Category: cycling

Skinplug!

Published June 15, 2009

Today was a very, very fortunate day to unexpectedly acquire a bottle of veterinarian-grade cyanoacrylate adhesive meant for tissue. While out at Addison Oaks riding the single track mountain bike trails with some friends, I had a rather slow speed fall, hit my knee on a screw hole on the side of the stem, and scooped a chunk of skin out the very front of my knee. After falling I was looking at my knee, and sliding the skin on it side to side showed something very light colored beneath that did not move with the skin. That photo up above is the chunk of skin in the screw hole.

It didn’t hurt very much, so after a minute or two I was able to stand up and ride the couple miles out of the park and back to the school we had all met up at. Thankfully there were a bunch of good people there, which would have been even better had I been more hurt.

By the time I drove home there were four distinct paths of dried blood down my leg, so I set to washing them off, cleaning the wound, and getting ready to glue it shut. After washing it I found that the hole seemed to have begun closing up, so I patted it dry, applied a drop of the clear blue adhesive to the surface, then worked the skin a bit to open and close the hole and let it stick shut. This worked, as it’s now now nicely stuck shut and no longer bleeding.

My knee is a bit swollen and still hurts a bit, but I think it just needs some time. The swollen area is the skin on top of my knee, and the pain doesn’t appear to be joint related. There’s the surface sting from the hole, and a bit of muscle-ish pain when I bend my leg into certain positions or go down stairs, but nothing that happens when I simply move my leg.

Here’s some photos from today, if you’re curious. Be forewarned, some of these might bother those who don’t like blood:

· Chunk of skin, still in a screw hole on the stem of my bike. This happened during a relatively low speed crash at Addison Oaks.
· Blood running down my leg after riding from Addison Oaks back to the nearby school.
· Greater detail of the blood coming out of my leg. The thickly scabbed, oozing part near the top is the injured part. Everything else was just dried / oozed blood.
· Chunk of skin which had been removed from my knee and then picked out of the stem.
· Detail of my knee after washing it and applying a veterinary-grade cyanoacrylate glue to close the wound.
· After a few minutes the cyanoacrylate glue did its job and closed up the wound.

(Oh, and if you’re wondering how I fell, here’s what happened: Right at an area that transitions from some wider trail to some narrow stuff, a branch was leaning down across the trail, covering everything above 5′ off the ground with leaves. I thought I could see well enough through it so I ducked and entered the leaves. However, right after getting through them I saw that the trail turned more than I’d expected, and my the very quick turn I made caused my front wheel to lose traction.

As most anyone who rides a bike regularly, a front wheel sliding in anything other than the direction it is pointing often means a rapid fall, which is what I did. The problem was that when going down I banged my knee on a screw hole on the stem, which acted as a melonballer and cut out this nice chunk.)

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My Random Day

Published June 9, 2009

Instead of a post talking about something in particular, I’ll talk about the last 28 hours or so of my day:

To start, as seen above, Danielle and I came across both Deluxe and Old Fashioned hot dog buns from Aunt Millie’s in VG’s. When comparing them, there was no substantial difference. Beyond the price (about $1/package difference) only a few things at the very bottom of the ingredient list, vitamin supplements mostly, varied.

This photo shows the large wrapped stack of boxes waiting on my front porch when I got home. These are CD-sized outside tuck corrugated mailers from Planned Packaging of Illinois Corp. which I will use to box my CDs and store them in closets in the basement. The CD rack in my office (see this fisheye photo) will then be removed and replaced with a bookshelf to hold both my and Danielle’s books.

After work I went for a ride around the mountain bike trails at Stony Creek. I hadn’t eaten properly today, polishing off a bag of trail mix before leaving the office, and this made it really difficult to ride. Despite this I pushed myself quite a bit, and thus I kept having cramps in my lower back. I think that lowering my handle bar will help with this, because most of the cramping came with trying to stand and pedal, but with the bar relatively high I could pull on it properly and likely overdid things.

