Weathering it

I'm sure most of you have figured out that cycling is classified as an outdoor sport.  Let's all have that "duh" moment, but when most of us hear the term "outdoors", we think camping, trails, trees, backpacks, and boots.  I certainly don't think of skin tight clothing, padding in private places, and shoes that only work when clipped onto a primitive machine.  The clothing for cycling is very specialized, much like football, soccer, or skiing.  But cycling and skiing are called outdoor sports while football and soccer are called field sports.  When you ski or cycle, the terrain is wide open.  Sure, there's painted lines for road cycling, but those lines aren't really for the bikes, they're there to make sure cars stay where they're supposed to be.

But the main problem with outdoor sports, besides the colorful shirts, strange hats, and weird shoes, is that they are outdoors.  Outdoors means weather: too hot, too cold, too windy, too rainy, too foggy.  All these things can happen outdoors, all of them even in the same day for those of us in Southern California.  That's what happened to me this weekend: I was reminded that my main hobby is an outdoor sport because of rain.  I got rained out on Saturday and I didn't want to chance it on Sunday.  My rides usually start out early in the morning, and that's when the rain was happening.  Both days, the rain stopped around 8:30, but the roads were still too dangerous by 10.  I mentioned that I got rained out on Saturday and I just didn't want to get back on the bike after things had dried out.  Sunday was stupider.  The rain again stopped around 8:30, but the clouds threatened all day, even though it never rained again.  So I called off my ride, but if I had chanced it, there would not have been a problem.  Oh well, hindsight's 20/20.  Besides, I rode 107 miles last weekend, I deserve a break.  At least that's how I justify my laziness to the guilty voices in my head.

But can't you cycle indoors on a trainer?  Yes, you can.  This kind of exercise program is called spinning, where you lock your bike onto a machine that allows your back wheel to spin as pedal, you can control the resistance, and pedal hard and fast.  I say you can, because I can't.  Why not?  I hate them.  I really, really hate trainers.  Really, really, honestly, really hate them.  It's not even rational.  Okay, so there's gotta be a story here, right?  Yes, of course, there is.  I have not been on a bike trainer since April 29th, 2004.  That's the day I broke my hand which eventually required surgery.

Now, most of my friends say that I should come up with a better story about my bionic hand and cool scar, but honestly, I like the ridiculousness of reality.  Plus, there were witnesses, not just to the lameness of the accident, but what a tough little bugger I am when it comes to pain.

I did not learn how to ride a bike until the year 2003.  I did not own a bike until the year 2004.  That's the same bike you see in all the pictures I've posted here.  I had not broken a bone in my entire life until April 29th, 2004.  That is the day I got my first clip-in pedals installed on my bike to be fitted.  Mike and Warren were with me.  We had just ridden 42 miles with my plain old pedals, and we went to the shop where I had bought my bike.  After 3 months, they, and I, felt I was ready to clip in to my bike.  The pedals were installed, and as the sales guy and Mike were chatting about our ride, I attempted to clip into the right pedal.  It just was not working, and I began stomping on the pedal to get enough force onto the clips.  Bad idea.  I stomped and finally felt the shoe clip on, but I had stomped so hard, the bike had become unbalanced on the trainer.  Well, I tried so hard to clip on to the pedal, there was no way I was going to learn to unclip in the second it was going to take for me, the bike, and the trainer to hit the ground.

Mike and the sales guy were standing to my left side, and I was falling to the right.  They both literally had that "Nooooooh!" moment in slow motion as they saw me topple and crash into a rack of little kid mountain bikes.

I usually remember my falls, the pain of joints hitting the ground in awkward positions, but this time, all I felt was my hand being bent in a way I had not felt before.  Oh, there was pain, but to Mike, Warren, and the sales guy, they could not tell how badly I was hurt by my reaction.  My two middle fingers got caught in the spokes of a wheel, and were bent at a strange angle.  Even though I was in a lot of pain, I knew they were dislocated, so I pushed them back into their sockets and felt them click into place.  I thought the shifting I felt in my hand were just the knuckles grabbing the bones again.  According to my surgeon, that's probably when the second break occurred.

I immediately went into shock, but never having been in shock, I didn't know what was going on.  I began to sweat and the world became very bright.  The sweat happens because of a whole mess of adrenaline being pumped into the blood stream so an injured animal can ignore pain and either run away or fight its attacker.  The pupils of the eye dilate in the presence of adrenaline.  I picked myself up, after learning how to unclip from the pedal while lying on the ground, asked for some ice or at least the bathroom, and ran cold water over my hand.  At the time, I thought that I had at least sprained it while dislocating the fingers.  After ten minutes, while drinking some water and flexing my hand, the brightness went away, I got back on the bike, and finished fitting my pedals to my cleats.  I never cried out in pain.  All I said was, "Whoa," right before I pushed my two fingers back into place.

That night, I wrapped my hand in an ace bandage, iced it, and thought everything would be okay the next day.  Well, bruising started showing up in my other knuckles the next day, so I went and got x-rays.  My doctor was surprised that I had waited over 24 hours to get looked at and asked if I was taking any pain medication.  Just advil, for the swelling.  Well, he said, I'm giving you an appointment at the orthopedic center so they can set the bone, but they won't do anything until Wednesday.  I broke my hand on Sunday.  My hand was immobilized in a splint, and I was told to keep it elevated.

On Wednesday, I saw the orthopedist, they saw the x-ray, and the doctor immediately gave me back my co-pay, told me she could not set the bone with how badly it was broken, and set up a new appointment with a hand surgeon an hour from then.  When doctors start giving your money back, you know it's bad.

I then went to the hand surgeon, he saw the x-ray, made me curl my hand a few times, and then he said that I had two options.  I could let it heal how it was, but the break in the third metacarpal was such that my middle knuckle was already shorter than it was supposed to be.  Also, if I let the bone heal without setting it properly, I would always have a piece of bone sticking into the middle of my palm.  That's when I said, "Cut me doc, I can take it."  He recommended surgery to put screws in the bone, at the most two, which would never come out, but I would have a perfectly set bone and full mobility to my hand.  You see, the break was at such an acute angle, twisted in a spiral, that there was no way to set the bone externally.  Here's a picture of the hands of the bone, so you get a better idea what was going on.

 

 

The third metacarpal is right in the middle and it was snapped like a chicken's drumstick.  They couldn't operate for a week, because they had to wait for the swelling to go down, so for another week, another splint, and I could now feel the bones grating against each other because the swelling was going down. *Shudder*  Well, the surgeon's one hour surgery and one to two screws at the most, became a ninety minute surgery with five screws stuck in the bone.  During the surgery, the doctors found another break, and had to get my parents' okay that I would probably agree to more screws.  I'll tell you at another time how I was still getting calls from work while I was getting prepped for surgery, even taking a call while I was tying my medical robe with one hand.  Try not to leave that image in your head for too long.  Surgery was fun, even that last little shot in the butt to make me "feel relaxed."  I closed my eyes with a big splint on my hand and woke up with a bigger splint on my hand.  All in all, I only missed 3 days of work.  I was just a little groggy the day after, and vicodin is fun drug to have in your system.

Rehab was great, like going back to preschool, playing with blocks and putty.  But what sucked was no exercise for 4 months.  Not being on the bike, even for a rained out day, reminds me of those 4 months.  And the scar on my hand reminds me why bikes are for the road, not for spinning in place.