Yesterday I got very very sick. Fever, sweating bullets and alternating chills, etc.
So far I feel a bit better this morning, but I am very very sore. I feel like all my muscles are 10 times more sensitive. As much as I need rest, it hurts to be on one bed for too long...
This isn't a "pity me" post (well....), but just to let you know that if if you can't get ahold of me, this is why.
Oue, my neck...
Showing posts with label injury. Show all posts
Showing posts with label injury. Show all posts
Monday, January 15, 2007
Friday, June 30, 2006
Day 3- Just chillaxin
Greetings from Hudson everybody!
We woke up today around 9:00. When I got out of the couch I was sleeping on I went over to the room dX had crashed at.
"Dude-" he said, "we have a problem."
The problem was his ankle. He had hurt it last night while flipping off of his bike, but it didn't look like it was going to be that big of a deal. When he woke up on it though, he could barely limp with it.
This, to say the least, complicated our plans- eventually we decided to get some ice on it, and he wanted to rap it in a bandage- but oh wait! The bandages we bought were in his backpack. Where was his backpack? In Jakes car. Well thats fine, but- wheres Jakes car? Not at his home. You see, dX had left his pack in the trunk of the car, which should have been fine- but as it turned out, the van one of the family members was using broke down, so they had to use his car. And that put us with out bandages.
So, after a little bit of griping and a lot of good strong coffee (they make the best coffee over there, seriously) I biked off to shaws, which was really just a stones throw away from the house I was at. I got an Ace bandage there for a ridiculous 5 dollars and 59 cents. Talk about a rip off...
Anyway, we got back and he applied it to his poor aching foot. By this time it was probably 11 or so. He could barely walk on it still, but I was trying to convice him that biking would be different. Renee said that she thought it wouldn't be good to work much on it. There was a slight back and forth, but we did in the end relent to chilling out there for a bit. dX could still work on computers, and thats what he did:
This picture very much sums up the tone of the day. We chilled, we watched some videos, we talked. And thanks be to Renee and their family for letting us- we don't know what we would have done otherwise. Thanks again guys for your generosity and everything, your flipping amazing!
About 3ish or so, dX was walking around on his foot LIGHTLY. I had convinced him to try riding his bike earlier to see what it was like, and he concluded that it was possible and as I suspected, it was actually better then walking. So at 3 or so in the afternoon, we decide to try and visit some of his friends in the area. We found out Renee had a bike, so she got to come too since it was so close. We headed up the road about a mile or 2 really fast since dX and I were not wearing those huge backpacks we were used to. Renee was actually keeping up pretty well. We got to the place where we suprised a few of dX's old friends and then we decided to move on for a good trip down memory lane. After catching her breath and downing some water, Renee went all hardcore and said she was down with it too. We biked over to dX's old house, all the way to amherst where we stopped at a cafe for food. It was really nice, and I played a pretty evenly matched game of checkers with Renee (but I won in the end). Then we biked back- About 20 miles in all.
When we got back, it was allready 5ish. We were trying to figure out what our next move was... we wanted to camp, but we didn't know what place we could camp at that was near enough. In the end, we decided to stay over at our lovely stop at Hudson- as it turned out, we were just 10 miles out anyway. We biked down through Nashua, only stopping once- there was a concert going on in some park for free. The musicans playing were all in their middle to late ages, but they were playing some funky music and they were good. dX and I stayed there for just as much as we could afford, then we got back riding. We arrived at our new destination at about 7.
This host home is awesome- They gave us cold cuts to go along with our ramen, they gave us icecream, and we've got to just talk with them and have a ball. They are into everything cool here... I don't know how specific I can get with names and things since it is 1:26 and they are all in bed. I got to watch The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe with two people who haven't seen it yet. It was an interesting experience- they watched movies with captions on, and I actually got little bits of dialouge and background chatter that I never quite got before.
Well, thats about it for me- I am devilish sleepy and I must be off to bed. Today was pretty much just a chill, relaxing day. We, once again, don't really have tomarrow very much planned out but I'm sure it will be great.
Till next post- farewell.
We woke up today around 9:00. When I got out of the couch I was sleeping on I went over to the room dX had crashed at.
"Dude-" he said, "we have a problem."
The problem was his ankle. He had hurt it last night while flipping off of his bike, but it didn't look like it was going to be that big of a deal. When he woke up on it though, he could barely limp with it.
