November 2008

The Wife and I had mused on taking a few days off and doing some riding around the Bay Area this week.  Our schedules, the weather, and other stuff conspired to make that untenable, so we figured we would just do a few easy rides around the area on the weekend.   Yesterday I got an IM from The Wife asking if I wanted to ride up Mt. Hamilton.  Surprise, surprise.   I had asked her last weekend if she wanted to ride up Hamilton, half in jest, and got shot down.  And, to be realistic, I had done a couple of short hills since the accident but Mt. Hamilton is another ball-game with almost 5000 ft. of climbing over 19 miles of road; probably not the best choice for the first real climb during a recovery.

We met Dana and the rest of the pink crew at the junction of Alum Rock and Hwy 130 just before 8 AM and there were already a bunch of cyclists gathering in the area.  Rather than start right into the climb the ladies voted to make a bio-diversion into Alum Rock Park first in what turned out to be a fruitless endeavor; the restrooms were locked with huge chains and signs stating that for budgetary reasons the restrooms would be closed every Thursday.   Just our luck.

The pink squad started at a mellow pace but The Wife was trying to stay close to her training plan and do most of the ride in zone 2 so we took a slightly more relaxed pace.  It soon seemed that a good percentage of the local cyclists were on the hill or amassing at the bottom, which seemed a bit strange to me that so many would come out to climb the mountain.  Angela caught up with us and told us her Hunny would be doing the ‘low key hill climb’.  Doh!  That is why there were so many folks on the hill; the standard club and recreation rides inter-mixing with the faux-race of the low-key climb.  It was great to see so many folks we knew, many we had not seen for a while.  Ravi, who lives a stones throw away, was leading a group of his friends up while pedaling his fixie.   For most of the trip we were doing shoutouts to or visits with someone or another we knew, and met a few we did not know before.

The real payout for the ride was the view once we broke through the overcast.  Stunning views of the valley filled with fog, just the tops of the tallest peaks of the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Diablo range poking through.  We got that view for the top 3 miles or so of the climb, then a bit more on the descent as the cloud layer shifted.    All the sprawl of the Santa Clara Valley below us erased for the momen;, just us, the mountain, and the fog with the local family of acorn woodpeckers keeping us company.

For me the good news is I made it without any problems.   I even did a bit of a push for the last 3/4 mile or so just to see how the legs would react.  Perhaps it is time to schedule a few more hill climbs while the weather is cooperating.

Recovery has its ups and downs. Physically it is mostly ‘up’ now, but mentally and emotionally there are some ‘down’ times. It has become a game of reconciling what the mind would like to do with what the body can or should do at this stage in the recovery trajectory.

I am on the second emotional/mental roller coaster of the week in this regards. The first one was last Saturday. Ride The World Cups #3, raising funds to send Proman Shelley Olds on her World Cup exploits, was Saturday and Shelley had convinced The Wife to come out and ride if not race at the track. I was going along, as usual, but then got longing to try out the track bike. I have not ridden that bike, or any fixed gear bike, since the accident five months ago. I was severely tempted, but in the end I reasoned that I could not afford even a small crash so I left the bike hanging in the shed and went to the track to kibbutz and cheer. And to spend some time, and cash, in the bake sale efforts to send Megan to Manchester in her World Cup quest.

The second “do I or don’t I” tribulation this week is a bit of a long term tradition trying to bubble to the surface. I like to take a long ride this week every year, a chance to get out, think about the year and all that has gone on and is facing me in the future, all while getting some wind in the face and some fatigue in the muscles. Generally the route is from home, across the spine of the Santa Cruz Mountains, down to the coast, then north or south to another road for the return. But those routes are long, generally 50-80 miles or more, with a lot of climbing. Is there sufficient strength in the legs at this time? A couple of weeks ago I would have said no, today the answer is ‘probably’. Do I have the endurance for 4-6 or so hours of riding? My guess is probably not. And without being able to complete the circuit it is wise to let the tradition pass, at least for this year. Sigh. Perhaps by the first of the year I can do a long coastal circuit. One can hope.

