Riding
September was my first sub-1,000-mile month since April. 882 miles was plenty. When it wasn’t raining I mostly rode my Tour Easy recumbent for 475 miles. I decided to ride the Tank (a new bike name), my Surly Crosscheck, on rainy days for a total of 181 miles. Little Nellie took a rest at 34 miles. The Mule, equipped at last with a new rear hub and a new Minimoto v-brake, for 191 miles.
My long ride, 62 miles, was my 15th 50 States Ride on The Mule on September 30. The day before, I passed 9,000 miles for the year.
On a ride last week, I ran into Stan, Hebert, and Fabi. Stan was escorting Hebert and Fabi around DC. Hebert and Fabi are in the middle of an on-going, 15-month bike tour, which included several countries in Europe and Africa.
Watching
Little Richard: I Am Everything. This CNN documentary covers the life of Little Richard. He grew up poor and queer in Macon, Georgia in the 1930s and 1940s. After learning to sing in church he turned to singing in clubs, the Chitlin’ Circuit and a series of gay clubs in the deep south. He learned his piano style from Esquerita, a queer performer who served as something of a role model. Like most people, I knew Little Richard helped found rock and roll, what I didn’t know was that he came out of the closet long before most other queer performers. (Not that it wasn’t obvious.) I also didn’t know that his original lyrics to his first hit, Tutti Frutti, were about anal sex.
Heart of Stone. This Netflix movie is intended to make Gal Gadot a female James Bond. The movie is formulaic and not particularly interesting. It is tempting to dismiss Gadot as a serious actress because she is so beautiful but she’s quite good, as she was in the role of Wonder Woman. I feel the same way about Brie Larson who can say more with a turn of her head than most actors can with a page of dialogue.
Ahsotka. I continued to watch this Star Wars miniseries. Its leaden pacing made for many sleep inducing moments. One more episode to go.
Baseball. I went to a couple of Nationals games, once with my daughter and once solo by bike. The Nationals are a work in progress, but wait ’til next year!
Reading
Ancestor Trouble by Maud Newton. This memoir received great reviews from a wide range of publications but it was completely lost on me. The author delves into her ancestry and genome, ad nauseum, extracting often nonsensical conclusions about her own life. At times she came off as witless to me. (For example, she has ancestors who farmed in antebellum Mississippi and seemed surprised that they owned slaves.) Maybe it’s because I have little interest in my ancestry, but I kept thinking as I read: Who cares?
Crooked by Cathryn Jakobson Ramin is two books in one. The first half is a deep dive into the morass that is pain and back care in western medicine, something I’ve been all too familiar with. It turns out that in many if not most cases, back surgery does more harm than good. Failures in back surgery led to a boom in pain management which includes opioid use and other interventions that treat symptoms and not the root cause of back woes. The second half is the author’s exploration of alternatives many of which seem very promising to me. It may very well be that the condition that keeps me from standing or walking without a dull ache can be dealt with using any number of non-surgical interventions. I intend to explore many of these over the winter. Stu McGill’s Big Three exercises is a good place to start.
The Way Out by Alan Gordon with Alon Ziv. This book explores the phenomenon of neuroplastic pain. The authors assert that most chronic pain is caused by the brain misinterpreting signals from the body. The way to get rid of or manage this kind of pain is to re-wire the brain to properly interpret the signals. This process is called Pain Reprocessing Therapy, which applies mindfulness meditation to pain remediation. I’m skeptical but will be exploring this over the winter as well.
The Wager – A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann. The subtitle says it all. An epic true tale of an eighteen century expedition on the high seas gone horribly wrong. A great read for a cold, rainy winter’s day with the winds are howling and the tea is hot.
A Few Spokes Shy of a Wheel 
I once considered having back surgery. Instead I changed careers, where I saw a lot of people for rehab after back surgery. I came to consider spinal fusion “the gift that keeps on giving”. If you fuse part of the spine, it transfers the load to the joints just above and below, and increases that load. Pain relief is often temporary, followed by extension of the fusion, thereby transferring the load…I saw the same people more than once. There are times that fusion may be appropriate. I’m not a doctor and this is not medical advice, just my experience.
The book Crooked pretty much says this in spades. Conventional medical care for backs is like a snowball rolling down hill. This will fix you. No? Okay then this will? No? Okay, here’s some painkillers.
Thanks for the book recommendations, especially Crooked. I had an incident a few years ago that had me thinking my backpacking days were over. Through PT I healed and strengthened my core. I do PT at home now to maintain. As I get older I have a feeling back issues are going to come back in force. Can’t wait to check out this book and the link.
Dr Stu Gillman has a back book for lay people. It’s expensive but probably as good as it gets, plus it comes with 1-year online access to additional material. He has several videos on YouTube for free as well.
He describes says stenosis is not a diagnosis. Treatment for stenosis depends on where and how it is occurring.
My hiking days are done, I’m afraid but I keep plugging away at PT (at home) for my condition to keep pain at bay,