Category: health

Today I took a ride from my house up to Stony Creek, around the trails, into Downtown Rochester, then over to Bloomer. Bloomer is a bit convoluted, and the only trails that I could find are the rather intimidating ridge trails, which are a bit riskier than I prefer to ride. (See this photo, which shows where I stopped riding as I prefer to not duck around chest-height trees on off camber bench cut trails with steep drop-offs.)

Right as I began heading towards my house, something wasn’t going right in the drivetrain. Every couple pedal strokes or so I was getting a bit of ghost shifting, particularly when in physically smaller gears. A quick look showed that it was likely a stiff link on the chain, so I headed back towards home. En route to home things became worse and worse, to the point where I could only ride in the big ring and somewhere above the middle of the rear cassette. Regular ka-chunk sounds were heard as the derailleur jumped around a bit.

By the time I got home there were 34.37 miles on the odometer, in just about 2:49. I was rather wanting to ride more, but the chain was saying otherwise. This is a pretty new chain, and prior to this ride (at about the 120 mile mark) the factory lube still seemed to be doing its job. Everything was moving very smoothly, there was no noise from the chain, and everything was shifting well. Right now I’ve got the chain soaking in degreaser, and then post-cleaning I’ll give it a bunch of (physical) attention to try and loosen up the link. At least a new chain isn’t particularly expensive if that doesn’t work.

(The bandage is from cutting a good slice mostly off of my finger tip yesterday while slicing limes with a bent, dull knife. Doing this made me very mad at myself.)

UPDATE: Problem found! It’s a damaged inner plate.

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With injuring my knee and rain through most of the week, I haven’t been able to go for a bike ride in a while. So, after washing my bike off and checking the wheels over for damage^† I headed towards Shelby Township’s River Bends Park. After stopping at the post office to ship a package I headed into the park and ended up doing two laps of the two track-type trail there. Normally I would have also continued along the paved path to Ryan Road, but the recent rains had the paved path under more than a foot of water, and I wasn’t in the mood to get wet. Both the bike and I got a bit muddy, but nothing terrible.

While on the unpaved tracks I ended up riding down anything that looked remotely like single track that went somewhere and ended up getting a much better feel for the land around there. The more I think about it, the more I think that River Bends could host a couple miles of nice single track.

The photo above was taken after I rode through some of the existing single track-like stuff, all the way to the far southeast corner of the park, where it goes down a ridge to the river’s floodplain. What is normally some trail for another 200′ was completely under actively flowing water. Looking towards the river showed what is above, with newly downed trees and a logjam. I love looking at this sort of transient river.

Also, during the whole time I was riding my knee had no problems. It’s still a bit sore at times, but all the aching seems to be coming from the outside of my kneecap in the area where the wound is still healing. This is good, I think.

^† Interestingly, I’d somehow fitted both tires backwards last time. I also found that while falling I managed to get a whole bunch of dirt between the bead of the tire and the rim’s bead seat, leading to a bit of a wobble in the tire. The wheels themselves are fine.

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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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It seems that the rocky / rooty trails at Island Lake and Maybury which we rode on Monday took a bit of a toll on me. Yesterday morning my back/neck was a little bit sore, and a bit of research showed that it was likely my trapezius muscle on the right side of my body. Since it wasn’t too sore yesterday I headed out for a paved ride on the Macomb Orchard Trail, which ended up being a bit over 20 miles.

Once back at the car I found that I was a good bit more sore, but just wrote it off as a problem from leaning over the bike for a while. However, when I woke up this morning I found that I can’t really turn my head without a good bit of stiffness and soreness.

I think that this point I just need to stay off my bike for a few days and rest up, then maybe do some elevated leg pushups or something else which will build up these muscles a bit. This is a bit disappointing as today and Friday are forecasted to have really nice biking weather, but that’s just how things go. At least I’ve got other things which I can be working on in the mean time.

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One week after falling, and one day after the stitches were removed, I finally was able to shave. In this photo you can see that I’d become very, very, terribly, uncomfortably scruffy, but with stitches and a bit of scabbing on my face I didn’t want to risk shaving.