I have to confess to being a fan of the “James Bond” films.  It is one of my escapist pleasures.  The Wife was not really a fan, that is not until Daniel Craig took on the role.  Now she is anxiously awaiting the U.S. release of the new film, “Quantum of Solace”, so we can go see it on the big screen.  She gave me the (in)complete set of the movies on DVD as a gift a couple of years ago, and was not really into them until she saw Daniel Craig as Bond in  ‘Casino Royale’.   And then she became more interested for some unknown reason.  My own interest has multiple origins, but one of them is I met James Bond, the real James Bond.  The Bond, whose name was purloined by Ian Fleming, worked as an ornithologist for the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia (ANSP).  One of my graduate school colleagues went to ANSP as a research scientist; a visit to a former colleague and I met *the* James Bond.

• Best Bond girl:  it is hard to choose these days.  When I was younger it was Carol Bouquet in ‘For Your Eyes Only’.  But now there are too many that are at least as good.
• Worst Bond girl:  Denise Richards in ‘The World is Not Enough”.   It is not about the looks/sexuality; her acting sucks!   Totally unbelievable as a nuclear scientist, and she reads the lines as if she is seeing them for the first time on a prompter.
• Best Bond villian:  Another tough choice, but I will go with Sean Bean as Alec Trevelyan (janus) in ‘Goldeneye’. A friend turned ruthless arch-enemy breaks the tie.
• Best Bond song:  ‘For Your Eyes Only’.  Always a fan of Sheena Easton, and it was recorded at AIR Studios on Montserrat about the same time I was working on the island.
• Best Bond tongue-in-cheek moment:  In ‘Die Another Day’, when in Havana,  Bond picks up a copy of ‘Birds of the West Indies’ by James Bond, the real James Bond.  Later, he introduces himself to Jinx (Halle Berry) as an ornithologist.  The joke started by Ian Fleming, naming Bond after the ornithologist, comes full circle.   By the way, I do have a copy of the book in my bookshelf (handy when I worked in the Caribbean).
• Best Bond tear-jerker moment:  When his wife, Tracy Di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg), dies in his arm shortly after the wedding in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”.
• Worst Bond plot line:  Take your choice:  either the plot to create a microchip scarcity in ‘A View to a Kill’ or the Rupert Murdoch clone trying to instigate war to sell more newspapers in ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’.
• Worst Bond:  With no hesitation, Roger Moore.
• Best Bond:  Anyone other than Roger Moore.

I am not all that happy with my progress since the crash in June.  I had expectations that within 2-3 months I would be on the road, and close to normal in 4-5 months.  The orthopedic surgeon and The Wife have felt I am doing OK, but my personal view is I should be doing better.  Once I was cleared to go back on the road, at just short of 4 months, I knew that the first task was to get back the base skills: mounting, dismounting, stopping, starting, and just pedaling.  So the first couple of weeks have been on the flats and easy.  To get back towards my view of normality I know that I need to step up and start pushing towards other skills.  And that was what I was determined to do this weekend.

Saturday the weather was not the best for riding with relatively constant rain, sometimes heavy.  Not the type of conditions that I wanted to go out into, so I decided to use the opportunity to work on other skill sets.  I rolled out the road bike, not ridden since the Pescadero RR on June 14th (and 2 cm taller than any of my other bikes, so more difficult to mount) and the rollers.   The first few minutes I was a bit tentative, but then things came back and I found that riding the rollers was actually easier than I had anticipated.  No hands free moments but I was able to grab the water bottle and drink, adjust the glasses, adjust seat position, etc.   I think that is all in hand and will use the rollers now when the weather is really nasty, though the mounting of the road bike is still a bit problematic.

A couple of things I have been really anxious to work on were endurance and hill climbing, and today (Sunday) seemed a good day to start.  I accompanied The Wife on her 3 hour ride with some low hills, the first real hills (i.e., not overpasses) since the accident.  I had to use some low gearing, but I was able to do everything we tried, even the 14% section of Page Mill between gate 1 and Moody Rd.   Now I am psyched to get out and do a real hill climb, 3-4 miles of some serious gradient.

The only thing I was bummed about was that The Wife and I missed our annual end of October climb up Mt. Diablo.  It is an anniversary trip, and we seem to vary the route a bit each year.  But unless we do it one of the next couple of weekends it looks as if we will miss this year.  Sigh.