Blogging Again

I finally bit the bullet and decided to move my blog off of my own server (which was having DNS issues) and back onto blogspot. It's easier this way :) Unfortunately, since all of my old content was published to my own web server, I am missing some stuff like photos.

Losing the Lotoja Lottery

I just received my notification from LOTOJA that I did not get a spot in this year's ride. Too bad :( I guess I will have to wait until next year for my shot at redemption. Or, I could ride with a handful of guys that are going to attempt the LOTOJA route several weeks before the race.

Returning to the Scene of the Crime

I hadn't planned on mountain biking again so quickly. My plan was to road bike this week while my wounds were healing. But, alas, it was too windy to road bike today but too warm to workout indoors. So, I did the only thing I could... I velcroed on my biking cleats, still caked with the dried blood of Friday's incident, and headed back out onto the trail. I did take it a little easier than normal, and, of course, I avoided riding the section that I crashed on. But, I did stop to get a picture. I hesitate to post it because it probably doesn't look as treacherous as I described it, but here it is anyway:

In other crash related news... I took my iPhone up to the Gateway Apple Store on Saturday. They laughed when I asked if it might be covered by the warranty :) Rather than repair, they offered to give me a replacement for the low, low price of $250. Unfortunately, I didn't think to ask if they would give me a price break on upgrading to the 16Gig iPhone until later that day. Oh well.

The swelling has gone down a little on my back, but it's gotten even uglier. I woke up Saturday morning to my entire left side being painted the deep purple of subcutaneous blood. I'll spare you the picture. Several days later and the fringes of the purple splotch are starting to fade to yellow. Although it's still a little tender to the touch, it's more of an annoyance at this point. I feel like I have a big ugly appendage sticking out of my back and side.

Living Dangerously

In more than two years of riding my road bike I have only had one major accident. Riding my mountain bike, on the other hand, seems to result in at least one wreck per week. Usually these aren't very bad; scrapes, bruises... normal stuff. But yesterday I managed to raise the bar.

I was riding solo on my lunch ride when I decided to tackle a short steep hill that I usually ride around. It's the sort of hill that you could never just ride up, but if you get enough momentum and then switch through your gears fast enough you can manage to get up without stopping. What makes the hill particularly difficult is that you can't ride straight up it. There is a slight S-curve that you need to navigate as you are riding. Also, the hill drops off on one side to pit several feet down filled with broken fragments of concrete slab.

Well, I didn't get enough momentum going into the hill and ended up about halfway up before I had trouble pedaling. The hill was steep enough that as I came to a stop I started to feel myself going over backwards. I went to put my feet down to catch myself but there was nowhere for them to go because of the drop off. Before I knew it I was upside down with my body slamming into the concrete slabs.

I can honestly say that my helmet saved my life yesterday. My lower back took the brunt of the fall, but shortly after my back hit my head (or rather my helmet) came slamming down as well. I was really lucky that I managed to not get impaled by the several pieces of rebar that were sticking out of the concrete slabs.

Fortunately, I was able to pick myself up and walk away. I had blood dripping down my leg and my back hurt like hell but at least it didn't feel like anything was broken.

Now here comes the stupid part... I was riding circles in the parking lot beneath the Slate Canyon trailhead trying to decide whether or not I should continue riding or just head back to work and I'll bet that you can't guess which I chose. Yep, with my back hurting so bad that it was painful to walk, I decided to finish my workout and continue the climb up Slate Canyon. Silly me :)

I actually wasn't too concerned about the injury until I got back to work. It was starting to swell really bad. By 3 in the afternoon, a couple of hours after the incident, I felt like I had a basketball embedded in my back. I showed my boss and he insisted that I go to a doctor to have it looked at.

On top of the pain, I was starting to get faint. This started at work but continued to get worse through my doctor visit. I actually blacked out at one point as I was talking to the doctor and they had to wheel me around in a wheelchair as I was beginning to doubt that I could walk without passing out and falling over.

The only thing that I learned from the doctor was that I had a massive hematoma in my back. They did some blood work to make sure that I wasn't losing too much blood to internal bleeding and then checked my urine to make sure that I hadn't damaged my kidneys in the fall. Both checked out OK. There wasn't a whole lot left to do other than wait for the pain to subside and the swelling to go down.

Here is a picture of my hematoma. It's kind of embarrassing because it looks like I just have a massive love handle.