This, to say the least, complicated our plans- eventually we decided to get some ice on it, and he wanted to rap it in a bandage- but oh wait! The bandages we bought were in his backpack. Where was his backpack? In Jakes car. Well thats fine, but- wheres Jakes car? Not at his home. You see, dX had left his pack in the trunk of the car, which should have been fine- but as it turned out, the van one of the family members was using broke down, so they had to use his car. And that put us with out bandages.
So, after a little bit of griping and a lot of good strong coffee (they make the best coffee over there, seriously) I biked off to shaws, which was really just a stones throw away from the house I was at. I got an Ace bandage there for a ridiculous 5 dollars and 59 cents. Talk about a rip off...
Anyway, we got back and he applied it to his poor aching foot. By this time it was probably 11 or so. He could barely walk on it still, but I was trying to convice him that biking would be different. Renee said that she thought it wouldn't be good to work much on it. There was a slight back and forth, but we did in the end relent to chilling out there for a bit. dX could still work on computers, and thats what he did:
This picture very much sums up the tone of the day. We chilled, we watched some videos, we talked. And thanks be to Renee and their family for letting us- we don't know what we would have done otherwise. Thanks again guys for your generosity and everything, your flipping amazing!About 3ish or so, dX was walking around on his foot LIGHTLY. I had convinced him to try riding his bike earlier to see what it was like, and he concluded that it was possible and as I suspected, it was actually better then walking. So at 3 or so in the afternoon, we decide to try and visit some of his friends in the area. We found out Renee had a bike, so she got to come too since it was so close. We headed up the road about a mile or 2 really fast since dX and I were not wearing those huge backpacks we were used to. Renee was actually keeping up pretty well. We got to the place where we suprised a few of dX's old friends and then we decided to move on for a good trip down memory lane. After catching her breath and downing some water, Renee went all hardcore and said she was down with it too. We biked over to dX's old house, all the way to amherst where we stopped at a cafe for food. It was really nice, and I played a pretty evenly matched game of checkers with Renee (but I won in the end). Then we biked back- About 20 miles in all.
When we got back, it was allready 5ish. We were trying to figure out what our next move was... we wanted to camp, but we didn't know what place we could camp at that was near enough. In the end, we decided to stay over at our lovely stop at Hudson- as it turned out, we were just 10 miles out anyway. We biked down through Nashua, only stopping once- there was a concert going on in some park for free. The musicans playing were all in their middle to late ages, but they were playing some funky music and they were good. dX and I stayed there for just as much as we could afford, then we got back riding. We arrived at our new destination at about 7.
This host home is awesome- They gave us cold cuts to go along with our ramen, they gave us icecream, and we've got to just talk with them and have a ball. They are into everything cool here... I don't know how specific I can get with names and things since it is 1:26 and they are all in bed. I got to watch The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe with two people who haven't seen it yet. It was an interesting experience- they watched movies with captions on, and I actually got little bits of dialouge and background chatter that I never quite got before.
Well, thats about it for me- I am devilish sleepy and I must be off to bed. Today was pretty much just a chill, relaxing day. We, once again, don't really have tomarrow very much planned out but I'm sure it will be great.
Till next post- farewell.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Day 2- Blowouts and bruises
Greetings friends and fiends, from lovely East merrimack!
We got up today at Mr. and Mrs. C's home welcomed by the smell of blueberry pancakses, ham and coffee. Thanks again, Mrs. C!
dX packing up at Mrs. C's house- beginning of day 1
I read more of "Out of the silent Planet" and ended up calling the bike shop in Derry to make sure they would be there- a good thing, as "the number you have dialed is not in service at this time". We talked it over very briefly, and Mrs. C gave us the number to a place she recomended on Kelly st- Jakes Bike shop, 25 miles away. We took off at about 9 o'clock.
It was tough going with the wheel- even though I had unlatched the rear brakes, it was still lightly touching the side once every revolution. We were on our way to route 28, but we only got about 4 miles out:
I was riding down a slight hill when suddenly there was a loud bang- for a split second I wondered what it was, then for a split second I thought I blew out the tire and should try to slowdown, and the last few second I felt myself riding increasingly on the rim. But suprisingly, I didn't loose control. I yelled up ahead at dX "BLOWOUT, MAN BLOOWOUT!!!" It took him a little while to get the idea and slow down, but in the end I pulled over and we took a look. On the plus side, I didn't have to use my bike kit to to take the tire off or the innertube out- I don't know how it stayed on the wheel at all. When I pulled over, they were off.
