Going Down

The descent on Going to the Sun Road (to be discussed in more - perhaps even excruciating - detail in a later post) was long and exciting. The one I took yesterday was short. And painful. Turning a corner here in town at very low speed, I got into a patch of newly deposited gravel and went down like a shot. Riding a road bike with its skinny, high pressure tires through a layer of loose gravel is like walking on ice with Teflon coated shoes. You will, more often than not, be going down.

There were numerous extenuating circumstances (as always), but I was going at a very low speed and decided to simply roll on through; with traffic backed up due to the road work that was the source of the gravel, I had to turn onto the paved trail that parallels the road. It was that extra 45 degrees that did me in. I turned the handlebars and in a flash I was on my right side on the pavement. Of course, I ended up with abrasions on my calf and elbow. In addition, I felt a pain that is sure to blossom into a colorful bruise on my hip. But it wasn't so bad - there wasn't the forward velocity necessary to do really significant damage so I was up and on my way in no time.

It was a perfectly marvelous evening and my plan was to ride down the river for an hour and come back. The Stoddard Kwik Trip provided a reason to stop and fuel up - chocolate milk and a Glazer donut. It was there that I found that my other injury, a sore thumb, was worse than I had thought. It was stiff and very painful whenever I tried to grasp anything. But only the heavy stuff; you know, like the dollar bill I tried to pull from my wallet. What was interesting is that it was my left thumb. It must have gotten caught up in the brake lever and twisted as it was my right side that hit the pavement. So, even though I had gone no more than half the distance I had hoped, I headed home.

Ice and ibuprofen, applied in quantities I will not reveal here, helped. And today, less than 24 ours after the spill, the thumb is stiff and sore, but not swollen. At noon today I as even able to tear off the top of a little pack of coffee "creamer," a feat that was beyond me in the morning.

In addition to this improvement in thumb-function, I have a new story to tell. Seems as if things are looking up!