Orny's Cycling Journal

Like the rest of my life, the 2014 cycling season was a big pile of extremes.

I started this year on a high, receiving the silver lifetime achievement pin that the Pan-Mass Challenge gives to riders who surpass $100,000 in fundraising for cancer research. Just a few weeks later, the world changed forever when my hero and charity ride mentor Bobby Mac succumbed to pancreatic cancer. Up and down.

By mid-June, I was happily on pace for a record year, with the Outriders ride to Provincetown constituting my fourth century ride of the year. That night, on a one-mile ride home from the ferry dock, I had a bad solo crash that left me with a mild concussion. Even worse, the ER nurse botched an IV insertion, which left me with a huge hematoma and an unusable right arm. It was six weeks before I was well enough to do another long ride. Up and down again.

I wasn’t fully healed—and certainly not fully trained—when I completed the Mt. Washington Century in July as a final warm-up for my 14th and final Pan-Mass Challenge. By riding with my buddies Paul and Jay from the New York state line, I extended the PMC to a third day and 290 miles. I felt strong again, and was both proud and sad to ride in Bobby’s memory and to finish my PMC career having raised $111,222 for cancer research.

Shortly after the PMC, I noticed lingering pains in my abdomen. Eventually I was diagnosed with a balky gall bladder. I put myself back on a restrictive low-fat diet, and stayed off the bike in the interest of halting the accompanying weight loss. That pretty much put an end to my season, while I waited (and waited) for a surgery date. Up and down again!

Yesterday I completed my first ride post-surgery. It was nice to be out on the bike again, but it also sucked. It feels like I’ve lost all my conditioning: strength, endurance, cardio, speed, sprinting, climbing, bike handling, everything. Looks like we’ll be starting 2015 from scratch. Fortunately, since I live in the fucking tundra, I’ve got three and a half months left to hibernate before I have to address the fitness shortfall.

Despite my health problems blowing two gaping holes in my season, 2014 was still a great year. My 3,500-mile total was the most I’ve ridden since 2010, and I did set a new lifetime record of nine rides in excess of 100 miles. In fact, nearly 30 percent of my riding was in century+ rides! It makes me wonder how much more was possible if I had not run into so many health issues.

A lot of that was possible because I wasn’t working this year. Having just started a new job at Buildium, my opportunities to ride next year will be curtailed quite a bit. And I won’t be commuting, because it’s not worth riding the mere one mile to the office.

On the other hand, my new employer fields a 40-person team for the Cape Cod Getaway MS ride, which I’ll participate in. Like my annual Outriders ride, it goes from Boston to Provincetown, and it usually falls on the weekend after Outriders. Unlike Outriders, which goes 130 miles in one day, the MS ride wanders around, taking two days to do 175 miles. So it should be a walk in the park for me. It’s kind of nice to have a bit of cycling culture in the company, and to be able to step in with some instant cred. And as compared to the PMC, the fundraising is trivial.

So I guess I’m happy with 2014. It was a very eventful year, with many extreme highs and lows. But I still did a lot of riding, and enjoyed myself quite a bit.

At this point, there’s no saying what 2015 holds, save that I won’t have as much time to ride. Hopefully my digestive system will adapt to my new gall-bladder-less reality without inhibiting my riding. I think we’ll have to take the 2015 season day by day. But I’m eager to get through the winter and back out on the road!

Saturday was my third year doing the Mt. Washington Century as a warm-up for the Pan-Mass Challenge.

Although it was my fifth century of the year, I also viewed it as a big test: my first 100-mile ride since my most recent crash, where my arm was badly injured in the emergency room. My hematoma had been healing, but was still pretty colorful (as you can see in the photos), and the arm was still a little weak.

My buddy Paul and I left the start at 7am in cool but clear weather. There weren’t a lot of other riders as we made our way along the rocky Swift River up to Bear Notch, a 1300-foot climb over the first of three named mountain passes. The climb went well and the four-mile descent was just fabulous.

