Temporary Southpaw – Day 4

Last night I slept well, having taken a Tramadol around 11 p. m. I wrapped my forearm with ice and took it off after a short time. When I awoke, my fingers were completely nimble but there was still some residual numbness which should go away as the median nerve heals. The base of my hand feels like I caught a baseball without a glove on.

After riding and showering, it was time for the big moment. Off came the bandage. First came an ace bandage, then layers and layers of what looked like cotton. The last bit was some small bits of gauze over the wound.

The incision is about twice the width I was expecting. Judging from the bruises on my wrist above the incision, I am guessing that the doctor needed to fish around for a clear path to the ligament.

The surgeon closed the wound with three stitches. I was expecting to put a regular band-aid over the wound but I clearly needed something bigger. Fortunately, I had a perfectly sized flexible mega-band-aid. I put it on right after taking a much-needed shower.

Big boy bandage

I’ll be taking pain meds and icing the area on and off until next Tuesday when I go for my post-op appointment. I suspect the stitches will come out then.

Temporary Southpaw – Day 3

Last night was a bit of a set back. I took Tramadol at 11 and it seemed not to work very well. About 2 a. m. I popped some ibuprofen and, a couple of hours later, strapped an ice bag to my hand and wrist. That did the trick. I woke up with barely any discomfort in my hand. Somehow I was still groggy so after breakfast I hit the couch for an hour-long nap, with the ice bag once again strapped to my hand and wrist.

Next up, I tried to do my neck and back exercise routine. I omitted a couple of poses (bird dog and a psoas stretch) because they would have put weight on my right hand. The stretching went well.

I headed to the basement for a two-hour session aboard Big Nellie. The gears are changed using something called Grip Shifters which require a twist of the wrist. My right hand could shift up without pain but shifting down was uncomfortable. The bike is set up on a resistance trainer so it’s entirely safe to reach over with my left had for downshifts.

After the ride I took a sink bath (not wanting to risk getting the bandage wet in the shower), took some extra strength Tylenol, and hit the couch for another session with the ice bag.

When I woke up my hand felt very good. It still won’t bear much weight and there is pain in the fleshy part of my palm on either side of the ligament that was cut, but the numbness is all but gone in my fingers. Of course, how good I feel may be a product of the medications so I still need to be careful. The doctor did say, however, that the mobility in my fingers should improve after a couple of days so I am right on track.

Tomorrow I get to take the bandage off. If the wound looks okay, I’ll switch to a band-aid. I am looking forward to taking a shower.

Onward!

Temporary Southpaw – Day 2

The post-op instructions say, “The more you elevate and ice, the happier you will be!” Accordingly, I spent most of yesterday and today trying to keep my hand above my heart and using an ice pack, both to keep swelling down. I had some use of the hand but mostly it was achy all day. I have been taking big doses of ibuprofen and acetaminophen for pain. Before I went to sleep last night I popped a Tramadol. I put in some ear buds, turned on a brown noise video from YouTube, and fell fast asleep. Sometime in the middle of the night, the video was interrupted by a loud, obnoxious ad. I woke with a start, disoriented.

Once I figured out what I was going on, I switched to a non-ad app and fell asleep until about 7:30. I woke with no pain at all in my hand. At 8 my surgeon called to check up on me. From what I can tell, the recovery is going just as he said it would: no swelling, manageable pain, and no discoloration of the skin.

With the surgery sedative was out of my system, I drove (okayed by the doctor) to cut my hair cut, then to a bookshop for some entertainment.

There are two things I am prohibited from doing: getting the surgical bandage wet and lifting anything over 5 pounds. So far I’ve managed to keep the bandage dry. I decided against wrapping the arm in a plastic bag and taking a shower, opting for a sink bath this evening instead. (I can reach about 80 percent of my body without difficulty. The rest will have to wait a few days.

(I was a little worried about bathroom activities but I can use my right hand to brush my teeth and my left for other hygenic activities.)

