My thermometer just popped over 50F for the first time in nearly 4 weeks. Actually, last night, it went over 40F for the first time in nearly 4 weeks. That means only one thing around here in the winter – RAIN, and lots of it. If you see houses floating down rivers in Puget Sound on the news this Thursday, don’t say you weren’t warned.
Cold, of course, means snow and ice, and we got a lot of it. Last week, after the first batch had finally disappeared, I decided it was safe to bike to work. After all, the temp was 37 here in Cedar Hollow, and it wasn’t even raining.
But once I got up and over the hill from the Sound into Tacoma, I noticed my bike computer thermometer was down to 32. A few patches of black ice were sparkling up at me, but my tires seemed to grip the road just fine. Of course, it’s not called “black ice” for nothing. Meaning, when ice appears on a black asphalt surface, it sometimes disappears – it seems to be just as “black” as what it covers.
On the recently paved bike path, I was coming down the hill to my main cross street, where the route curves a bit. I turned slightly right and braked on the front, like I always do when getting ready to stop and punch the button for the walk signal. Nothing. I mean, the wheel turned, and locked, but instead of turning and slowing, we (the bike and I) just kept moving forward.
Now, I hate bikes. I think they are out to get me. I especially don’t like pedals, which are always sticking out from the contraption, and banging my shins, drawing blood and making for a particularly vicious streak of scar tissue running up and down the front of my lower legs. And I really, really don’t like the front wheel. The darn thing just will not stay still – it’s always turning of its own accord, and when it does, the bike’s momentum just comes to a halt, and it falls over. Really, a very poor design, I feel. Try this some time: hold a bike upright, and then give it a slight push forward. The front wheel turns savagely, and the bike goes into a sad little spin, promptly falling over. And they expect us to stay upright on these things?
So, the inevitable happened. At a speed of 15-20 mph, my bike, which was trying to turn right while the ice was only letting it move very smoothly forward, just tipped down onto its left side. Imagine you are running, and jump up into the air. Just as you hit your apogee, someone comes along and hits your legs from the side. Your hips and shoulders drop while your feet fly up, and you smash with a very satisfying “plop” onto whatever surface you jumped from. You can see great examples of this every fall weekend on TV. It’s called “football”.
But those guys have hip pads and are falling onto a somewhat soft surface. I’ve got just my flimsy bike clothes on (at least they are long-sleeved and -legged for the cold). So I fly forward off my bike (a beautiful example of the physics of momentum – Isaac Newton would have been proud of me!) like Superman, rotate around my long axis a quarter turn, and a half turn around my central axis. So I end up facing back the way I came, on my left side.
Cyclists have a nasty habit of breaking their collar bones when falling. The natural tendency is to curl up in a ball to protect yourself, so your shoulder hits first. This saves you head and your limbs, at the expense of your clavicle. Another common injury is even worse – trying to stop your fall with your hand – this breaks the little bones in your wrist, which can ruin your career as a boxer. The worst option is to hit your hip hard, break either the femur or the pelvis.
I’ve got a long history of falling while skiing (and ice skating), so I learned early on the value of throwing all four of my limbs out straight, trying to turn face up, and just taking the blow with my butt, thigh, and forearm. Although I only fall off my bike every couple of years or so, I’ve still got a complete set of very ragged scars all over my forearms, on the part you can see when you look at your elbow with your hand by your ear. And I have become a student of the purple haze which appears with deep thigh bruises.
I lay there on the bike path, trying to catch my breath (Adrenaline does funny things to your heart and lungs in a very short time), making sure I’m not TOO damaged. Then I realize I am effectively at the side of the road. I do NOT want some Good Samaritan stopping, coming over, and solicitously asking if I am all right – unless I am truly not all right. (I have personal space issues when I am feeling poorly). So I pop up, and rub my left outer/upper thigh to make sure it is functional. I pick up my bike, curse, and walk down to the cross walk. I get on, and start riding again.
It hurts, of course. I know what the next week or two will hold. First the pain and swelling, then the slow growth of the purple/red/blue patches signifying the rupture of a million tiny capillaries in the muscle and fat, followed by weeks of slowly shrinking hard lumps in that area. Sigh. But I can walk, and ride, and, with a little luck, run and ski. Swimming should be no problem. I take another 20 minutes getting to work, making sure I slow down and turn before applying the brakes, and just generally trying to get some semblance of blood flow back to my left leg, so the healing can begin. I am very happy that nothing is broken, not even my skin (except for those darn capillaries.)
This happened a week ago, and I have run and swum and lifted weights without any difficulty, so training can officially begin on Monday, January 5th, 2009, for my first Ironman of the year – Coeur d’Alene in June. I don’t see any issues with skiing three out of the next five weeks either.
What I do get are a series of comments in the locker room. I spend a lot of time in locker rooms – in the winter, 3 times swimming a week, twice for weights, and twice more maybe for indoor treadmill running. So I’ve got to parade around with this thing on my thigh everyday. I forget about the ugly sight of it, but it seems to impress a few folks. It’s amazing to me that complete strangers will actually start talking to me about my body without my permission – I guess that’s what a pregnant woman must feel like all the time.
“Did you fall on the ice?”
“What’d you do to your leg?”
“Couldn’t run fast enough away from her husband?”
“Wow, that looks just like a sunset (or Bloody Mary, or the painting “Guernica”, or whatever!)”
Since it seems a little risky to get into a prolonged conversation with strangers in a locker room over my body while I am partially or completely naked, I usually just quickly tell the truth (I fell off my bike on the ice), and shake my head sadly at the ignominy of it all. I don’t try to explain WHY I was riding in the ice, or that I mean “bicycle” and not “motorcycle”. Let them figure it our, or ask if they want. I just want to get dressed!
The only really bad part about this is I won’t be able to show this bruise to my sister when we get together to ski in three weeks. That’s one of our cute family traditions – we’re both PROUD of our active lifestyles, and the damage it can do to the body. It’ll be just a faint yellow memory by then. So this picture, and story, will have to do.