After the first rest stop, we tackled Crawford Notch, a beautiful ride flanked by rocky escarpments, climbing another 1100 feet and ending in a lengthy, steep pitch up. Paul and I stopped and took a couple photos in front of the lake at the top of the ridge.

During the next rolling segment, my arm started aching and my shoulder/neck went into painful spasms, but I nursed it in to the rest stop at the top of Randolph Hill. In previous years, the temperatures had been boiling by this point, but the day had stayed mild and pleasant for a change.

After a screaming descent down into the town of Gorham, we turned onto the long, steady grade up to the base of Mt. Washington. My buddies always find it to be a brutal segment, but I don’t; it’s short, really straightforward, and the climb is a moderate 800 feet.

After another rest stop, we climbed the final 400 feet to the high point of Pinkham Notch, followed by another screaming descent that eventually degraded into a road that—lacking any shoulder—is uncomfortably narrow.

The final rest stop featured facecloths in ice water and Lindt truffles on ice. Then we enjoyed a flat roll down West Side Road back into Conway… but not before a final kilometer of sandy gravel where the road had been completely torn up for construction. Then a short but absolutely brutal climb back up to the starting point.

The cooler weather and partial cloud cover made a huge difference in our perception of the difficulty of the course and the time we were on it. We finished in reasonable time, with only minimal aches and stiffness. I was especially glad that my neck and arm were fine after that brief period of difficulty halfway through.

Although we saw fewer riders this year, we seemed to chat with them a lot more, including one guy who had picked Mt. Washington for his first (ever) century ride, and Joe from Newburyport, whom we’d ridden with during the ECV Tour d’Essex County back over Memorial Day.

Another result of the cooler weather was that we didn’t feel compelled to go jump in the frigid waters of the Swift River after the ride, so we hung out at the lodge a while before finally piling in and pointing the car back toward Boston.

That will be my last really long ride (and this my last training update) before the PMC. I’m pleased that my body has recovered as much as it has, since the PMC—this year being three days and 290 miles, rather than two days and 190 miles—is barely more than a week away.

But it looks like I should be able to proceed with the bonus-length PMC as planned, with the only variable left to fall into place being the weather. It would be nice if we could squeak in one more really fine weekend this summer…

The GPS data is below, but if you want to see something really cool, check out the Strava Activity Playback, where you can view the ride unfolding, including my position and that of other riders near me along the route (check the guy named “P” to see my buddy Paul too).

June has been quite a month, featuring some amazing rides, and then another serious crash. Here’s an update.

With Memorial Day coming early, this year I had an extra week between my big May ride (Tour d’Essex County) and my big June ride (Outriders). With beautiful weather on tap, on Monday June 2 I decided to throw down another solo century, just for fun. It would be my third century of the year.

While deciding on a route, I came across a century I did five years ago with the Quad crew, which went up to Dunstable and back, skirting a couple lakes.

Although I’d forgotten much of it, it turned out to be a beautiful route, which I extended a couple more miles up into New Hampshire (both in order to cross the state line as well as to visit Nashua’s appropriately-named side street called “Century Way”). Going through Chelmsford I briefly rode alongside an adult fox, and on the return leg I stopped at Kimball’s for ice cream.

Physically, my body wasn’t quite up for the challenge, as evinced by periods of serious pain in my right shoulder, left knee, and both hands. But having stressed my body, I expected it to adapt to be able to better handle the demands the next time.

“The next time” came two weeks later, when I undertook one of my favorite rides: the Outriders double-metric century (127 miles), which starts a few blocks from my house in Boston and goes out Cape Cod to finish in Provincetown. Thus my fourth ride of the year in excess of 100 miles.

The weather was absolutely perfect, and I paced myself in order to have enough strength for this perennial longest event of my cycling year. As a result, I spent time chatting with several other riders, and still finished 12th out of 125 starters. And that left me with five hours to enjoy in Provincetown before my 8:30pm ferry back to Boston. It really was a stellar day.

