FYI
Just in case you wonder what its like here on the Loop...
http://www.chesterns.ca/current_monitor.htm
-B
Friday, February 5, 2010
05.02.10
Just in case you wonder what its like here on the Loop...
http://www.chesterns.ca/current_monitor.htm
-B
Thursday, February 4, 2010
02.04.10
Last on the Back
Come to think of it, there was that late Saturday evening in the park and I was trying to get some practice in for the last cross race. When I came down that off camber downhill left onto the field, and there were these weird dressed people circled around a bonfire dancing and chanting things I couldn't understand.
Well I threw my knees into the top tube and put my head down and did the best bunny hop of my life. Looking back with the smell of singed knee warmers wafting behind me all I could see were sparks flying and wails of, we will get your ass for this and where is your bell...
How was I to know.
-B
Come to think of it, there was that late Saturday evening in the park and I was trying to get some practice in for the last cross race. When I came down that off camber downhill left onto the field, and there were these weird dressed people circled around a bonfire dancing and chanting things I couldn't understand.
Well I threw my knees into the top tube and put my head down and did the best bunny hop of my life. Looking back with the smell of singed knee warmers wafting behind me all I could see were sparks flying and wails of, we will get your ass for this and where is your bell...
How was I to know.
-B
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
02.03.10
The Back Is... Well... Not
WheelDancer asked in one of his comments awhile back just how my said back was doing and wanted a sort of update seeing I was kind of back on a bike, even if it was indoors and on a trainer. I was amazed to be doing some catching up on my blog reading to see that I wasn't the only one with back problems.
Well WD the week before last was not exactly a banner week for me. You see the long awaited appointment for one of these came.
Yes the dreaded day came that only confirmed what I had already figured about my back. It was...
Yup. I've been waiting for this day. It's been coming. Naturally, people around here love to blame everything on bicycles. So the first thing that was said to me was... well, if you weren't monkeying around bent over on that bicycle all the time you wouldn't have a back problem... hmmmm.
Don't think so. Maybe it was the couple of years doing ridiculous things on drill floors of oil rigs for 12 hours a day three weeks straight.
Or maybe the couple of years of laying water and sewer lines, shoveling tandem after tandem load of gravel level and then over the pipe...
Well we're starting to get there. Then there was the five years of sorting brick in a factory. I can't even find a picture for that because the only ones that come up are from the third world. We wouldn't want anyone to believe that here in North America you would still want someone to bend over and sort through 15,000 brick a day and put them in a jig to be strapped.
One of my pals that worked there for years had once told me that when he first went to work at the factory he was perfect for the job. He was big, strong and stupid. But 15 years later he was no good for the job anymore and I asked why? He said his back was screwed and he had smartened up.
So the cat scan confirmed that the vertebrae has deteriorated and that the disc at L5 has slipped and is not going back. This is not me but looks something like this...
So it was up to the Doctor for the results and here is what he had to say...
He basically read me the riot act.
I get three choices. And these are choices for the rest of my life.
A/ I lose weight, I strengthen my core with exercise, I stretch and do stuff like yoga to make my posture as close to perfect as I can so we keep the pain at a minimum and the disc from rupturing and more from slipping.
B/ We operate and remove the disc and fuse the vertebrae
C/ We operate and cut the nerve that the disc is pushing against.
Thank you cartoon people. See what happens when you let the surgeons at you?
I've seen the whole fuse the back together thing and what happens with my dear departed father in law R Dawson MacLanders. I watched a very able man that was the age I'm at now become screwed work wise and get pensioned off, and well it went down hill from there.
So we don't like B or C so we, meaning me are going with plan A.
There you are WheelDancer. It's smarten up or lay the bike up and you don't buy cyclo-cross bikes just to look at them...
-B
WheelDancer asked in one of his comments awhile back just how my said back was doing and wanted a sort of update seeing I was kind of back on a bike, even if it was indoors and on a trainer. I was amazed to be doing some catching up on my blog reading to see that I wasn't the only one with back problems.
Well WD the week before last was not exactly a banner week for me. You see the long awaited appointment for one of these came.
Yes the dreaded day came that only confirmed what I had already figured about my back. It was...
Yup. I've been waiting for this day. It's been coming. Naturally, people around here love to blame everything on bicycles. So the first thing that was said to me was... well, if you weren't monkeying around bent over on that bicycle all the time you wouldn't have a back problem... hmmmm.
Don't think so. Maybe it was the couple of years doing ridiculous things on drill floors of oil rigs for 12 hours a day three weeks straight.
Or maybe the couple of years of laying water and sewer lines, shoveling tandem after tandem load of gravel level and then over the pipe...
Well we're starting to get there. Then there was the five years of sorting brick in a factory. I can't even find a picture for that because the only ones that come up are from the third world. We wouldn't want anyone to believe that here in North America you would still want someone to bend over and sort through 15,000 brick a day and put them in a jig to be strapped.
One of my pals that worked there for years had once told me that when he first went to work at the factory he was perfect for the job. He was big, strong and stupid. But 15 years later he was no good for the job anymore and I asked why? He said his back was screwed and he had smartened up.
So the cat scan confirmed that the vertebrae has deteriorated and that the disc at L5 has slipped and is not going back. This is not me but looks something like this...
So it was up to the Doctor for the results and here is what he had to say...
He basically read me the riot act.
I get three choices. And these are choices for the rest of my life.
A/ I lose weight, I strengthen my core with exercise, I stretch and do stuff like yoga to make my posture as close to perfect as I can so we keep the pain at a minimum and the disc from rupturing and more from slipping.
B/ We operate and remove the disc and fuse the vertebrae
C/ We operate and cut the nerve that the disc is pushing against.
Thank you cartoon people. See what happens when you let the surgeons at you?
I've seen the whole fuse the back together thing and what happens with my dear departed father in law R Dawson MacLanders. I watched a very able man that was the age I'm at now become screwed work wise and get pensioned off, and well it went down hill from there.
So we don't like B or C so we, meaning me are going with plan A.
There you are WheelDancer. It's smarten up or lay the bike up and you don't buy cyclo-cross bikes just to look at them...
-B
Sunday, January 31, 2010
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