Dinner tonight was two garlic chicken sausages from Trader Joe’s, along with salad, potato chips, a bunch of spicy cheese popcorn, and a bottle of Le Fin du Monde. I made a point of drinking the dregs from this bottle to experiment with the gastrointestinal results of ingesting a quantity of yeast. My next experiment will likely involve a teaspoon of bread machine yeast. Danielle says that I’m not allowed to do this when she is around, so it’ll probably happen next week.

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Strawberry Banana Gu Gel

Published June 7, 2009

Wanting a gel without caffeine for while riding, I picked up a Strawberry Banana-flavored Gu gel. While it does the job, I really don’t like the flavor. I think I’ll stick with the vanilla / chocolate Gu flavors, and maybe pick up this Hammer Nutrition gel flavor sample pack and try these out.

Today I went for a ride around Stony Creek after eating not quite enough food, so I had to eat two 100 calorie gels to keep myself going. The lack of food and my pushing myself meant that I kept feeling a bit shaky and dizzy until I ate something.

While riding around I came across this really swampy area filling in one of the paths, but thankfully there was a bit of newly worn trail going around the side of it. This is a route that I hadn’t taken before, but as it generally follows the normal route through Stony with a slightly new dimension, I think I’ll continue taking it. It exchanges two grueling back to back climbs for a quirky turn around a tree to avoid falling in the scummy swamp. (Weirdly, in the aforementioned photo it appears as if something disturbed (or started to go into) the swamp. I really hope it was a turtle and not one of the people heading out from that area as I was riding in.

Oh, and if you’re interested, here is what my legs looked like after today’s ride. No, those aren’t tan lines… That’s just dust from the trails.

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Another Nice Spring Day

Published June 4, 2009

Tonight I showed up at Mt. Clemens High School where some folks often meet up for a ride to Metro Beach and back, but this time I ended up making the ride myself. It was a really nice night for a ride, with a relatively empty path, not too strong of winds, and perfect low 70s temperatures.

Including time spent poking around in the parking lot before leaving, riding a few circles to stretch my legs afterwards, and poking around the end of the peninsula at the park I ended up riding the 17.62 mile route in just over 1:10, averaging 15 MPH. Not bad, but I’m sure I could do better if I was feeling up to it. For some reason I’ve been feeling as if I’m getting sick or having bad allergy problems, so a good part of the ride was made with a headache and runny nose. Hopefully that’ll go away soon.

All in all, this was a rather nice day. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back out to Stony Creek for some single track riding tomorrow, but we’ll see how that goes. It’ll involve changing tires^†, and if I’m not feeling too hot I won’t push it.

^† I sure could use a bike for this kind of riding… If only I wasn’t being overly cautious about spending big chunks of money I could get another bike…

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Dead Animal

Published June 2, 2009

This dead animal has been in the F parking lot at Stony Creek’s West Branch Picnic Area for a while, because I remember seeing it on Friday when caught in the storm. I’m not sure if it is a squirrel, small possum, or something else. If it’s not to your liking, enjoy this photo of a cute, fuzzy gypsy moth caterpillar instead.

Today I had a nice ride around Stony Creek, which was probably one of the easiest rides I’ve had in a while, despite doing a lap of all the single track without really stopping. I paused to throw some deadfall off the trail, and once to check that my rear tire had enough air (squeeze test), but didn’t actually take a break. It’s kinda nice.

I did fall at one point today, when doing a second lap of part of the Roller Coaster and trying to go over one of the more difficult log piles. I ran out of momentum, stopped part way up, and toppled over hitting my shin on a log. Thankfully I’ve only got a bump, few scrapes, sore shin, and what may become a bruise, though I don’t usually bruise, so it’ll likely just remain sore. Oh well.

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No More Bianchi D.I.S.S.

Published June 1, 2009

This morning, after talking with a few interested buyers for the last week or so, I was finally able to sell the Bianchi D.I.S.S. that I’d picked up at the very end of last year. While it was a great bike, I’m just not so sure single speed stuff is for me, so I decided to sell it. I’ll likely use the money towards another bike, perhaps a Salsa Fargo, a 29er something or other, or maybe a full suspension mountain bike. However, with all the recent news coming out of the Detroit area, I think I’d best sit tight for a while.