Instead of riding in the basement, I took another day off. No riding. No stretching for my neck and back. My body needed the rest anyway. My legs are happy; I am going up stairs like a beast.

With each passing hour I get a little more mobility in my hands. I need to stay aware that the pain medications are blocking the usual warning signs of damage.

My expectation is that I’ll be in good shape to replace the big surgical bandage with a band-aid in two days. Then I can go about my business (including taking a shower) albeit with the same five-pound lifting restriction. I cannot immerse the hand in water for four weeks.

Onward.

Temporary Southpaw Eve

Just to bring folks up to date, I have moderate carpal tunnel syndrome in my right hand. Some days I have no problems but, more typically, if I do something that stresses the base of my hand (e.g., pushing a lawn mower, riding a conventional bike, shoveling snow) my hand goes numb. Sometimes it’s only a finger (usually the middle finger) or two; other times, like during today’s ride on The Tank, my whole hand just kind of checks out.

The nerves in the hand are extensions of nerves that pass through a structure called the carpal tunnel at the base of the underside of the hand. The tunnel is capped by a ligament. When the ligament gets tight or inflamed, it impinges on the nerves leading to the hand causing the symptoms. If left untreated, the condition can become constant and painful. Typically the condition is caused by repetitive stress, like riding a bike a bazillion miles.

Tomorrow morning I will be undergoing endoscopic carpal tunnel release surgery on my right, dominant hand. The surgery is low risk and should take no more than 15 minutes. (For reference sake, this is about as long as each of my cataract surgeries.) The procedure is pretty straightforward. I will be given mild sedation (comparable to my cataract surgeries or my colonoscopy) and a local anesthetic in the area of my hand and wrist where the surgeon will be working. The surgeon will make a small (less than an inch wide) incision in the underside of my wrist just below my hand. He then will insert an endoscope into the slit and, using a tiny camera, maneuver it into position beneath the ligament. Once in place, he will sever the ligament using a surgical blade inside the endoscope. After he removes the endoscope, he’ll clean the wound with some saline, stitch the incision, and bandage the area.

After the surgery my job is to ice the area intermittently and to keep the wrist above my heart to promote healing. After three days, the surgeon’s bandage will come off and I will replace it with a Bandaid. In one week I go back to have the surgeon assess my progress. During this period, I am prohibited from raising more than five pounds with the hand. He said that I should be able to ride my conventional bike after a week. I think that’s pretty optimistic but we’ll see what happens. In the meantime, Big Nellie and I will be hanging out in the basement.

In preparation for the surgery I’ve been trying to get some minor tasks out of the way. I went to the pharmacy to get my post-op medications (anti-inflamatories, pain killers, and anti-nausea drugs). This was the first time I used my new Medicare D insurance and I shocked at the cost. My out-of-pocket expense for the three post-op medications was less that $3. (I am not making this up.) I also refilled my asthma maintenance medicine. It is $20 cheaper per month than my old insurance. My asthma rescue inhaler cost only $5. Dang.

Since I won’t be able to ride The Mule for a week anyway, I spent the last week riding it daily, until I reached 78,000 miles on the odometer. Then I drove to Bikes at Vienna and handed over my steed to mechanic Beth for some TLC. I told her about the surgery and she suggested a more cushiony bar tape that should help my hand over the coming weeks.

While we were chatting, Beth told me about a friend who had the surgery about eight years ago and said that it was a total success. Joan, a reader whom I met in Wyoming on my 2022 bike tour, told me that she had carpal tunnel release surgery on both wrists after riding the grueling Paris-Brest-Paris randonneuring event years ago. She, too, had excellent results. While waiting for her wrists to heal, she trained for a marathon (because she is an athletic beast!).

I’ve been spending much of the rest of my time doing small tasks that I’d rather not deal with using my left hand. These include changing the water filter in my refrigerator, installing new wiper blades on my car (the rubber on the old ones was disintegrating!), pumping up the tires on my bikes, and doing laundry.

I hope to post an update about my progress a few days after the surgery.