While the ride out was awesome, the trip back was a litany of troubles. The scheduled ferry broke down, and the replacement arrived an hour late for our departure. Then when we were halfway home, the new ferry shuddered to a violent halt when it got snagged in a line of lobster pots off Scituate, which took about 20 more minutes to extricate ourselves from.

By the time we’d docked and I’d put my lights on my bike, it was nearly midnight. I’d already been awake for 20 straight hours!

On the two-mile ride back to my condo, something happened. I’m not gonna go into the details of what or where, since my head injury prevented me from remembering much about the event. I’m pretty sure it was a solo fall from hitting something I should have seen. Although there are additional odd pieces of the puzzle.

What I do know is that I came to, completely disoriented, but knew it. I had someone summon EMTs and went to the hospital, where I was diagnosed with a concussion, cat scanned, and (after several hours during which my mental state gradually improved) released. I had some abrasions on my hand and foot, but the head injury was the most concerning. Well, except for the huge bruise I later developed from the nurse’s botched attempt to insert an IV port in my arm…

The bike initially looked kind of banged up. I’d popped both tires, bent one brake lever, and the front wheel was dented and out of true. Fortunately, it looks like the latter may be the only thing that needs replacement, and that should be covered by the extended warranty I bought on my wheelset.

The only thing I really need to spend money on—and the most impressive bit of damage—was my helmet, which was scraped up, dented, and cracked through in four places. While I have very little faith in bike helmets, I can say that I’m very thankful that my naked skull didn’t take the beating the casque did. I’m pretty certain it saved me from a crippling injury.

By the time I walked my broken bike home from the hospital, it was 3:30am. I’d been awake for 23 hours and 45 minutes. One hell of a long day!

That was last weekend. Most of the symptoms of my concussion have abated, although I’m still being very careful about it. My arm—which was fine until they tried to stick an IV into it—remains livid, very sore, and difficult to bend. The bike’s in the shop, and I hope to have news from them shortly. And a new helmet has been ordered.

You might be wondering what this means for my planned rides: surprisingly little. I had been debating doing an unsupported CRW ride that repeated the 130-mile Outriders route the following weekend, but the ferry problems had already convinced me to forego that. I usually do a solo century over the Fourth of July holiday, and that should still happen if my arm permits, although possibly on my old bike. My next organized group ride isn’t until July 20th—the Mount Washington Century—and I expect to be back in form well before that. Then comes PMC.

So overall, the crash won’t put too big a dent in my training goals. Mostly, it’ll hit my wallet in the form of medical bills.

But the thing that bothers me most about the whole episode is this: cycling entails risks you can control and others which you cannot, and I’m discouraged to think that this accident might have been something entirely within my control to avoid.

Yesterday I rode my bike. It was a ride that wouldn’t even bear mention under normal circumstances, but it was noteworthy because it was the first time I’ve been able to ride since my crash, more than three weeks ago.

As I was riding home from work one afternoon, I was involved in an incident with a car. I’m not going to go into the details of it, except to say that it could have been a lot worse, so for that I am thankful. I had expected my body to have grown a lot more fragile with age, but I guess that’s a more gradual process than I imagined… or I was just incredibly lucky.

The most lasting injury for me has been a bad foot/ankle injury, which has kept me from riding (or even walking much) at all. Sadly, that’s put me out of commission for a good chunk of the most enjoyable riding of the year.

I’m certainly fortunate that this didn’t happen before my big Pan-Mass Challenge charity ride, because missing that would have been heartbreaking. I haven’t mentioned this year’s PMC ride here yet, but both the ride and the fundraising went extremely well, and you can read all about it in my usual comprehensive 2013 PMC ride report.