We discussed shortly putting on my spare and inflating it, but we decided rather quickly that it was crazy-talk. The wheel was in BAD shape- I knew that, and putting another one would be tirecide (you know like homocide...). So we went up to a nearby house and bummed a phone to call Mrs. C with. Thankfully, she had offered to pick us up in the case of an emergency. We sat around and wait for a while. I read more of my book.
Eventually Mrs. C came to the rescue and after taking the wheels off our vehicles, we put it into her minivan. She took us to the Jakes shop, which is now one of my favorite bike places- the guy there was really nice and knew what he was talking about.
It was in bad shape- spokes that were stripped, spokes that were broken- it was a bloody mess. In the end I had to replace the wheel, the innertube AND the tire- for the tire had a gash in it from the blow out as well. All in all I dropped $75 on it- alot of money, yes- but actually a VERY good deal.
From there, we biked to our first real destination of the day: Barns and nobooks.
I would tell you how many miles it was, but I sort of broke my bike computer- I sent it back into configure mode and I don't have the instructions that tell the computer what wheel size I have. Anyway, we got to the store early so I read the rest (more or less) and met up with my group. It was great to see the people again, though of course Brad and Kiaya were missing, which was too bad. :(
After the book meeting was over, me and dX were pretty much playing it by ear. We had the vauge notion of entering Merrimack because we knew several people there- we just couldn't get ahold of any of them. But we headed out anyway, having to back track a couple miles to hit the right rode, and the storm started coming up. We put on our ponchos this time, but the wind was much worse then the rain- and pedalling against it wasn't as bad, probably, as the stupid flapping sound it made right in your ear. Also, dX almost got ran over by an absent minded moterist. But at least we were mostly dry.
Eventually we got on route 3. dX wanted to pull over at a dunkin d. You see, he's been away so long in Kansas (Where allegedly there is only 1 dunkin donuts and its an 1 hr 45 minutes away at that) that whenever he sees a Dunkin Donuts, he gets impullsive. We pulled in, I situated my backpack differently (the straps are killing me) and we went inside for a second. dX goes up to the counter and comes back a minute later. Dramatically, he throws a box of a dozen donuts down upon the table with a loud thud. I look up at him-
"Dude..."
"I hope you don't have anything against maple or choclate."
With this he flips open the lid- the box is split evenlyh between the two flavours, six each.
All I can think is that there is no way we can eat this many donuts quickly and not get cramps while riding. I had maybe 3, I think he had 5. We gave one to a person I knew from co-op that happend to walk in and we squished the rest into my backpack while dX made some calls on a payphone. When I had got my backpack back on (a difficult and painful ordeal) I went out to meet him again. He was smiling "Dude, I talked to Jake and Renee- they can meet us at the library in about half an hour. Lets get going!"
We started back up. It was tiring work- the weight of the packpack was heavy and it seemed to bounce up and down more then usual, which really irritated me because it made the pain in my arms more noticable. We climbed two large hills- they were murder. Finally we came upon the library, and for some reasons we had beat our companions there, which gave me a chance to get online and work on the blog a bit. It was really open there and nice- just give the receptionist your first name and BAM!! full xp box with adminstrative rights- even a USB port! Very nice indeed.
Jake and Renee made it but we we were talking too loud for the library, so they took us down to this place called King Cone. We each got a small, which was huge- more then I could eat before it melted and made a mess of me.
After hanging out there for a good 45 minutes, they drove us back to our bikes and took our packs with them to their house. With all that weight off of us, we flew down to their home in double time- it felt really really great. And thats where we are now.
Tim and I are having a blast over here- and to pay to pay for it we've been trying to work on their PCs and cook them Ramen. I got one of there boxes in substantially better shape then when I found it, and I unloaded 4 packs of the ramen here for part of our meal. I'm excited because that means my backpack will be that much less bulky. Rock rock on!!