In unrelated news, during my ride today I passed a man mowing his lawn. I think he takes this Groundhog Day thing way too seriously.

January 2025 – Watching and reading and riding in a polar vortex

Watching

The Holdovers – Director Alexander Payne’s second collaboration with Paul Giamatti (the first was Sideways) about those left behind during Christmas break at a New England boarding school. Terrific.

American Primeval – A tail of blood and hate and deliverance from director Peter Berg. Mormons, the U. S. Cavalry, settlers, Shoshones, and Paiutes contest the Utah territory. Incredibly violent. Taylor Hirsch, long left in the dust after playing Tim Riggins in Berg’s Friday Night Lights, makes a stellar protagonist. Great cast, cinematography, and direction. Written by Mark L. Smith who also wrote The Revenant.

Michael McIntyre, Showman – A Netflix stand up special. Absolutely hysterical.

Rams – Disease breaks out among sheep herds in Australia. Flocks must be destroyed but one man keeps a ram and three ewes in a back room of his small house in defiance. Interesting tale staring Sam Neill (who is an actual sheep farmer in real life). We had trouble figuring out if it was meant to be a comedy.

Mat Ryder’s Tour of Aotearoa (New Zealand) – Mat’s at it again riding from the northernmost point in New Zealand all the way to the southernmost. Here’s the first five days, but the video series precedes his departure from Wales.

Football – I watched several NFL playoff games in preparation for the Super Bowl, otherwise I would not have a clue beyond Taylor Swift and such.

A nearly nightly binge of coverage of Trump’s first 100 days on MSNBC, CNN, and The Daily Show.

And the month ended with a horrific mid-air crash near National Airport. It brought back memories of a gloomy night, March 3, 1972, when a Mohawk Airlines turboprop flew over my head and, about a mile away, crashed into a house.

Reading

We Solve Murders by Richard Osman. The man who brought you The Thursday Murder Club is at it again with a new series about three unlikely (Osman’s stock in trade) crime solving partners. This is my first book of 2025, having waited three months so that my wife could buy it for me for Christmas. Well worth the wait. Witty. Clever. Loads of interesting characters. Someone is killing social influencers and the blood of Amy (one of the “We”) is found at the site of each murder. Who done it?

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Hadn’t read this since I was a tween. I got lost in the dialect back then. Liked it much more now but found some of the escapades went on ten pages too long. Precursor to reading James.

James by Percival Everett. A re-telling of the story in Huck Finn (mostly) from the perspective of Huck’s companion Jim. a runaway slave. I say “re-telling” because this book’s plot, especially in its second half. diverges from Twain’s narrative. James is worthy of all the praise heaped on it last year when it was published.

A Firing Offense by George Pelicanos. The first book by the much praised DC author. It’s a private eye novel set in DC in the early 1990s. Pelicanos captures the vibe in DC at the time to a t. A pretty impressive first novel. Half way through, I ordered his next two books which continue the boozy adventures of Nick Stefanos.

Nick’s Trip by George Pelicanos. The second Nick Stefano book by Pelicanos. Like the first one Nick takes on a case and solves a second for personal reasons. A literally incredible amount of alcohol is consumed by the characters who mostly remain functional and coherent despite their drinking. Still, this captures the vibe of the time and places (DC, southern Maryland).

Any Road Tour by me. I was between books so I decided to read the journal I created out of the nightly blog posts during my 2018 bike tour from Mount Vernon, Virginia to Portland, Oregon. It could use a little editing and a handful of photos are missing but it’s still not a bad read, if I do say so myself. I found that my memory had mixed up sequences and locations of events. Also, I seemed to think that I had far fewer headwinds than the entries suggest.

Riding

I managed a pretty decent month of riding despite snow and ice and the infamous polar vortex. I clocked 775 miles, riding 29 of 31 days. I rode indoors for 12 days on Big Nellie for the equivalent of 256 miles. Most of the rest was on The Mule at 398 miles. The switch to platform pedals really paid off this month. My feet are secure and I don’t have to find a way to jam them into toe clips. Also, the Catalyst pedals are proving to be well worth the money.

