Month: July 2025

A Bent July

It’s been another scorcher of a month here in the mid-Atlantic. The heat index has been near or above 100 F’n degrees on several days. Storms roll through nearly every night giving us a good show and occasionally knocking down a tree here or there. Thankfully, August is forecasted to begin with pleasant weather. Ahhh.

A storm victim on the trail near Mount Vernon

Riding

I logged 744 miles, all of it on Big Nellie my Tour Easy recumbent. I took nine days off, two for a family reunion, a couple more for rest and to avoid nasty weather, and the rest in preparation for a blood test. Near the end of the month I put Knee Savers on the bike. These little chunks of machined metal move the pedals away from the crank arms by 20 millimeters. They seemed to work okay so I tried them with my Catalyst pedals. The combination worked quite well. After a couple of days I felt like my old bent self on the bike. As these things go, 744 miles for a summer month isn’t exactly setting the world on fire, but it isn’t half bad considering all the time I took off.

Knee saver pedal extender

For the year I’ve logged 5,955 miles, on pace for 10,253 miles for the year.

I registered for September’s 50 States Ride in DC. It will be my 17th. If you live in DC and have never done it, you should. As President Kennedy said, “We do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard.”

Reading

My Friends by Fredrik Backman. A splendid novel about teenagers, art, and friendship. On a par with Backman’s Anxious People and A Man Called Ove.

Medical

The medical merri-go-round decided not to take the summer off. After briefly considering physical therapy for my injured right arm, I decided to go it alone. It’s getting better incrementally. Fortunately, my local county fitness center re-opened a few weeks ago. I’ve been working out (carefully) on a set of nine weight machines and I have to say my body is pleased. My arm is still a wreck but it’s a happier one.

Since January, I have been getting monitored for prostate cancer. The level of prostate specific antigen (PSA) in my blood was found to be slightly above the threshold for concern last December. As it turns out, high PSA levels can be caused by cancer but they can also be caused by a number of less serious things such as advancing age, an enlarged prostate, and (I kid you not) bike riding. To eliminate bike riding as a cause for my PSA levels, I took a week off the bike and re-tested. It made no difference. (I think the connection has to do with riding a conventional saddle which can compress the perineum and the body parts above.)

Earlier this year my urologist sent me for an MRI. It found no abnormalities other than the enlargement. My urologist is confident that I’m at very low risk for cancer. Just to be safe we’ll do PSA blood tests every six months. No worries.

The only disturbing thing about this whole prostate cancer business is the fact that old men (70 years old and up) can often skip treatment altogether for slow growing prostate cancer. The thinking is they’ll die before the cancer gets them. First do no harm; then call the undertaker.

You wouldn’t like me when I’m weeding

Last night the skies raged. It was another typical storm with beaucoup thunder and lightning. As is usual around here, the storm followed a horribly hot and humid day.

Today was yet another day that I abbreviated HHH – hazy, hot, and humid – in my bicycling log. I took today off from the bike and spent a couple of hours tending to my pathetic garden. It is full of unwanted vines, crabgrass, and weeds.

After 45 minutes I had to stop working. I sat in a plastic lawn chair in the shade, gulping water from one of three bottles I had brought outside either me. My clothes were already soaked with sweat. My heart rate was through the roof.

Fortunately a breeze kicked up and I cooled down. Once my heart rate came down, I returned to my labor. This time I lasted about 30 minutes before returning to my chair.

After reviving I gave the garden one more go before surrendering to Vulcan. Dang.

I hosed myself off so as to not drip sweat and mulch bits all over the house. Preparing for a shower I reached over my head to take off my T-shirt. It was pasted against my skin.

It was a shirt I bought in North Cascades National Park on my 2018 cross country bike trek. I bought it after climbing five mountain passes in four days. It had some small holes in it so when I gave it a yank I Hulked it. The back just shredded. It was still so wet that I had to take it off like a skirt.

Shirt died a hero.

It will live on for a while in my rag bag before succumbing to the trash.

Agin’ and Ragin’

At my 25th high school reunion my classmates and I lined up for lunch. The line next to us comprised the 50th year alumni. Overhearing their conversations, I couldn’t help but laugh. All they talked about was the diseases and operations they had been dealing with.

Of course, now that I am at the tail end of my 60s, I am finding that medical woes are the topic du jour no matter where I go. At Friday’s Coffee Club we had three shoulder impingements and one post-op rotator cuff. My shoulder impingement is an interesting diversion from my whiplash recovery (nearly complete), my lumbar spinal stenosis, my wrecked left knee (nothing new), and my recovery from carpal tunnel surgery.

Another thing that seems to be new is my difficulty in dealing with excessive heat and humidity. Aren’t old people supposed to love hot weather? This summer in the DC area has had it usual oppressive, swampy weather. Lately when I finish a ride in “feels like” 109 degrees F, I need to drink a gallon of whatever I get my hands on and take a nap.

You don’t want to know what it feels like. Trust me.

That hourly chart makes me super glad I hired out lawn mowing this year.

It’s at least ten degrees cooler inside this outbuilding on Capitol Hill.

The heat and humidity does provide us with some entertainment. We routinely have raging thunderstorms. The other day I was doing a 50-mile ride on Big Nellie when I came upon a tree that had fallen across the Anacostia River Trail in DC. Fortunately, a young whippersnapper (in the green jersey below) helped me by hefting my bike over the tree and sent me on my way.

Another recent storm dropped a tree from my neighbor’s property into my backyard. Most of what fell in my yard was from the top of the tree. My neighbor was not at all concerned that his rotted tree had left a mess in my yard. Thanks, pal. I decided to return the wood to its rightful owner and threw it over the fence onto his derelict property.