Tomarrow, we don't have totally planned out. We are basically a day or two ahead of schedule and a little bit off of the planned route. We will probably bum around Milford for tomarrow, visiting a bunch of dX's old friends and hang outs. Should be a nice easy going day I think maybe. Then perhaps tomarrow we can find a place to actually "camp out" at and use some of this ramen and alcholioc fire starter!
Thanks to everyone for your prayers and comments they really are apprecited.
Mrs. C: Thank you so much for the emergency services and hospitality. dX was really blown away by the pampering we got there; it made his day.
Lyndsi: Oi, it is looking like possibly saturday for your place. Hopefully I can call you tomarrow to let you know for sure- it might change. Don't know how much time we will take with Milford, and Hudson is a large journey and we have two days left.
Mum: Thanks for the ponchos, they work pretty good when applied to the body. Who would have thunk it?
To ladyofnarnia: Thanks so much for letting me take the book so I could read it. You rock.
Jake and Rennee- dude you people are awesome. Thanks for everything! And Renee, sorry about not getting all of your face in that picture.
Bander: Dude, sorry I didn't come over today. It just didn't work out- our plans were shifting all over the place and it would have meant backtracking and loosing preacious time. Sorry though!
Kiaya: Thank you for trying to solve our weather problem. Actually, it might be working. Today didn't rain much at all, and when it did, it only rained breifly. Whatever you did over there seemed to mess with the forcast, so keep it up next time you see rain in our future.
More tomarrow, guys! Thanks for reading.
Update: dX flipped/flew/jumped off of his bike last night (end of day 2), and hurt his ankle. Apparently worse then I thought- he sort of limps with it now and its in to much pain to walk on much. We've got ice on it but dX's backpack is in a car that got taken to work unexpectedly since another vehicle died.... so the bandages aren't here. I'll be biking down to shaws for some emergency supplies. We'll try to fix him up here and see what he can do. Okay, that will be all- as you were.
We got up today at Mr. and Mrs. C's home welcomed by the smell of blueberry pancakses, ham and coffee. Thanks again, Mrs. C!
dX packing up at Mrs. C's house- beginning of day 1
It was tough going with the wheel- even though I had unlatched the rear brakes, it was still lightly touching the side once every revolution. We were on our way to route 28, but we only got about 4 miles out:
I was riding down a slight hill when suddenly there was a loud bang- for a split second I wondered what it was, then for a split second I thought I blew out the tire and should try to slowdown, and the last few second I felt myself riding increasingly on the rim. But suprisingly, I didn't loose control. I yelled up ahead at dX "BLOWOUT, MAN BLOOWOUT!!!" It took him a little while to get the idea and slow down, but in the end I pulled over and we took a look. On the plus side, I didn't have to use my bike kit to to take the tire off or the innertube out- I don't know how it stayed on the wheel at all. When I pulled over, they were off.
We ponder our prediciment. The verdict is unanamouse: cRaZy!
We discussed shortly putting on my spare and inflating it, but we decided rather quickly that it was crazy-talk. The wheel was in BAD shape- I knew that, and putting another one would be tirecide (you know like homocide...). So we went up to a nearby house and bummed a phone to call Mrs. C with. Thankfully, she had offered to pick us up in the case of an emergency. We sat around and wait for a while. I read more of my book.
Eventually Mrs. C came to the rescue and after taking the wheels off our vehicles, we put it into her minivan. She took us to the Jakes shop, which is now one of my favorite bike places- the guy there was really nice and knew what he was talking about.
It was in bad shape- spokes that were stripped, spokes that were broken- it was a bloody mess. In the end I had to replace the wheel, the innertube AND the tire- for the tire had a gash in it from the blow out as well. All in all I dropped $75 on it- alot of money, yes- but actually a VERY good deal.
From there, we biked to our first real destination of the day: Barns and nobooks.
I would tell you how many miles it was, but I sort of broke my bike computer- I sent it back into configure mode and I don't have the instructions that tell the computer what wheel size I have. Anyway, we got to the store early so I read the rest (more or less) and met up with my group. It was great to see the people again, though of course Brad and Kiaya were missing, which was too bad. :(
After the book meeting was over, me and dX were pretty much playing it by ear. We had the vauge notion of entering Merrimack because we knew several people there- we just couldn't get ahold of any of them. But we headed out anyway, having to back track a couple miles to hit the right rode, and the storm started coming up. We put on our ponchos this time, but the wind was much worse then the rain- and pedalling against it wasn't as bad, probably, as the stupid flapping sound it made right in your ear. Also, dX almost got ran over by an absent minded moterist. But at least we were mostly dry.