As it turns out, the crash also wound up being my final bike commute home from my expiring job in Quincy. Less than a week later, the office was emptied and vacated. The few of us still on the payroll have continued working from our homes for a while, which worked out well for me, given my injuries.

The bike is also pretty banged up, but salvageable. The worst part is that the components that were damaged are all expensive ones. So much for having a nice, new, pristine bike. That didn’t last long, did it? And the new bike will be in the shop for some time yet, so yesterday’s ride was on the old Plastic Bullet.

As you might expect, yesterday’s ride was a mixed experience. The best thing I can say is that it felt so good to be back in the saddle, enjoying the outdoors and getting some exercise in, rather than sitting at home with my leg up. I did a somewhat hilly 45-mile route out to Kimball’s and treated myself to some ice cream.

But in comparison to where I would have been without the accident it was very disappointing. I was slow and very limited both by reduced aerobic fitness (and correspondingly high heart rate) and by the ankle, which was done and gave up by mile 35. I was in pain any time I tried to accelerate, climbed a hill, or even just clipped into or out of the pedals. And understandably I had to deal with some post-accident jitters.

Prior to the accident, I had planned to spend yesterday doing the gorgeous Maine Lighthouse Ride; it would have been a beautiful day for it, and it would have been a very satisfying seventh century of the season. Instead, I probably won’t get another 100-mile ride in this year, and I hope I’ll be healthy enough to do the 50-mile Hub on Wheels ride later this month. And who knows when the shop will finish patching up the new bike.

Thankfully, during my recuperation there was one deeply satisfying event that took place. I received a PMC donation from an old friend that put me over $16,000 fundraising for this year. That is an incredible and unexpected new record, and also means that in my 13 years as a PMC rider, I’ve now singlehandedly raised over $100,000 for cancer research, treatment, and prevention at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

That’s an achievement that means the world to me, and is something I’ll treasure and value as one of the most important accomplishments of my life. So it has been helpful to offset the sense of depression and discouragement from the accident with the pride and satisfaction of reaching that long-anticipated lifetime goal, and remembering the support that I’ve received from the hundreds of caring friends who have sponsored my rides for so many years.

That goes a long way toward making this setback a little easier to endure.

Bicycling magazine used to have a monthly feature called “The Big Question”, queries which solicited short, witty contributions from readers. After my recent review of my old magazines, I decided to post my responses to a few of them. I’m sorry they’re more serious than witty, but that’s my nature, and hopefully they’ll give you a little more knowledge about me as a cyclist.

How did you get into cycling?

When I moved into Boston, I spent several years inline skating. For some reason, I decided to start commuting to work (2 miles) by bike, and then the challenge of a long ride started to call to me.

Who would you most like to turn into a cyclist?

Without question, my former, future, and present significant others. Part of that is to promote healthy activity, but the other half is to share all the beautiful places I’ve seen and experiences I’ve had in the saddle, which just can’t be communicated in words. It’s a part of my life that they have never been able to share or fully appreciate.

When do you feel most like a cyclist?
What’s your bike’s favorite season?

This one’s easy: late summer. Winter’s too cold, and spring is beset by strong headwinds and the painful process of training up to peak fitness. In late summer, it’s still beautifully warm out, but with all one’s major events done, one can forget training and ride for the pure enjoyment of it, reveling in the ease that comes with peak fitness.

How did you pick your bike?

First I identified the criteria I’d use to make a decision. Second, I reviewed the literature to identify bikes that would meet those criteria. Then I went out and rode lots of bikes, because the real final determiner is how the bike feels under you. Then I bought from the closest LBS to my house.

How do you know when you’ve found the right bike?

When it feels like a part of you, allowing you to move through the world almost effortlessly.

What does your bike want?

The Plastic Bullet would love to have its youthful vigor and health back. After 12,000 miles of riding, it’s had tires, wheels, cranks, bottom bracket, chainrings, chains, cassettes, and a brake/shift lever replaced, and the frame has acquired a bunch of little dings. It’s starting to look a bit beat, but it should continue to serve for a while yet.

