Nazis, cringe!) is that I used to ride my bike everywhere.  

When I was 8 years old and visiting Holland where my mother is from, I went with her uncle and biked all over Holland on a bike that the uncle tied blocks to so I could reach the pedals.  When I was in junior high and living in Lima, I used to bike to school every day that I could.  I used to bike to a friend’s house who lived way out by the reservoir.  I remember it took about an hour and a half to get out there.  And back then I was young and fast.

MC was going to help me buy a bike when I got back from Thailand.  Well, we kept trying to get together but our schedules just never meshed.  But after talking to him and my other “biker” friends, I made a list of the things I should ask and look for on a bike.  In the meantime, I took out my old bike a couple of times.  But the bike is too small for my long legs and I wasn’t liking it much.  Still, I made the commitment and purchased a bike online from Dick’s Sporting Goods.

When the bike came, I found out the frame was too big.  Still, I recalled that old bike with the blocks on the pedals when I was 8 and I told myself I could make it work.  Sure that had been a woman’s bike without the bar and this was a men’s bike, but I’m older and wiser now…

Famous last words.

I got the bike home and like any excited new bike owner, I decided to take it for a spin around the block before the approaching rain got here.

I got on the bike easily enough.

I wobbled a little.

The wobble wouldn’t have been a problem, but it seems the handlebars hadn’t been tightened.

So I couldn’t correct said wobble.  I fell.

Hard.

On the concrete.

People in a passing car stopped to ask if they needed to call 9-1-1 while I sat there in the grass and watched the blood run down my leg.  I waved them on and told them to please just forget they’d ever been around.  I got up when I was sure my knee cap wasn’t broken.  The bike was mashed up in the front.  My entire leg was skinned up on one side and bruised on the other.

The next day I returned said bike to Dick’s.  I have to give them kudos, they did everything they were supposed to, to make things right.  They replaced the bike with one of a proper size, they made sure it was put together properly the second time.

I get on the bike.  I ride it around the neighborhood.

This is really nice.  I really like this.

Over the next couple of days, I take it out around the neighborhood again.  Getting comfortable with it.

Then I take it on the road, heading to the park near my house and back.  Each time, I’m going a little farther.

I have had the bike for one whole week when the weekend of hell hits me. 

It starts off innocent with the promise of fun—that’s how all evil things start, with the promise of fun…hell, that’s how my marriage started.  I’m going to meet my editor on the islands.  I decide to take my bike with me and after having lunch with her, I’m going to spend the day riding around and meeting up with some friends who are camping.  First, the close ferry is sold out.  I head 45 minutes across the bridge to Port Clinton to catch the other ferry.  I get it.  I get the bike on.

I am on the island!  Yay!  God, I’m so happy.  I love riding my bike.  Finally an athletic activity that I really really enjoy.  I get on the bike.  I ride.  It sounds funny.  I get off.  I look at it.

The back tire is flat.  Not just a little flat, but no air at all off the rim flat.

I walk the bike to the park.

I lock the bike up.

I meet my editor.

I drink.

I call my camping friend who is the kind of person who would have a bike pump while camping.  He comes to my rescue.  He and his wife teach me how to get the tire back on the rim.  But the tire isn’t holding any air.

I walk back to the ferry.

I drive back home.

One youtube video later, I have the tire off and the inner tube out.  

I go to Dick’s.  They don’t have the right size tube in stock.

I buy a patch.  The patch doesn’t work.

I have had it.  I have reached the end.  Screw it all.  Screw the universe.  I’m buying an Xbox and three dozen packs of Oreo cookies!

The people at Dick’s are really nice and patient.  The bike tech takes the bike and tries to put a patch on it as well.  They order a tube.  They’re going to pay for all this.  Then the manager has an epiphany.  They replace the tire with the good tire of the crashed bike.

I go home.  I think I'm happy.

Tomorrow I will ride.

Right after I mow the lawn.

While mowing the lawn, the stupid welfare brats across the street have apparently left a superball on the sidewalk.  Or maybe they planted it, the fucking bastards.  Afterall, I’m the neighbor who tells them my dog will eat them if they step one foot in my yard.  I’m the one who tells them no when they want to borrow things and suggests that their parents get a job so they can buy things without having to humiliate themselves with begging and stealing.

I, of course, don’t see the ball until after.  This is after all, the weekend from hell.

I roll my ankle.  I hear a pop.  I don’t really fall down.  I stand there for a second.

I can put weight on it.  So, it must not be broken.  I finish the lawn.

But the more I go, the more the ankle hurts.  I opt to go in and put some ice on the ankle before trimming.

Turns out I’m putting ice on it for a week and popping ibuprophen while it continues to swell.  When I walk, it crunches.  I’m wearing work boots to work because I can’t wear tennis shoes.  I certainly can’t ride my bike.  I fell when I had an ankle that could catch me.

Finally I go to the doctor and ask what to do.  Me and my really crappy health insurance prepare.

I get vicodin and xrays.

The xrays show that I did indeed break said ankle.

So, it’s off to the specialist.  Which is probably going to give me a nervous breakdown since I have to pay for this crap.  The irony that the kids across the street get medicaid which I pay for with my tax dollars but I can't pay for my own does not escape me.

And it’s on with a soft cast AND an air cast.  Robo-Jo.  My nephew says I look like a stormtrooper.

I have been ordered off the bike until the cast is off.

The universe wants fat girls to stay fat.  This is BS!  God, I’m so fricking bored.  I can’t drive for long distances because I have to ice the damn thing all the time.  I have to hire someone to mow my lawn.

This bike thing is getting rather expensive.

I have been reduced to watching bad television.  I can’t read on vicodin; I read the same page five times and I still don’t know what it says.  I can’t write on vicodin; it doesn’t make sense when I’m sober.  I can’t work in the yard.  I can’t work in the garden.  I can’t walk the dog or play with her.

And there’s this itch…this itch right by my heel.  Hidden and protected under a hard shell it’s festering and keeping me awake at night.  But at least I have this really cool helmet to wear while I bang my head against the wall.