The other night another line of storms came through. A tornado warning was posted for the northern edge of DC about 25 miles away. I was sitting in my kitchen when the loudest bang and biggest flash went off right over my house. The floor shuddered. WOW! Somehow the lightning bolt didn’t cause any damage other than my frayed nerves.

The heat and humidity does bring some interesting flora. The lotuses, water lilies, and other marsh flowers were in full bloom at the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in northeast DC. This, combined with Friday Coffee Club, made for a nice 48-mile jaunt on Big Nellie.

Speaking of Big Nellie, I have gone full on bent, riding it for 460 miles over the last two and a half weeks. My right arm, the one with the impingement, is happy.

A week ago my wife and I signed up to use the newly renovated recreation center three miles from home. I used to go there to lift weights before the pandemic. It had a crummy little weight room but it served my purposes. The renovated weight room is massive, with brand new equipment. Lifting helped my riding, especially during my recovery from pulmonary embolisms back in the winter of 2017 and 2018. I use only upper body machines with very light weight. I concentrate on going very slowly. One interesting result is that my upper back can now comfortably lean back when I am sitting. This makes for a much more efficient and comfortable ride on my recumbent.

Tone for my nap….

Cookin’ in June 2025

Weather

We’ve been dealing with heat waves and violent thunderstorms. One of the latter dropped a tree that partly fell into my yard. I worked on cleaning it up and hacking back invasive vines for an hour and was soaked in sweat by the end. I did another assault on run-away vegetation a week later and looked like I had jumped in a pool. I have a method that keeps me from doing too much; I own three 30-gallon garbage cans. Once they are filled with clippings and other debris, I stop. One more round of yard work to go and I can find another way to trash my aging bones.

Bicycling

I had three unstated goals this month. One was to reach 5,000 miles for the year. I ended the month at 5,211 miles. Yay me. I wanted to hit some thousand-mile milestones on my bikes. I hit 33,000 miles on the Tank, my Surly CrossCheck, on June 5. Five days later I hit 52,000 miles on Big Nellie, my Tour Easy recumbent. On June 25, I hit 80,000 miles on The Mule, my Specialized Sequoia touring bike. My last goal was to hit 1,000 miles for the month. This may seem like a lot but I’ve done it every year since I retired in 2017. This year I fell short by hitting only 50 miles. I guess it helps to be on a tour.

I spent the last week of the month on my recumbent to get my “bent” legs back. Recumbents stress different parts of your body so they do take some getting used to after riding conventional bikes for over a month. Once I get dialed in, and have no other problems, I’ll test ride some tadpole (two wheels in front) trikes.

Reading

1776 by David McCullough. The story of the rag tag US Continental Army’s fight against a massive British force augmented by Hessian mercenaries. British General Howe had the US forces in his hip pocket at New York but let them escape. The ultimate outcome, American independence, according to McCullough, “seemed little short of a miracle.” My last McCullough book. Not a bad one in the lot.

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. The plot focuses on the coming of age of two girls in a working class neighborhood in 1950s Naples. Both are intellectually gifted. Their relationship evolves as they grow into their middle-teen years. Their lives become intertwined with their family and neighbors. Basically, it’s a soap opera. It sold extremely well and was praised by critics. I suppose if I had read it in one sitting I’d have liked it much more but, in the end, it wasn’t for me.

Watching

Good Night and Good Luck – CNN broadcast a live performance of this Broadway play about Edward R. Murrow’s confrontation with Senator Joseph McCarthy. It is based on the film of the same name In the film Murrow was played by David Strathairn, one of my favorite actors. Strathairn is now 76 years old so he’s aged out of the part which is taken by writer/producer George Clooney. (Clooney played Fred Friendly, Murrow’s boss, in the movie.) It was very well done. The sound, staging, and acting were all first rate. It shares one rather depressing thing with the Beatles’s Get Back. Like George Harrison in that film, Murrow is constantly smoking. Murrow died in his 50s from lung cancer. (The cloud of cigarette smoke from virtually every cast member is constant.) Harrison died from throat cancer that spread to his brain. The whole time I was watching I wanted to reach into the television and slap the cigarettes out of their mouths.

Mat Ryder Unplugged – Mat’s editing pal Ross made a 3-hour video from the massive content documenting his ride across America. This one has no commentary or music, just ambient sounds. Watching this I am a bit amazed that I rode across the continent at the ripe young age of 62. Mat also produced three new, shorter videos. One was about overhauling his bike. Another about his plans to ride mostly off-road from Land’s End to John O’Groats, the length of Great Britain. The third was about how he and Ross did a day tour riding the perimeter of the Isle of Wight.

Washington Nationals – The Nats went into a tailspin transforming from a promising team to one of the worst teams in the National League. They have a legitimate, emerging superstar in James Wood, and a couple of good starting pitchers who I pray won’t have arm problems. Where have you gone, Tony Two-Bags?

Trikes – I’ve watched countless videos on the various aspects of trikes, So many decisions: folding or not, will a rear rack impede the fold. drum or disc brakes, direct or indirect steering, three small wheels or two small ones up front and a big one in back. How would I carry stuff? Where does the water go? How will I transport it? Is the seat adjustable? Should I get one with an electric assist? It’ll probably come down to which one I like to ride the most.

Medical Merri-Go-Round

I noticed an odd looking spot near my left elbow last week. I am paranoid about getting skin cancer from my thousands of hours outdoors so I went to a dermatologist for a skin screening. It was a nothing burger. I’m of Irish and English ancestry so I burn easily. Nobody (that I know of) in my family has had skin cancer. Weird.

I continue to deal with pain in my right arm that resulted from my topple over crash on the Streetmachine that I test rode last month. Somedays I feel only mild discomfort. Other days my arm is screaming at me. I thought about going for physical therapy or I could just save myself the hassle, frustration, and expense and let time do its thing.