What gender is your bike?

My bike doesn’t have a gender. “Bicycle” *is* a gender.

Old-school or cutting-edge?

Cutting-edge, no question. I never want to become one of those old-school cranks with their Brooks saddles and Sturmey-Archer hubs and DPW-surplus reflective vests.

Eat to ride or ride to eat?

Can you tell me any reason why I should need to choose between them?

Faster climb or faster sprint?

Climbs have always motivated me, whereas sprints just seem like typical male dicksizing. And I’ve never been a fast-twitch muscle fiber guy. My sprint lasts about 3400 milliseconds.

Faster or farther?

Definitely farther. See previous question! Plus by going farther you get to see more interesting places. Going faster just means you’re less present to experience the beauty of the locale you’re riding through.

How far do you go?

How far *can* I go?

What finally makes you quit?

My knees are rapidly going to hell, and I get terrible neck pain on longer rides. I was always surprised that lack of strength is never the limiting factor; instead, it’s these niggling little incapacities that have nothing to do with your actual stamina, endurance, and desire.

When do you go slow?

I go slow a fair amount of the time. Unless you’re training, there’s no real need to push yourself to go faster.

What’s the best cycling advice you ever got?

Probably the best suggestion was a meta-suggestion: go check out the rides Bobby Mac puts on at Quad Cycles. I have to credit Bobby with nurturing the inspiration, drive, and know-how for me to develop into an experienced and accomplished cyclist.

What’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever done on a bike?

This is a tough one, but I think my big childhood bike accident qualifies. A friend grabbed my baseball glove and rode off. When I caught up to him on my bike, I veered into him sideways to intimidate him so that he’d give it back. In the process, his pedal went into the spokes of my front wheel, and I instantly was thrown over the bars. Not my best planned strategy.

What makes a ride great?

A great ride consists of enjoying the spectacle of nature, the inner quietness that comes with focused riding, the physical ease that comes with peak fitness, and sharing all of that with close friends.

What did you smell on your last ride?

It’s spring, so typical seasonal smells include dogwood, lilacs, spreadered manure, and the cool, watery smell of lakes and rivers.

Where’s the best place to end a ride?

The ice cream shop, duh!

How has cycling changed you?
Has cycling made you a better person?

Absolutely. I’m healthier, wealthier, more philanthropic, and more at peace with nature, all because I’m a cyclist.

What’s the greatest thing you’ve ever done on a bike?

I don’t think I could answer this any other way than to say that I have derived a ton of satisfaction from the $60,000 I’ve raised (so far) for cancer research by riding in the Pan-Mass Challenge.

What was your best moment on a bike?

This is a tough one, but the thing that immediately comes to mind is the first time I crossed the PMC finish line in Provincetown.

What was your toughest mile?

At 112 miles, the first day of the PMC is always tough. Although that first time I finished in Provincetown was also hard, because I was having severe knee pain.

How is bicycling like a religion?

Cycling has its own ethics and culture, along with many different “sects”. Cycling is a solitary activity that promotes quiet contemplation. Cyclists know that although we each understand the joy of the ride, it’s something that can’t be communicated in words to someone who hasn’t experienced it themselves. Even between cyclists, that feeling can only be shared, not fully captured in words.

Why don’t the others understand?

Because they view the bike in a very limited way. There’s one thing that bicycles share with automobiles and trains and motorcycles, which is a sense of freedom and exploration. That’s why all these conveyances inspire enthusiast groups who all share a very similar kind of passionate devotion. If you compare cycling to the great American love affair with the automobile and the open road, you will actually see an awful lot of similarities.

What’s cycling’s greatest lesson?

Simplicity of life has immense payoffs that easily eclipse the hectic, self-obsessed, compulsiveness and materialism of modern life.