Carpal Diem

Well, my annual trip on the medical merri-go-round has been interesting. I went to my pprimary care doctor for a referral to a hand surgeon to fix the trigger finger on my right hand.

The hand surgeon gave me a cortisone injection at the base of my middle finger. It appeared to work as expected. Alas, the hand surgeon also asked several questions about my fingers and hand. I told him I have numbness at the tip of my middle finger which I attributed to the removal of a cyst before the pandemic.

He said that wasn’t likely and did a simple diagnostic test and said, “you have carpal tunnel syndrome.” This would explain the general numbness and aching I have been getting in my hand for the last year or so. Occasionally the pain wakes me up.

The doctor gave me a splint (looks like a roller blader’s wrist guard) to wear while sleeping. Off I went to a neurologist for an electromyography (EMG), a systematic test of nerve function. I’ve had one before and it was extremely painful. This time the test wasn’t nearly as bad, only slightly worse than getting a series a static electric charges. More annoying than painful.

The test results essentially confirmed the hand surgeon’s diagnosis. The nerves in both my hands are a little weak but test of the median nerve (the one that sends signals to most of the fingers) came back “NR”. This means “no response.” Derp.

(I asked if this meant the neurologist botched the test. The hand surgeon said that this was not likely. “She’s really good.” That’s the sense I got from the neurologist, too. Dang Doesn’t hurt to ask, I suppose.)

If I do nothing, the numbness and general weakness in my hand is likely to get worse. So I am scheduled for surgery in a couple of weeks. Barring some unforeseen problem, the surgery is likely to last about ten minutes. The doctor will be using a laproscope. This means the surgical incision will be about and inch or so wide. Using the scope, he will cut through a ligament that runs across the base of my hand. The tiny incision should greatly speed my recovery. Assuming nothing goes wrong, I should be good to return to normal activities in a few days. Of course, for me, “normal” means riding my bike. I suspect that I’ll be limited to my recumbent for a while. The doctor said the success rate is about 90 percent. That’s confirmed by all the videos I’ve been watching online.

I had hoped to do a supported, spring tour of the Natchez Trace. Two of the three tours I was looking at have already sold out. The last one is in early April. I will wait until my post-op visit with the surgeon and, with luck, sign up. Otherwise I’ll do it in the fall.

If any of you have had carpal tunnel release syndrome or know someone who did, let me know in the comments.

Well, at least it’s pretty

It finally happened. A significant snowfall came our way. According to the National Weather Service, my neck of the woods received eight inches during the main part of the storm. A few hours later we had another inch that was light and fluffy.

I can’t really use a conventional snow shovel because it would cripple me, being of compromised lower back architecture. Luckily, I have a wovel, a.k.a. a snow wolf. It looks about as weird as a recumbent bike, but like the recumbent bike it works like a charm.

The wovel has a large pan that can holds two or three times as much snow as a regular snow shovel. If you try to lift a full pan of snow you’ll be sorry.

Instead, you push down on the crossbar and use the big wheel to move the snow then thrust with your legs and push down more on the crossbar to cast the snow off to the side. Brilliant.

This series of pictures from the wovel website shows how it is done.

Step 1. Push the wovel to pick up snow.
Step 2. Push down on the crossbar to lift the snow.
Step 3: Step toward the wheel and push down to toss the snow.

Your neighbors and Facebook friends will laugh at you but ignore them. It works! It clears snow roughly two or three times as fast as a conventional shovel and about half as fast as a snow blower.

I created some long piles of snow along the side of the street and had to cast more snow over the top of the piles. Let’s just say that my tossing technique could use some work. Also, I ran out of places to put the snow so I had to walk around with a full shovel to find fresh landing spots.

I have to say that eight inches of snow is about the limit that my 69-year-old body can handle. Next time, I’ll tackle the wovelling in waves, four inches at a time.

