Progress

 Road to Recovery - Day 23

Only days when I exercise and ride count as the road to recovery.

This morning I did a complete 'normal' ride on the P2 level down in the garage: 34 minutes, 9.6 kms. That is what passes for 'normal'. On the exercise front, I am close to being able to do 20 full 90 degree squats. Today I managed ~80-90% of the 90 degree knee bends. There is still some minor discomfort going up and down stairs. The fact is, I am approaching a complete return to normal.

Adding to the theme of today's entry, I am also reading more than I have in the past.

I have quite the collection of books. It's not over-the-top by any means. Yet it's quite a lot of books. 

There are some key law books, as you might expect. There also works of philosophy and history ranging from Homer to Voltaire, including Thoreau. There is mostly literature, ranging from Shakespeare to Douglas Adams, including Mark Twain and Agatha Christie. A few recipe books including the Larousse Gastronomique. Even a quirky ribald collection of limericks I inherited. 

The sad fact is that, unlike Susan, I am not a reader.

Maybe it's because as a lawyer, the occupational hazard is one heck of a lot of reading. So I have read. I have read a lot... of law. Literature and the other genres mentioned above, not so much. Either I begin to read my books, or admit that they're just décor.

And yet I truly do aspire to read, so I plucked Voltaire - Mélanges off the bookshelf recently.

It's a collection of Voltaire's works, including correspondence, treatises and speeches. It's the work that made Voltaire famous, and infamous simultaneously, work that forced him to flee to England to escape the wrath of the French crown and the Catholic Church. Sounds terribly boring, I know. But it's like time travel. I'm learning a lot about 18th century Europe and the Age of Enlightenment.

If Paris can emerge as my favourite place to visit and explore in the 21st century, emerging from a truly dismal 18th century past, then there is hope for us, in these dismal times.

Oh... wait. Hope was the last journal entry. I am supposed to be focusing on progress.

Yes I am definitely making progress.

Hope

Blue skies, white clouds, red and yellow leaves, cool air, and strong gusting headwinds. 

Today in my desk journal I noted “ROAD to RECOVERY - Day 13”.

That is certainly true, but the truth needs context. 

For several years until the end of August of this year, every weekday began at 6:00 a.m. thanks to my watch gently vibrating me awake. Stealthily rising, gathering my clothes, and leaving our bedroom, doing my best not to wake Susan. Exercising, dressing, gearing up, and quietly leaving our home with my Brompton, for an 8 to 10 kilometre ride along one of three routes through our neighbourhood.

Towards the end of August I managed to overwork the many muscles in my right leg by refusing, stupidly I now see, to accept adapting my pace to the hills along my path. So ended my weekday morning rituals, terminated by pain as the soft tissues in my right leg rebelled against the persecution I had inflicted. With the benefit of hindsight I realize that as I applied significant force to the pedals to maintain my speed and pace, I was favouring my left leg and overworking my right. That was because in my lifetime my left leg was the one that suffered injuries, not my right leg. To protect the left, I messed up the right. dumb, dumb, dumb.  

Two weeks later, we were off to Europe and countless daily steps, up and down and around, with trudging up and down stairs thrown in for good measure. My leg saw this not as a well-deserved vacation, but as counter-insurgency measures intended to stifle their rebellion. 

That was September. 

We returned home and I quickly conceded defeat. 

In an earnest attempt at reparation (not that I had much choice) I spared my right leg as much as possible. Climbing the three flights of stairs in our home sparingly, with my left leg doing all the work. Keeping errands in the car to a minimum, with Susan at the wheel, as I twisted and shifted, moaning, under the constant attacks of pain and breathtaking discomfort, all meant to remind me that my right leg had won the war and had beaten me into submission.

That was October. 

This is November. 

Tomorrow I am having X-rays and ultrasounds.

My doctor, playing the role of a United Nations envoy, is assessing the war zone, searching for a path to peace and reconciliation. 