Geez, two weeks into the 2010 cycling season and there’s already so much to tell…

After a long spell of rain that brought flooding to the area, Tuesday March 16th was a beautifully sunny day, with even better weather predicted for the rest of the week, so I figured it was time to take the bike out of its stationary trainer for some pre-season maintenance.

The first thing I did was replace the chain: a fairly simple repair that I’d never done before. Previously, I’d waited until the chain had worn so much that both the chain and the rear cassette had to be changed at the same time, but this time I wanted to change the chain before it got to that point, hopefully saving myself the additional cost of a new cassette. It was an easy, if messy, swap. I’m looking forward to running my drive train dry again this year, after last year’s successful experiment.

Next I replaced my handlebar tape, which was another first. It sounds easy, but actually there’s some skill involved, and I wanted to be extra careful, since my old bar tape (put on by the bike shop) had unraveled on me. And what a messy surprise of gel, masking tape, and scotch tape I found underneath the surface of the old black bar tape! I replaced it with bright blue cork tape and finished it off with blue electrical tape, hoping it would look good with my blue tires, which it does. So far, I think I did a pretty good job with it, although I’m wondering how long it’ll stay so tight and neat.

Speaking of those blue tires, I also removed the heavy-duty rear tire that I use for the trainer, and replaced it with my regular lightweight blue road tire. But that was a familiar and routine swap. After that, the bike was ready for the open road!

I did all this in anticipation of my first outdoor ride of the season on Thursday, when the temperatures would be in the upper 60s. On Wednesday, after letting the bike sit overnight, I decided that I didn’t want to go on a long ride without first making sure my chain would hold together, so I took the Plastic Bullet out for a very short 8-mile test ride.

I rode out to Brookline and over Summit Ave., then turned home by picking up the Charles River bike path at Cambridge Street. As I rode along, I approached a group of two or three people coming from the opposite direction, either walking or jogging or skating. Just as I got even with them, from behind them another person on a bike veered around them to pass, swerving across the center line and directly into my path. Since she blocked my entire lane and there was a light pole on my right, there was no way to avoid her as this woman slammed her bike straight into me head-on, and I went flying over the bars in a classic Superman pose and crashed hard onto the ground beyond.

On initial inspection, I was bruised all over and in a lot of pain, and bleeding liberally from a deep gouge my left hand. I had to re-center my brakes and straighten my handlebars, but the bike otherwise looked okay.

She was an Asian-American student on a rusty commuter beater that was probably older than both of us put together. While I’d been in no position to see what happened to her in the crash, she appeared uninjured afterward. Several other people stopped and helped me recover, which took about five minutes. After I got her contact info, she went to leave and discovered her chain had fallen off, and that her rear wheel wouldn’t turn because the fender was rubbing. I fixed those for her before heading homeward myself.

That’s when I discovered that her impact had also broken my left shift lever. The bike is rideable, and I can still shift and brake using that lever, although with a broken pivot I have to really fiddle and force it to make it happen, and it’s likely to come apart in my hands one of these times.

Physically, I’d landed very hard on my left knee and upper back, and both were heavily bruised and had some road rash. I have pain that feels like cracked ribs in both the front and back of my chest. The injuries to my left hand featured a deep, inch and a half long laceration in my index finger. I didn’t think it was quite bad enough to get stitches, so at home I took a scrub brush and painfully cleaned the gravel out of it before bandaging it myself.

Looking back on it, it was a stupid idea to go anywhere near the bike path. This time of year, the joggers are all out training for the impending Boston Marathon, which makes the paths more crowded and a lot more dangerous. On top of that, it was the first warm day of spring, so everyone was out enjoying the sun, oblivious to the fact that there are other users on the path than themselves. Having spent the winter forgetting everything they might have known about safety, it is, in a word, Amateur Day. And with so many self-absorbed idiots on the bike path, it is the most dangerous place a cyclist could be. Although my unwise decision to take the bike path certainly doesn’t excuse this woman’s stupid and dangerous actions at all.