Had I used a conventional shovel, my lower back would have been screaming at me after 20 minutes. Using the wovel, the only thing that hurt was my triceps and my upper back muscles. They both really felt like I had hit the weight room. I took some ibuprofen and rested afterwards.

The next day I was a hurtin’ unit. My upper back muscles and triceps were super sore. (My hands were achy but I have carpal tunnel syndrome so that’s to be expected.) I managed to use a conventional shovel to clear the small amount of snow from the second wave of snowfall. Afterwards I did my normal stretching routine and rode 2 1/2 hours on my recumbent in the basement.

I checked the road near my house and there are significant sheets of ice here and there. So riding outside is not going to happen for a while. I’m headed down to the basement where Big Nellie and me are going to tackle Huckleberry Finn (in advance of reading James).

Looks like 2025 is going to be wild

After taking New Year’s Day off from riding (50 mile per hour gusts just aren’t my cup of tea) I’ve been doing my best to get outside and ride. Yesterday I rode into a strong headwind to drop off some books at the Carpe Librum nonprofit bookstore in downtown DC. The ride utterly exhausted me. I always forget that riding in cold temperatures is much harder than riding in the summer. I think I get dehydrated because I tend not to drink enough water when I have a balaclava covering my mouth. Also I am wearing more layers than the kid in A Christmas Story.

During my rides I have noticed that the wildlife around here is very busy. I have seen evidence of beavers like never before. They cut down small trees and leave wee stumps that look like they’ve gone through a pencil sharpener. Today, the Friends of Dyke Marsh posted a picture of a new lodge in the marsh.

The other day The Mule and I came ripping down a hill at a bit over 30 miles per hour (did I mention that it was damned cold?) through a posh neighborhood along the GW Parkway. At the bottom there’s a chicane with a stop sign. Of course, I normally don’t look up because I routinely blow through the stop sign and swerve through the chicane. Sue me. Anyway, this one time I did look up to clear my eyes which had teared up during the descent. There to my left, high up in a mature tree in the backyard of a rather nice home, was a massive bald eagle nest. (For you locals, it’s at the corner of Park Terrace and Huntly.) When did that get there? I didn’t see any activity in the nest mostly because I was more concerned about surviving the chicane and such.

Last week I noticed that a nest near Tulane Drive on the Mount Vernon Trail in Dyke Marsh was no longer there. So I am guessing that the nest or its tree had somehow been compromised. Trees in Dyke Marsh have been succumbing to ever rising river water levels so perhaps this tree toppled. In any case, the backyard nest is approximately 200 yards west of the old Tulane nest.

This kind of nest relo happened about ten years ago a bit further north. Eagles had built a nest in a tree between the Parkway and the golf course at Belle Haven Country Club. The tree took a beating in several storms and the eagles moved about a half mile uphill into a backyard in the Belle View neighborhood. For some reason they abandoned that nest and moved to a light stanchion at the mixing bowl where Richmond Highway meets the Beltway.

Another development in local eagle real estate has happened at the nest in a tree on the trail near the intersection of Morningside Drive and the Parkway. There had long been a nest in this tree only 50 yards from the trail toward the river, but it was abandoned in recent years. The other day I was cruising north along the trail when I saw two people, one with binoculars, looking up at the tree. I craned my neck and saw the head of an eagle above the rim of the nest. Fast forward a couple of days. I was heading south along the trail and remembered to look up at the nest. To my shock, there were two nests in the tree! Multifamily housing has come to Mount Vernon. Do the authorities know?

Across the river in Oxon Hill, Maryland I recently rode past a sign warning of deer for the next 1/4 mile. I’d ridden this road scores of time but had never seen a deer. I scoffed as I followed the road 90 degrees to the right. And there, in the middle of the road, were four deer. Dang.

On the same ride, I was attacked by a dog. It was a nasty looking cur. Lucky for me it was territorial and stopped at the end of its driveway. This was one of two dog attacks in the last couple of weeks. The other was in Fort Hunt Park near home. A woman was walking her dog with her friend. They were chatting and the dog walker had dropped the leash. As I went past, the dog came after me with bad intent. I stopped and gave the dog and the walker a piece of my mind.