Thirteen weekdays ago, I was finally able to start a slow path to restoring my rituals. I am calling that path my ROAD to RECOVERY. 

For each step I take, for each exercise I do, for each token bike ride I take in the garage, I constantly murmur to my right leg my mea culpas, my heartfelt apologies, and my endless assurances that there will never again be persecution. That all future movement and travels will be disciplined, fair, reasonable, measured, and balanced.

Perhaps it’s the approaching medical assessment, or just the discipline of my determination to get back to ‘normal’, but I have been making slow and steady progress day after day.  

This afternoon I was able to chance my first outdoor ride since the troubles began in August. Even though it was a modest 4.69 km jaunt, it was truly joyful, and I am grateful. 

The struggles may be ending.

Peace may be in sight. 

There is hope.

Inspiration

If there is something that leads to a deep sense of happiness for me, it is the feeling of being inspired. 

I felt inspired often during our recent trip to Malaga and Seville in Spain, and to Lisbon in Portugal. This was our third trip to Spain and our first trip to Portugal.

I tend to find inspiration when I am out of my comfort zone. On this trip I was quite literally seldom in a comfort zone because I had managed to mess up the soft tissues in my right leg in a variety of ways. Three trips to our physiotherapist in the week leading up to our departure was clearly too little, and too late.

Mountain ranges lie just off the Costa del Sol, Spain's aptly named Mediterranean shore. The mountains near Malaga where we were staying are known as the Montes de Málaga. It turned out that the challenge to climb fairly steep slopes pretty much started at the door step of our AirBnB. For the first few days we were there it mostly didn't matter. The parts of Malaga where we spent our time exploring were pretty flat and made it easy to stroll around. Even though we often walked more than fifteen thousand steps in a day, flat is flat. 

That's not to say that my leg wasn't complaining. If I didn't give it a break, it would steal one simply by leaping over my pitifully low pain threshold.

Things got more challenging once we rented a car to take our explorations into Malaga's mountains, to places like Frigiliana, Ronda, and the Caminito del Rey. We also managed a day trip to Gibraltar. The only parking available for our car was in the streets way up that hill at the end of the street. Mornings started and ended negotiating that hill, and in between we hiked on more slopes, hills, and stairs. 

My leg was the only one not enjoying the trip. As we dove deeper and deeper into our seventeen day adventure, my leg got grumpier, and testier. Now that we're home that leg is getting a lot more attention. I can't wait for it to forgive and forget so that I can kiss the bouts of squirmy pain adieu.

I can't really blame my leg, cause we did stuff like this:

All of this, including coping with my pissed-off leg, and breaking completely with the day-to-day of our 'normal' life back home, can't help but offer fresh perspectives and challenges, challenges for you to move on and live the adventure, when lying pain-free in bed seems to make so much more sense.

Unexpected rewards came our way every single day. Stumbling on Christopher Columbus's tomb in Seville; watching firefighter helicopters with sirens blaring slinging water at a cliff-side brush fire below us while we were on the parador lookout in Ronda; coaxing my darling wife to cross a crazy-scary narrow steel suspension bridge across a very deep gorge as massive wind blasts literally shook us as we crossed the canyon, while I pretended, with a reassuring hand lightly on her shoulder, to be her Amazing Race companion cheering her on in a loud enthusiastic voice with promises of a million dollars. "You can do this, you're doing it girl! You're a winner!!! YOU’VE GOT THIS!! One M i l l i o n DOLLARS..."

  

And the list goes on.

What I was finding, what was dawning on me ever so slowly, emerging from our adventure, from online browsing, from observing the very different pace, quality, and circumstances of daily life in Spain and Portugal, seemed different. It was inspiring me, offering insight into what just might be a different approach to life, a different way to be. 

