August 2008

Life as a partial shut-in is getting increasingly boring. Which leads to not much to say or write. Beth says she is short of things to write about, too, except for her quads and the lobbying efforts to get ‘Keirin cut’ jeans manufactured.  At least she has her quads to write about!  Muscle atrophy resulted in  mine shrinking from an already pathetic 56 cm (same as my top tube length) down to a sub-50cm number.  Now that I am back on the trainer they have grown back to almost 51cm, but not something to shout from the rooftops about.

As bad as it is to be a partial shut-in, this weekend may make me long for more time at home.  The Wife got shamed into doing the San Ardo RR tomorrow, which means an inhuman wake-up time to get ready and drive the 2+ hours south for the race.   Uggh!  After the race we will drive further south for the rest of the weekend, and then the long haul north Sunday afternoon/evening.   Too much time in vehicles, and no time on the trainer or doing other recovery activities.    Don’t get me wrong: I loathe the trainer, but it is a means to an end (getting back strength and flexibility that are needed to walk) while sitting in a car gets me nowhere in terms of my current goals.  I suppose I should block off the next few weekends on the calendar so there are no more last minute surprises.

Now that I am permitted, by the orthopedic surgeon and The Wife, to ride on the trainer I am spending some time each day in the garage.  I am not a big fan of the trainer; if I cannot get out where the wind can blow through the helmet vents then I prefer to use the rollers.  But for now that is not an option.

The first task was figuring how to get on the bike, since I cannot just ‘throw’ a leg over the top tube.  The first couple of days were tricky, but I have picked up enough flexibility that I can stand on the left pedal and slip the right leg around the back and over the saddle to mount.  The first session was 15 minutes, and I was not sure I would last.  A lot of tightness and pain behind the right knee and some slight pain at the hip as the right knee is lifted in the stroke.  At first it was all sitting straight up, no bending forward.

I have increased the time on trainer by 5 minutes per session.   A couple more days and  I will hit the one hour mark.  Phew!  There is less pain now, and there is more flexibility each day.  I can now rest my hands on the top of the bars for the most part.  I am nowhere near ready to get to the hoods yet, much less the drops.  And I cannot stand and pedal.  Baby steps, but there are signs of progress.   One of the issues after reaching 30 minutes is that the neighbors do not provide sufficient entertainment to overcome the mind (and butt) numbing effects of the trainer.  I now use the iPod, but that might not be enough once I go past an hour.  Perhaps I will need to mount a TV on the garage wall(?).

The neighbor to our east has a large walnut tree in their side yard next to our property line. It provides some nice shade, but it is a pain and adds a lot of additional work for me. In the early winter I have to trim it back so it is not sitting on our roof or hanging too low over the side-yard. In the spring it flowers, pouring vast quantities of pollen into the air and triggering weeks of bad allergies for both The Wife and myself. Then all the flowers drop, creating a large mess to clean up, including out of the rain gutters which they tend to block. After that there is about three months in which the tree is a great neighbor.   The lasts until the walnuts are ripe adding another mess, and an infestation of small moths that seem to grow up in the walnut tree or walnuts. And finally in the fall we have all the leaves to deal with, and that includes more work on keeping the rain gutters clean.

The walnuts seem to be ‘ripe’ around late July into mid-August. We are near the end of that period now, a period when it is difficult to go into that side yard and during which we get pre-dawn wake up calls from those who feast on the bounty of the walnut tree. The Wife complains that the racket starts way too early most mornings these days. By 5:15 AM or so there may be 2, 3, or 4 squirrels in the tree cracking open walnuts right outside our bedroom window, and dropping quite a few on the roof. Soon the cacophony of Chickadees starts; they come to eat whatever insects are feeding on the tree or the nuts. Occasionally one of the neighborhood feral cats will come to try to get a squirrel, which leads to an all out symphony of warning notices. The pile of walnut shells grows on that side of the house until the weekly visit of the gardeners. By the time they got here last Saturday the debris was probably about a half-inch deep all along that side, making it difficult to get into the side entry into the garage.

Working from home this summer I have been witness to more of the action than normal. As I sit in the back office I can often see two or more squirrels running around the yard or cavorting in the privet trees. I see them digging a lot in the gardens and wonder how many volunteer walnut trees might spring up next year. I have not seen any walnut seedlings yet, but we do have three volunteer oak seedlings in the yard which I presume are the after-effect of squirrel nut hording behaviour.

The local squirrels have feasted so much for the past three weeks that they are looking a bit thick. Perhaps we need to add some exercise facilities. Or perhaps enjoy some squirrel fricassee with a nice salad garnished with walnut bits.

Even though I am working from home, the boss has been cracking the whip so I have not been able to digress into working on other things.  At least for the most part.  I had thought I could use some of this time to do a complete redesign of this blog, but that is not going to happen.  I had wanted to for a while, but then got the swift kick in the behind when Sabine unveiled her sweet new site.  So, though I do not have the time to go full bore, I used Tuesday night (while The Wife was away) to slide in a new WordPress theme and dress it up a little.  Hey, this one even uses gravatars on the comment pages!  Still lame, but better.