It turns out that my body was not the only thing to get injured. When I mountain bike, I carry along my iPhone in my camel back. After the accident, the iPhone was still playing music, so I didn't suspect any damage. But when I got back to work and pulled it out of my pack, this is what I saw:


Do you think that this will be covered by the warranty? It makes me so sad that I want to cry :(

Our Sick Little Monkey

Somehow our little Sara Belle picked up a pretty nasty chest cold and has been miserable for the last couple of days. There is nothing more awful than hearing a 2 week old baby hack like a smoker. To make matters worse, Mom has the same ailment and Dad may be coming down with it as well.

Nursery Video

Here is some video that I took right after Sara was put in the nursery. I wanted to post it earlier but I didn't have the proper software at the hospital to extract the video from the camera.

Blue Man and a Baby

Escape From The Hospital

Free at last. We are finally, free at last.

It wasn't easy though. We had a beeyotch of a nurse this morning who seemed content to ignore us into staying another day at the hospital if it was up to her. By nine in the morning we had gotten the OK both from Rosey's doctor and from Sara's pediatrician to head on home. So, I started packing all of our bags into the car. The only thing that we were waiting for was for the nurse to come remove Rosey's staples and then turn off Sara's security device.

After waiting an hour, I very politely nudged the nurse and asked what was left to do before we go. She looked at a bunch of papers, and said that there were just a couple of formalities to take care of and then we were free to leave. She then disappeared. I presumed that she disappeared to wrap up those formalities, but began to doubt when we hadn't heard anything from her in another hour. So, once again, politely asked her what else needed to be done for us to check out. A second time I got an identical response... few things to wrap up and then disappear.

After waiting three hours, I was starting to get a little upset. I called her up one last time and asked a little less politely for her to help us leave the hospital. She finally comes storming into our room all pissed off and then blows up at us because Rosey is still in her hospital gown. She gives us a dirty look and says, "Your wife isn't even dressed and you still have all these bags to take out to the car. You're not even ready to leave yet."

She seemed unphased and unapologetic when we reminded her that the reason that Rosey was still in her gown was because no one had yet removed the staples from her incision. And, by the way, the only bags remaining in the room were the ones containing Rosey clothes and the baby's things. I had removed all of the others hours ago.

With an ugly scowl on her face she removed Rosey's staples without saying a word to us and then disappeared. Another nurse, a much nicer nurse, then offerred to do the final release and walk us out to our car.

It was funny to compare all of the different nurses that we got while staying at the hospital for several days. Every one of them had their own little quirks, but for the most part they were all really good at what they did and really pleasant to work with. It's funny that the worst nursing experience we had was with the very last nurse that we had assigned to us.

Marathon Hospital Stay

It feels like we have been at the hospital forever now. Thankfully, there is an end in sight. It looks like we'll be let go on Saturday morning. We've been here since Tuesday night... ugh.

Sara is an exceptionally healthy baby. She is very alert and seems bigger and stronger than most 2 day old babies. Our only trouble has been that she seems to get a lot of gas. As I was burping last night, I asked in a baby voice... "Where's all the gas coming from, huh?"... and then the answer occurred to me: GENETICS. Poor girl.

Rosey seems to be getting better by the hour. She has been able to get up and walk around and seems to be relying a little less on the pain medication. It's still no picnic for her though. We're hoping that she'll be feeling back to normal within a week or so.

After hearing and/or reading about how much trouble some women have with breast feeding I was almost surprised to see how natural it seemed to come to Rosey and Sara. Sara has a killer grip... a lesson which I learned to Rosey's consternation when I tried to pull her away from Rosey's breast without unlatching her first. I won't make that mistake again. I also think that Rosey's success is largely due to the months of reading and research that she did to prepare herself. I'm really proud of all the work that she has done and it's fun to see it all paying off now.

C-Sections make for lucky fathers that get to spend more time with baby since Mom isn't feeling well. Because Rosey isn't very mobile, I have been charged with most of the other care duties outside of breast feeding. Largely this means, burping, soothing, and changing dirty diapers. Because of little Sara's gas this has been no small task. I have also quickly become acquainted with the affects of sleep deprivation. I woke up this morning at 1am after only getting about an hour of sleep and it took me several minutes to remember who I was and what I was doing. It was seriously a creepy kind of feeling.

Rosey's Mom has been with us here in the hospital and has been a huge help to us both. I think that the only reason that I've gotten any sleep at all in the last two days has been thanks to her. It's funny how your perspective can change so quickly. Before the baby came we were convinced that we were going to be able to handle everything by ourselves and that Mom's help would be superfluous. I would say that it took less than 8 hours after Sara was born to realize just how wrong we were and now we are immensely grateful that Rosey's Mom is here to help us. Thanks Mom.

More Baby Photos