One-Knee Bike Ride

Yesterday I spent an hour screwing around with an electrical socket that refused to work properly. I failed. It still doesn’t work. Afterwards I noticed the back of my left knee hurt like a bitch. My leg wouldn’t support my weight. The leg just gave way. In scientific terminology this is WTF! Who the hell hurts their knee swapping out an electrical socket?

Um. Me, apparently.

So I took some vitamin I and elevated my leg as I watched the DareDevil series on Netflix. When I was a kid, I owned the first several DareDevil comic books. The series got good reviews based, I am sure on the first few episodes which seemed faithful to the comics that I read. After 23 chapters I was losing interest. It was hard to figure out which was more disturbing:

• The fact that DareDevil got his head bashed 20 times per show and rarely showed concussion symptoms
• The number of people who were gunned down or run through with sharp objects (waaay too much gore for me)
• The fact that everyone who wasn’t in a superhero suit would drink whiskey whenever they walked into an office

After the TV binge, I stood up and my leg didn’t want to have anything to do with propelling me to bed. Not fun.

I took some more vitamin I and hobbled up the stairs.

This morning the knee hurt more worser. Ow. So I read the newspaper and kneaded the back of the knee with my fingers. It seemed to get better.

It was over 60 degrees outside. What’s an invalid to do?

I went for a bike ride. Nothing epic. I rode my old bike commute route along the Potomac River. Then I climbed up the hill in Rosslyn and rode the roller coaster called the Martha Custis Trail along I-66. I rode back on the nearly flat W&OD and Four Mile Run Trails. For about 25 miles my gimpy knee was doing fine. Then it weakened.

I distracted my knee with some Halloween candy. Applied orally. Snickers worked better than Bit-O-Honey.

I made it home okay. 34 1/2 miles. Getting off the bike was a tad interesting. Good thing Little Nellie has a step-through frame so that I didn’t have to put weight on my left leg for more than a couple of seconds. (Now that I thing about it, I can’t remember the last time I got off a bike on the right side. It’s a bit like swimming freestyle and breathing from the same side all the time.)

So long story short, I can function pretty well as long as I don’t put weight on my left leg. I can ride my bike, lift weights, do my physical therapy, watch TV. Hell, I bet I could even drink whiskey.

Now there’s an idea….