Back at the homestead we’ve had several interesting developments in the world of critters. Twice in two weeks, mourning doves have been evaporated on our lawn. There was nothing left but feathers. Harsh! We suspect ospreys from the nest in the light tower at the softball field down the street. Or maybe there is an owl in the woods nearby.

Raccoons come and go, often leaving their paw prints on our garbage cans.

Foxes stop by several times a week in the dead of night. They come close to the house, sometimes on our deck and make a racket. They have an eerie distinctive, deranged bark that sends shivers up your spine.

And finally we have become engaged in anti-squirrel warfare. We spend a ton of money on birdseed and other bird food. Our preferred seed is shelled and covered in red pepper. This is supposed to deter squirrels. The red pepper seed is expensive so we mix it with slightly cheaper un-peppered, shelled sunflower seeds. This mixture, and the removal of two nearby maple trees, has greatly reduced our seed loss to squirrels. Until recently.

A squirrel has figured out that if he shakes the otherwise squirrel-proof bird feeder he can loose some seeds to the ground. Our nemesis then hops down and eats his fill of the un-peppered seeds. My wife also puts out suet in a cage and some peanut butter in an artful little wooden house. The squirrel simply yanks them off the tree. The peanut butter house was recently found forty feet away. Khaaahnnnn!

I’d like to tell you more about the beasts of suburbia but I am in the process of panicking about an impending snowstorm. We had a squall the other day that featured a nasty micro burst, sideways snow, and thunder. It was good prep for the coming mayhem. We expect to get inches. INCHES! We have milk and toilet paper so no worries.

My Year on the Wheel – 2024

This was my seventh straight year of riding more than 10,000 miles, 10,394 to be more or less exact. I put more miles on two of my bikes than I did on my 2009 Honda Accord (it’s going to last forever).

The big event as usual was my bike tour but this year was the first time since 2003 that I quit early. In that year my rear tire blew out, my gears and brakes stopped working, I was sick as a dog, and it was raining. You don’t have to be a genius to know that the bike gods are not on your side. So it was in 2024 when I found myself struggling to ride up even the most moderate of hills. The final straw was a ride of less than 30 miles into Charlottesville. I felt like I was dragging both brakes the whole way. I decided to take the train home and let my body recover.

A week later I lit out from home on a bee line back to Charlottesville. It worked out okay except for nasty traffic on a narrow two-lane road just north of town. I persisted and, the next day, was back on my original route, the eastern third of the TransAmerica Trail. There were some good days after that. I hiked the Blue Ridge tunnel, stayed overnight at the Cookie Lady’s house in Afton, Virginia, rode a short, but spectacular stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and had a fabulous ride on the roads to Damascus, Virginia.

The rest of the ride was not so great. I rode past several hypdermic needles on the road outside Lexington, survived a scary thunderstorm, felt lousy when I was pedaling up hills, pushed my bike up several mountains, and was attacked by dogs over and over again. By the time I reached Hazard Kentucky, I was totally stressed out mentally and physically. When the caretaker of a bike shelter 50 miles west told me to buy bear spray, I rented a car and drove home.

The rest of the year featured my usual array of local rides: three one-way rides from the western end of the Washington and Old Dominion Trail to home, several rides on Maryland’s eastern shore, and three rides in Virginia hunt country. I also did five event rides including my 16th 50-States Ride in DC.

As usual, The Mule won the prize for most mileage: 3,912 in all. Despite nearly getting rid of the Tank in March, I ended up riding it 3,795 miles, thanks to some smart wrenching and advice from the good folks at Bikes at Vienna. Little Nellie saw very little use, if you can call 839 miles slacking. Big Nellie racked up 1,847 miles, albeit 583 miles connected to a resistance trainer in the basement during reading season.

The end of year odometer readings.