I may have Jason Slaughter to thank, among others. I was already familiar with his Not Just Bikes YouTube channel. In this case, as I was lounging in our AirBnB coaxing my leg to calm down so we could stroll around looking for dinner, YouTube offered me this video that Jason posted about the benefits of a more walkable life, as opposed to a drivable life. What Jason calls the "Gym of Life".

This struck a chord for me. I was already on that path with my Brompton. I love getting around on two feet and two wheels. If you've been hanging around here and reading my journal you will know that I have explored my love of two wheel travel on many occasions. 

I would say that Jason's video planted yet more seeds. He mentioned Nebula TV and Curiosity Stream. I made a note because I am finding that, like so much of the low-hanging fruit on the internet, and particularly on YouTube, it's often just bait, and I am the fish.  Ads and commercials are everywhere, all the time. When you get to that point, to the crux of the video, when the YouTuber is about to reveal the true secret to everlasting happiness, first comes an ad, then a commercial, and another ad.

Yes there is good content, like Not Just Bikes, and yes there are amazing creators like Jason Slaughter and Casey Neistat, and there certainly are excellent videos by lots of passionate chefs, explorers, scientists, designers, entertainers, and fixers. But I am really tired of being the fish.

I absolutely refuse to pay Google to stop harassing me with advertising. I feel that it's blackmail, truly I do. This avalanche of advertising is just to make Google fatter, more bloated, and ultimately more anti-social than I could ever have imagined back when the motto that they long ago trashed was "don't be evil".

I plan to explore Nebula TV and Curiosity Stream. Yes they are pay-to-view platforms. But for less than $100 a year, that just might be OK with me. There was a time in the past, before streaming, when Susan and I visited the local video rental store and shelled out $5 or $10 a week. If these platforms turn out to deliver good content and free me from my life as a fish, it will be a small price to pay. If the content turns out to be satisfying and appeals to the creative and curious me in a sustainable way, I'll be an even happier person, I hope.

All of which to say that this vacation opened my eyes. 

Oddly, it started that way from the moment we boarded our outbound flight. 

My morning bicycle ride ritual introduced me to groups of people practicing Tai Chi in the local parks. I bought Pocket Tai Chi for Beginners - Simple Steps to a Healthy Body and Mind to read on the plane. I feel I was already open to a fresh perspective right from the start.

The final bit that capped off the sense of inspiration that was building in me was the award winning documentary I watched on the flight home directed by Nuno Tavares entitled A alma de um ciclista (the soul of a cyclist). The film explores the benefits of focusing our life on friendship, ecology, and minimalism.

Here’s the trailer. 

 

I actually watched the film two-and-a-half times during the flight home. Once without headphones (I just didn't have them), once with headphones, and once with headphones on and with the closed captioning switched on (my Portuguese remains virtually non-existent). Then I watched again this morning on my phone, while lying in bed, awakened courtesy of jet-lag at 4:50 a.m. 

It may appeal to you as well. You can find it on Vimeo.

This movie just resonates with where I feel I want to be. I feel genuinely inspired  

In the very last scene in the film, the leading person, Artur Lourenço, leaves us with these inspiring thoughts.

“Now I see life from a new perspective.
 I’ve realized that life goes by too fast, and, in the end,
we are not immortal.
We only have one life.
While we’re around, we must somehow enjoy it
 - without harming anyone, obviously -
and make it sweeter and smoother."

To blog, or not to blog, that is the question

Peter Sanderson and Steve Williams, who are dear friends and fellow bloggers, are rethinking their blogs. Peter has already discontinued his blog, and Steve revealed in a post I recently read that he is considering whether to do the same.

I mentioned in a comment I posted on Steve's long-standing Scooter in the Sticks blog that my blog is now really more my journal than anything else. Not only do I like to document things I do that give my life meaning, I also have come to appreciate the ability to revisit my past by going back to older posts. This blog keeps an important part of my past present for me.

Recording my daily life as a journal is not really why or how this blog started.

In the many months preceding the purchase of my first Vespa, I was doing research, and gathering information.