The next day was Thursday: the day I’d planned to take a big ride. It was just as beautiful as predicted, and I still wanted to take my first real ride of the season. Aside from a lot of pain in that left knee, my legs were mostly uninjured, so I decided to take it real slow and easy, and see how far I could go.

I didn’t know if I would make it two blocks, but once my legs loosened up, I found I could manage. The only problem was that my knee would tighten right up again if I stopped for very long, so I had to limit my rest stops to a couple minutes each. The spring winds were very strong, and once I was out of town my route was repeatedly blocked by floods of the Sudbury and Concord rivers. I even stopped and chatted with one of the DPW crews who were erecting barriers across Sherman’s Bridge Road, where the wooden bridge was at least eight feet underwater!

By the end of the day I’d actually racked up 71 miles, which is about twice what I’d normally do on the first ride of the year. Naturally, my average speed was way down, but that also kept me at an aerobic pace, rather than pushing and working myself too hard. Surprisingly, it didn’t feel too bad, at least while I was in the saddle. See the ride map.

On the way home, I stopped at the LBS and had the bike checked out. The lever definitely needs to be replaced, and the part alone is going to cost me $290. I decided I’d hold off on that for the time being, until I’d at least talked to the girl who hit me to see if she was going to do the responsible thing and compensate me for the mechanical damage she caused. Since I was in the shop already, I made an appointment to have my simple annual tune-up performed on Monday.

When the weekend came, Saturday was a gorgeous day, and I would have liked to have rode with my buddies at Quad, but by then I was just too achey to endure another long ride, so I reluctantly gave it a pass.

However, it was also the vernal equinox, which is a big deal for me. So I decided to ride a few miles down to Castle Island and back, simply to observe the return of the sun to the northern hemisphere. But just as I wheeled the bike out of my apartment, my old inner tube gave way at the valve stem, giving me a flat tire; then I popped (literally) the replacement tube while levering it onto the rim. Finally I got a patched tube onto the rim and completed my little equinox ride.

Monday’s tune-up was quick and painless, with the only surprise being a needed tightening of my front hub. I’d hand-trued my rear wheel after the accident, but apparently I did a good enough job that the mechanics didn’t feel it needed any further attention.

Wednesday, a week after our collision, I finally emailed the girl who hit me. I was especially calm and nonconfrontational about it, but told her about the $290 cost of a replacement lever and suggested that “as the responsible party I hope you will offer to foot a decent portion of that expense” and that “I am relying on your sense of fairness”.

It took her only half an hour to reply with her refusal. Despite admitting that she had crossed the center line, she maintained “that doesn’t make me completely guilty”, and the preposterous assertion that “I would consider myself to have been a fairly safe person in this situation”. Besides, she said, as a student, she doesn’t have any money at all. Yup. It’s all about her, and how could anyone expect her to take responsibility for the damages and injuries that her dangerously oblivious riding caused? Thanks, Nikki, you’re all heart, and I’m screwed out of $300 I can’t afford.

The next day, Thursday the 25th, I did my second long ride of the year, doing a few more random roads around Concord (ride map). I also stopped at Quad Cycles to see if Rustem could repair my bike for less money, which he could not. By the end of that 61-mile expedition, my legs were cramping from too many hills, but it still felt good to be back out on the bike again.

Today is Monday the 29th, and this morning I trudged into my bike shop and reluctantly ordered a new brake lever. While it’s the same style (Shimano Ultegra), the newer model is going to look and feel quite a bit different from the older, undamaged lever on the right, but that’s the breaks, right?

Now that it’s been twelve days since the accident, my hand has begun healing, although it’s unclear yet whether it will bear a permanent scar or not. My knee is mostly good, but I still have weakness and twinges of pain whenever I climb stairs. My ribs remain a constant pain, especially at night. I’m more convinced than ever that I might have broken one or more ribs, rather than cracked them, but it’s mostly an academic point. As with all rib injuries, they’ll heal at their own slow pace as long as I don’t re-injure them.