After getting home from work I took a shower, shaved all of my head and face save for my upper lip, fitted a new (and very sharp) blade to the razor, then started shaving shaving my lip. While I was particularly cautious, it all went very well with only a bit of pain coming from the inside of my mouth as my face moved around. There are still some painful cuts on the inside, but those are healing quite quickly.

I then applied some Target-brand Moisturizing Scar Lotion which claims that it, if used multiple times per day for about two months, will help ensure that scars appear softer and smoother. I’d compared the Target brand version to the bigger name brand version, and as the only ingredient difference was the type of polyethylene glycol, I opted for the 50% cheaper Target brand. It has a somewhat bothersome fragrance, but dealing with that will be worth it to help things heal better.

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Danielle suggested I take a photo today, as the bruising from last night’s accident is a bit more pronounced. I’ve also got a bit of a bruise on my left thigh, left shoulder, and right upper arm, combined with a sore lower back (surface, from the seat hitting me, I believe), and a quite sore calf.

All said, I’m quite thankful that this is apparently all the damage done. I still feel a bit out of it, but likely is also from not sleeping well last night. Or, maybe I caught some cold from one of the people in the Urgent Care. I hope not, as blowing my nose will be terrible right now.

Thanks to everyone for the nice comments, good wishes, and stuff like that. While I am feeling quite well, it makes me feel really nice to hear from everyone. Thank you.

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With the nice weather today and a report that most of the Stony Creek mountain bike trails were ridable, I decided to head out there with my new-to-me single speed and give it a go. While exhausing, things went great all the way to the top of Mt. Sheldon, where this photo was taken. After that I started to head down The Roller Coaster, where things were equally fun, until I started into the back half of this trail.

Immediately after descending a rather root-y area and crossing some two-track path (marker #24), there were a couple of decaying logs which I had to ride over. (This crossing / section can be seen in this video, right after 1:45.) As I went to ride over them, my front wheel sort of sank into the log, my bike stopped, and I went over pulling the bike on to me. I immediately knew that things weren’t right, because I could taste blood and felt a little out of it.

After checking parts (teeth, tongue, lip, etc) and taking this photo to assess the wounds (warning, a bit graphic), I realized that I was a bit messed up. At that point I gathered my stuff and started walking back to the parking lot. Thankfully someone (Mike Moss, Stony Creek’s excellent MMBA Trail Coordinator, I presume) had recently posted accurate maps of the trails, which include the numbered intersections making the walk pretty quick.

Once back at the car I put everything away, cleaned myself up a bit, then went to meet Danielle at my house. She then drove me to the Urgent Care facility at M-59 and Heydenreich where I received excellent treatment from a bunch of different nurses and Dr. George Maristela. While there I received a tetanus booster shot, general check-over, five or six injections (very painful) of Lidocaine, and the seven (particularly fine) stitches which were needed to close the wound.

The final tally is a Y-shaped cut on my upper lip which tool seven stitches to close, a cut on my nose, a mole on the left side of my face which was mostly ground/cut off, a bruise on my forehead from the helmet, and various other scrapes and bruises. I also have a seven-day prescription for Cephalexin (Kephlex GEQ). Thankfully there were no problems with my tongue, teeth, neck, skull, or any of the hard to fix / very important parts. This, combined with really great treatment by an excellent doctor and staff made things, so far, not that bad. This fall could have been much, much worse.

I can’t help but think that when the visor came off of my helmet (they clip on loosely) my face hit that, which actually cut me, but I can’t be certain of that. Regardless, I will have to get a new helmet as mine has a nice dent / flat spot in the front, and once one falls hard in a helmet it should get replaced. I think in the future I may forego the visor completely and just wear a cycling hat with flip up/down visor. This will accomplish the same ends as a visor, but without the detachable plasticky bit risk.

Danielle and I brought a camera to the Urgent Care, so (with the doctor’s permission) she took photos all throughout the procedure. If you’d like to see the photos, they can be found in the Stitches! album here. Here are some of the more notable photos:

· Me, a bit cleaned up but with a split upper lip, before leaving the house to go the Urgent care.
· A very, very painful injection of Lidocaine.
· Stitches going into my face.
· Firmly holding the bed frame during the last couple stitches, which I could slightly feel.
· Wincing at the last couple stitches, which hurt a bit.
· Procedure complete, laying there a bit bloody waiting to be cleaned up.
· After being cleaned up, just about time to leave.

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