Eventually we got on route 3. dX wanted to pull over at a dunkin d. You see, he's been away so long in Kansas (Where allegedly there is only 1 dunkin donuts and its an 1 hr 45 minutes away at that) that whenever he sees a Dunkin Donuts, he gets impullsive. We pulled in, I situated my backpack differently (the straps are killing me) and we went inside for a second. dX goes up to the counter and comes back a minute later. Dramatically, he throws a box of a dozen donuts down upon the table with a loud thud. I look up at him-
"Dude..."
"I hope you don't have anything against maple or choclate."
With this he flips open the lid- the box is split evenlyh between the two flavours, six each.
All I can think is that there is no way we can eat this many donuts quickly and not get cramps while riding. I had maybe 3, I think he had 5. We gave one to a person I knew from co-op that happend to walk in and we squished the rest into my backpack while dX made some calls on a payphone. When I had got my backpack back on (a difficult and painful ordeal) I went out to meet him again. He was smiling "Dude, I talked to Jake and Renee- they can meet us at the library in about half an hour. Lets get going!"
We started back up. It was tiring work- the weight of the packpack was heavy and it seemed to bounce up and down more then usual, which really irritated me because it made the pain in my arms more noticable. We climbed two large hills- they were murder. Finally we came upon the library, and for some reasons we had beat our companions there, which gave me a chance to get online and work on the blog a bit. It was really open there and nice- just give the receptionist your first name and BAM!! full xp box with adminstrative rights- even a USB port! Very nice indeed.
Jake and Renee made it but we we were talking too loud for the library, so they took us down to this place called King Cone. We each got a small, which was huge- more then I could eat before it melted and made a mess of me.
Renee and Jake in waiting in line at the King Cone
After hanging out there for a good 45 minutes, they drove us back to our bikes and took our packs with them to their house. With all that weight off of us, we flew down to their home in double time- it felt really really great. And thats where we are now.
Tim and I are having a blast over here- and to pay to pay for it we've been trying to work on their PCs and cook them Ramen. I got one of there boxes in substantially better shape then when I found it, and I unloaded 4 packs of the ramen here for part of our meal. I'm excited because that means my backpack will be that much less bulky. Rock rock on!!
Tomarrow, we don't have totally planned out. We are basically a day or two ahead of schedule and a little bit off of the planned route. We will probably bum around Milford for tomarrow, visiting a bunch of dX's old friends and hang outs. Should be a nice easy going day I think maybe. Then perhaps tomarrow we can find a place to actually "camp out" at and use some of this ramen and alcholioc fire starter!
Thanks to everyone for your prayers and comments they really are apprecited.
Mrs. C: Thank you so much for the emergency services and hospitality. dX was really blown away by the pampering we got there; it made his day.
Lyndsi: Oi, it is looking like possibly saturday for your place. Hopefully I can call you tomarrow to let you know for sure- it might change. Don't know how much time we will take with Milford, and Hudson is a large journey and we have two days left.
Mum: Thanks for the ponchos, they work pretty good when applied to the body. Who would have thunk it?
To ladyofnarnia: Thanks so much for letting me take the book so I could read it. You rock.
Jake and Rennee- dude you people are awesome. Thanks for everything! And Renee, sorry about not getting all of your face in that picture.
Bander: Dude, sorry I didn't come over today. It just didn't work out- our plans were shifting all over the place and it would have meant backtracking and loosing preacious time. Sorry though!
Kiaya: Thank you for trying to solve our weather problem. Actually, it might be working. Today didn't rain much at all, and when it did, it only rained breifly. Whatever you did over there seemed to mess with the forcast, so keep it up next time you see rain in our future.
More tomarrow, guys! Thanks for reading.
Update: dX flipped/flew/jumped off of his bike last night (end of day 2), and hurt his ankle. Apparently worse then I thought- he sort of limps with it now and its in to much pain to walk on much. We've got ice on it but dX's backpack is in a car that got taken to work unexpectedly since another vehicle died.... so the bandages aren't here. I'll be biking down to shaws for some emergency supplies. We'll try to fix him up here and see what he can do. Okay, that will be all- as you were.
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