But my injuries and the cost of fixing the damage to my bike are ultimately temporary issues. Beyond those problems, what will stay with me long after this incident is a lingering mistrust of bike paths and other path users, and a reinforced belief in the selfishness and self-centered callousness of the younger generation. And I think that’s a horrible thing to take away from something as ennobling as a simple springtime bike ride.

In case you haven’t been reading my main journal, the past six weeks have been an absolute trial: an incredible litany of crises coming one upon another, from trivial to life-changing.

In the bike realm, this period has included my saddle problems, bee stings, my travesty dealing with Back Bay Bicycles over my headset, and the training and fundraising time lost to graphic design class, Inna’s hospitalization, and my new job.

And now this:

Last night I was riding home from work along the Esplanade bike path. As I went to overtake an inline skater, I called out the usual “On your left!” warning. Of course, it was at that exact moment that the idiot—who was listening to music in his earphones, of course—decided to swerve all the way to the left side of the path. There were benches lining the path, so there was only one thing I could do: I slammed on the brakes and hit the fucker.

Fortunately for his his stupid ass, I’d bled off enough speed so that I only rode up on his left foot, and although he stumbled, he didn’t fall. I managed to keep the bike upright, but I heard a loud bang and felt the hundred pounds of air in my rear tire come out in a rush.

The skater was fine and—to his credit—apologetic. I told him it was just the tire and that as long as he was okay, I could deal. He skated off.

At first I figured I’d just swap my inner tube out and continue home, but I quickly realized that I didn’t have anything with me: no tire levers, no spare tube, no patch kit, and no pump. That stuff usually sits on my bike, but I didn’t want anyone to steal it while it sat in the bike rack at work, so I’d stripped it all off. There was nothing for it but to walk the mile back to my condo and affect repairs there.

An isolated incident? Bad luck? The curse of Ornoth 2005? Call it whatever you want; all I can say is that I’m getting very tired of it, and I’m really hoping it doesn’t bite me in the (still tender) ass during the PMC ride two weeks from now.

Last year I crashed out of my PMC ride when I was at the tail end of a paceline and hit a pothole that no one had signaled. Today I was in a paceline on a Quad Cycles ride approaching Carlisle when the guy in front of me lost it. He’d been daydreaming and touched wheels with the guy he was following, which is a recipe for instant death.

It’s like having the car in front of you lose all his tires when you’re travelling 80 miles an hour; there was nowhere I could go but over him. Cyclists call it an “endo”; not because you need an endoscopy afterward, but because you go “end over end”, or over the handlebars. The guy behind me also went down.

We all got up and inventoried our bodies (first) and our bikes (second). No one was seriously hurt, and I think I was the worst off. I had a patch of road rash on my right hip, slightly higher than where I hit in last year’s PMC crash; a good-sized road rash on my right knee that swelled up prodigiously; plus a few assorted other cuts and bruises. The worst is the knee, which will take a bit of time to heal, but it isn’t all that serious. That’s good, because I’ve been uninsured since earlier in the year.

Fortunately, the PMC ride is still a month away, and I should be fine by then. Of more concern is my west coast trip, which is in two weeks. Still, I imagine things will be fine by then, since after icing my knee and hip I managed to make the 22-mile ride back home. It’s more frustrating that I had been planning to spend over 160 miles in the saddle this fine weekend, and now I’m reduced to sitting at home and eating. But I’m thankful it wasn’t any worse, because it was a lot like those really messy first-lap pileups that you sometimes see in auto races.

Oh well. At least Le Tour will be on!

Follow this link for my full 2003 Pan-Mass Challenge ride report.

Whoops! Biking in to work the day after a wet snowfall, I took a hard dump on some black ice. I wound up with a livid 5 inch bruise on my hip, but was fortunate in not receiving something worse. This isn't what spring's supposed to be like!