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Tube Failure Investigation

Published May 31, 2009

Last Monday at The Potawatomi Trail my front tire had started going flat, and it took a new tube to fix it. Further investigation today showed that the problem was a small split (as seen above), right along one of the seams or for-packaging fold points in the tube. Cutting open the tube (picture) showed that this was the only visible part of a rather large split forming in the tube.

I’d first thought that perhaps this was a pinch flat, but those won’t cause long slits running parallel to the wheel / bead. So, I figure that this is a lingering seam from when the tube was made, or possibly some damage from when it was folded for packing. Ah well. I’ve since replaced both tubes on that bike with brand-new Presta valves, so hopefully that will sidestep any future problems.

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Downpour Averted

Published May 29, 2009

After work I headed over to Stony Creek to ride a bit, but when I got to the parking lot it appeared that a storm was getting close. Still, I headed off into the trails, periodically reloading the DTX National Weather Service radar. It turns out that the storm was moving in faster than I’d expected, so I had to take a shortcut out of the Roller Coaster only 10 or 15 minutes after starting and hurry back to the car.

A ~20MPH ride along the two track back to the car was filled with blowing dust, leaves coming off of trees, a freshly downed branch in the path, and people who were (for some reason) heading outbound into the trails. Thankfully I made it back to the car just as the large drops started falling and was in the car and leaving the parking lot as the rain really started to come down. All thanks to having a smartphone.

Of course, now that I’m back home and typing this, all the rain has passed and the trails are likely perfectly damp. Ah well.

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The Potawatomi Trail

Published May 25, 2009

I’d been invited by some friends out to The Potawatomi Trail at Pinckney Recreation Area for a group today, so, I went. Having heard about this trail since even before I’d started riding, I was interested to see what it’s like. Well, I’m really, really glad I went.

We did something near a 15 mile loop, with nearly all of it being narrow single track which included fast, winding downhills, rocky and rooty uphills and downhills, long and sandy climbs, wooden railroad ties (water bars) stretched across fall line hills to cut down on erosion, and lots of wooden bridges across watery areas. There was also lots and lots of roots and 8″ – 14″ drops, one after another, which I had to carefully pick my way down. In short, an absolutely excellent but challenging trail. From my limited experience I’d say that it’s a very good mix of everything that I’ve ridden on to date. The only problem is that the park is about an hour and a half away from my house by car.

Here’s three more sites about the trail:

· Trail’s Edge Outdoors
· dirtworld.com
· singletracks

Since the photo I took of Kristi and Bob standing at one of the meetup points (called the Four Corners, I believe) came out a bit blurry, I instead give you this photo of the bike that a guy named Kevin rode today. It’s a fixed, rigid bike with clipless pedals, Ergon grips, Jones H-Bars, and two front brakes. The two brakes? Just in case one hand gets tired.

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Gatorade and Erma’s Custard

Published May 24, 2009

This afternoon was a nice, brisk ride from Dodge Park to Metro Beach and back, along with Brian, Nick, and Marty. Total moving time for this ride was just under two hours, which is a nice pace for that route.

After returning to the parking lot at Dodge Park, not wanting to miss a BBQ, Brian had to leave, but then we continued on to Erma’s Frozen Custard in Utica for some tasty, tasty custard. I ate a nice, small cone of Dulce de Leche flavor, which was really good, not overly sweet, and just the right size. Adding on Erma’s, our total ride was a little bit over 37 miles.

On the way home I was able to stop and get pita from Yasmeen Bakery, which should go nicely with the hummus I’ll be making for a BBQ tomorrow. Now it’s time to shower, assess which ingredients need to be purchased for making the hummus, and figure out what I’ll be having for dinner. Having eaten a Gu Chocolate Outrage Gel, drank half a bottle of lemon-lime Gatorade, the custard, and a few handfuls of raw almonds I’m not too hungry yet, but when the need for calories catches up with me, I want to be ready.

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