Well, the drought has well and truly broken. This week I got the green light from the Orthopod that, in his own words, I could now do anything. My clavicle is no longer busticated. It is healed. To celebrate I rode my bike in the great outdoors. My first ride was pretty gingerish, but confidence was quickly gained.
That morning was the morning after the downpour of Tuesday and the paths and roads were covered in all manner of leaves, grit and gravel. The pics below were taken post ride, and my bike was clean before the ride.
On this particular ride I rode the new bike path between Henderson town centre and the rural part of Henderson Valley Road. Waitakere City Council are to be commended for this path, it is wide, well surfaced and a pleasure to ride. Except for one little hazard, as one exits the back of the Corbans Estate there is a slightly off camber left hand corner. This corner throws you off line as you enter a bridge, and instead of being firmly on the bike section of the bridge, you can find yourself on the slippery metal grate. In my case I had to make a hurried grab for the bridge railing to stay rubber side down.
Waitakere City Council also deserve another bouquet for finally putting a decent surface on the bridge across the Henderson creek on the North Western Cycleway. The surface now is firm, has excellent traction and doesn't squirm like previous matting. Well done.
Today The Crocodile and I braved the elements and knocked out three hours in pretty average conditions, oddly on a route that is normally pretty well traversed by cyclists (The Ridge Road loop) we didn't see a single other cyclist, they must be getting a touch soft me thinks.
The great thing about all this rain is that the metal roads will be getting well bedded down, and with a few more miles under my belt, I can go and tackle some blazingly great roads in Rodney District. Truly I can't wait.
First off, some recent scientific reporting that Explains some of us. I'm just damned pleased to know it's not just modern day Homo sapiens who engage in strange and immoral behaviour.
Following on from my last missive, CTB contacted me, and while expressing some doubt, felt that The Evil Homo moniker was still mine. Although he did applaud Mikeal roundly for his demonstration of cul de sac stupidity.
My ongoing use of the windtrainer is starting to seriously stress me, I have worked out a virtual play list to get me through these sessions of hell, I've also found that I struggle to watch DVDs while performing efforts, so it's all pretty much music based boredom relief. I could divulge the playlist, but I have a sneaking suspicion that most readers eye's will glaze over and those that don't, will mark me off as a heretic, so instead I'll just leave you to imagine the worst.
My regular road bike, the one not subjected to the indignity of being saddled stationery is looking very forlorn. I'm thinking that if the weather plays it's part then I may drive out to the New Lynn velodrome and entertain a few laps, that way I can more easily judge my readiness to re-enter riding in the outside world, with minimal risk. I know this runs counter to the lack of bodily disregard that I displayed in the first instance, and that landed me the broken thing, but being as profoundly right-handed as I am, this injury is causing me no end of inconvenience.
However, not all has been bad in my life, on Friday night, several of us, and our assorted male offspring went to the Auckland Domain to watch the special stage of the Rally of New Zealand. It was an excellent spectacle and well worth attending. Below is a very short video clip that captures some of the noise and speed that I witnessed.
As it turned out, last weekend was a weekend for the crashes.
The opening shot was from the Onanator himself, Mikeal, when he tangled with an errant steer in Totara Park, while MTBing. He claims there were two cattle beasts, and one went right, and anticipated the other to go left, but it defied him and went right also. Net result, Mikeal hit said beast, beast runs off, Mikeal has a lie-down sans some dermis from above his left knee. When I saw the wound on Sunday, it looked like an oversized and badly placed carpet burn, but that's just idle speculation.
Next up was my graceless grass/shoulder interaction.
Then on Sunday, Junior had a pretty heavy fall on a very greasy road near Taupaki. His helmet was wrecked in the crash, but his noggin and neck are fine. Apart from other bruising, his index finger isn't too flash and is now taped to his finger more commonly used for flicking the bird.
Del Woodford also crashed in the event he organised on Sunday. From what I understand, he also crashed without the aid of a fellow cyclist.
Del's crash is rumoured to have given CTB cause for thought, and he has come up with an award for the silliest or most inept crash. Once bestowed, it's the recipient's until someone else performs a greater act of stupidity. Apparently the name and story behind it are somewhat rude. It also looked like Del was set to grab the title, until CTB heard of my Saturday act. I'm claiming showmanship in my defence.
Additionally, I have been roundly mocked and laughed at, not without just cause I may add, but the mocking started within 30 minutes of the breakage, with a crack about it still being two weeks until opening weekend. (I'll explain that shortly) Then there was the assorted laughter of all and sundry. Add the daily humiliation on the walk to and from school from the assorted school mothers. Not to be missed was the use of me for Show and Tell by my progeny, his teacher being most amused. I'm certain now that in various households around the Balmoral area, I'm being held up as a cautionary tale.
Truth be told, I'm loving the attention, I just need to find a better way to attract it.
Now, back to the Opening Weekend remark. This came from a chap, who last year, broke his shoulder falling off a sofa on Opening Day of the duck shooting season. It just so happened that the sofa was in the back of a ute. The ute was driving down a gravel road, and he stood up to moon a local. The ute served and he was ejected roadwards. Skin loss and broken shoulder ensued. At least now, he can say, without a word of a lie, he did it falling off a sofa. I need to concoct a similar euphemism to cover my stupidity.
I'd been meaning to post a little missive describing the excellent Friday night I had last week courtesy of Doris and Mikeal, but that can wait until I'm a faster and more accurate one handed typist.
Today I'll write of my moment of stupidity and the outcome.
For the Prawn of my Loins birthday he got a new BMX bike, and very bright Haro Forum from the good chaps at Planet Cycles, and today he and I went for his first outing to a skatepark with it. Yesterday, he'd been most impressed to see Tristan, the best wheelbuilder in NZ, ride the birthday bike, manual, bunnyhop and otherwise perform tricks that I'm incapable of.
So back to today, we headed out to Shadbolt Park and it's little skatebowl. There the Kaos Kreator rode with aplomb. Jumping, bunyhopping, almost getting a manual off the coping and generally having a ball.
Time to finish, a lunch venue agreed on, and I had a brainfart. I rode to the top of the bowl, down flat out and jumped out the other side to land on the grass. My bike jumping skills are sub-par and my landing skills, even worse. the outcome was a shoulder first landing on the grass, I felt the crack and stood up and ran my left hand over my right collarbone. It wasn't the nice smooth thing it should be, instead the skin was tented by something a bit sharp and irregular.
A trip to A&E, a couple of x-rays and a small chat where I described me being a dick has resulted in a sling, some good pain relief and an appointment in a fortnight with an orthopaedic surgeon.
