Get Lost, March

March, and I mean this with all sincerity, has sucked. As I write this, it has been raining for two straight days, except for the last half hour during which it has been sleeting like a bitch. Good riddance.

In addition to depicting pretty much exactly how I feel about March 2014, this is also a picture with a medical purpose. If you look closely at the nail, you will see it is deformed. Just behind the nail is some swelling. When this finger gets aggravated, that swelling blooms into a big painful cyst. (The cyst deformed the nail.) If I bump this finger when the cyst is inflamed against anything hard, it hurts a whole bunch.  As it turns out, the cyst is somehow related to arthritis and a bone spur in the adjacent knuckle. So tomorrow morning I am having both the bone spur and the cyst removed. Later this week I’ll be riding in North Carolina with a splint on that finger. Let’s just say, it’s going to be interesting.

It is really important for me to get this taken care of. I’ve been dealing with it for several years now. A painful middle-finger cyst can impede the sharing of important information with my fellow road users, particularly those driving BMWs and Range Rovers. Once the surgery wound heals, my finger will be all set for the busy DC riding season.

I was expecting to get a local anesthetic for my surgery but it seems as though they are going to knock me out. I expect to be in a post-op fog tomorrow. This means that my bike riding for March is complete. The numbers are pretty lame. I rode 484 miles in March, 312 of this was on 11 bike commutes. As usual the Mule did the bulk of the work, 301 total miles with 213.5 miles from seven commutes. Little Nellie picked up the remaining five commutes and a total of 169.5 miles. Big Nellie was confined to the basement. I did one ride down there for what I guess was about 13.5 miles.

I completed the Errandonee Challenge. My long ride was a 40-mile errandonnee on a Saturday. I also did the Halv-vasa ride last weekend. I did several fun sessions of snow shoveling with my wovel. Finally, I started doing yoga again and actually did a head stand yesterday. I used the couch to spot myself. I didn’t stay vertical for long, maybe 15 seconds or so, but it was actually pretty comfortable.

For the year, I have ridden to work 27 times, which I was surprised to discover is only four times fewer than last year. I have racked up 1293.5 miles so far this year.