Steve's blog Scooter in the Sticks was an important source of the information I needed. Once the Vespa was a done deal, I decided to start this blog to return the favour by posting the lessons I learned on Vespa commuting, so that others who might contemplate doing the same would have yet another source of information and support. It was returning a favour, helping others in this same way I received help others who shared their insights that helped me  

Now the blog is more about me, about my life. A place where I can share my thoughts and experiences.

In the beginning I knew no one was reading.

When, over time, an audience formed, it was a little unexpected. I am blessed, because my blog led me to make some very dear friends, Peter and Steve among them.

My favourite photo of my Vespa and I was taken by Steve in the Pennsylvania sticks that gave his blog its name.

Now my audience has shrunk, I think. In truth I don't really follow my blog's statistics any more. 

All of which to say, this blog is here to stay. At least for the foreseeable future.

A break

Is it because I bought a leather saddle that needs to be broken in?

Is it because we will be taking a break vacationing in Spain this fall?

Is it because I was a little stressed-out in the days leading up to a half-day course I had to teach solo to a class of thirty or so colleagues on records management? 

It's hard to say.

Why would I stress out on giving a lecture when I literally wrote the book?

What's certain is that my body got itself into a funk that has required that I take a break. A break from my morning exercises, trading time in the saddle for time with Melina, our brilliant physiotherapist. The clock is ticking, as it always does, and I need to take this break, fix what needs fixing, and get back in the saddle.

I am closer to that this morning that at any time since the early days of this month, when my right leg went AWOL.

That's deeply ironic, because it's my left leg that has had issues, never my right. No massive skiing sprains, no dumb idiotic blows to my kneecap... my right leg has always been fine. Until it wasn't.

Melina showed me all the leg muscles on a cool application on her phone. They are the largest most formidable muscles on our bodies. They are all focused on our knee. Go figure. It seems that in the week or so before my right leg called riding quits, I was being, shall we say, a tad competitive. Resisting quiet relaxing contemplative rides, in favour of challenging myself on the uphill stretches. Can I do this hill at the same speed and pace as the level ground that precedes it?  And there I was, all hill long, focused on my cadence, feeling myself pull on the handlebars, breathing getting obvious... and YES!! I did it, WOW!

What did I do exactly?

It seems I antagonized the right leg muscle union, and the union called an unceremonious halt to the festivities. No more riding for you buddy.

And that's how my left leg muscles and I now find ourselves in mandatory mediation. Melina is the mediator. She gets the muscles' gripes. She gets mine. For a person who is much smaller than I am, she can sure work my leg muscles into submission in short order while we chat about stuff, interspersed by the occasional gasp, yelp or moan... on my part of course. Melina takes it all in stride with a smile, a dig, a pull, push, and stretch. Slowly, methodically, coaxing my right leg muscles into submission.

Thank heavens, it seems to be working.

Lesson learned (I hope).

My new Brooks saddle

 I have been a good boy.

My Brompton has been a good bike.

My Brompton and I have accomplished more than I expected when we were first introduced, hombre a bicicleta. If that sounds weird, please take into consideration that in three weeks' time Susan and I will be on the Costa del Sol...  practice is warranted. 

I felt like it was time to mark our - bicicleta's and my - considerable accomplishments, so I splurged on our new Brooks B-17 Special saddle. What makes it special are the hand-hammered copper rivets.

I hope my Brompton likes it. It matches her Ergon grips.

They say it takes roughly 250 kilometres or maybe six months to break in a Brooks. It's hard to say anything about time, because it's the actual riding that counts. I'm doing, conservatively, 8 kilometres each day I ride, so 250 kilometres is just over 30 days. I generally ride on weekdays, so in time, that's 6 weeks from this coming Tuesday. 9 weeks taking into account our - Susan's and my - Spanish adventure.

I'll be sure to let you know how it goes. And whether I'll ultimately be happy with our - bicicleta's and my - treat.