Superfriends

Just had an interesting conversation with a fellow Co-op board member who drove me home from Sac about how culture can be manipulated to great effect by companies or political movements trying to sell their products / canditates...e.g. Nestle creating a market for coffee in Japan by marketing coffee-flavored candies with cartoon characters to kids 30 years ago...now coffee has an enormous market share where it was previously unsuccessful because there was no cultural imprint for it there. Same with the Republican party / far right and the focus-group research done on what buzzwords are the most powerful, etc., working to create a culture that could embrace its manifest destiny agenda.

This is stuff I'd like to look into a bit, not having yet read the books my colleague was talking about and being unable to cite check him at the moment, but it makes me think that true liberals need to be much more pragmatic about these things. I don't mean that individual "liberal" political candidates need to be more pragmatic. I trust at least some of the current ones to be absolutely that. We don't want to just copy what the Empire does. This would be a much more grassroots, local kind of pragmatism, in which activists work to create a bigger cultural space for things like co-operative and /or locally owned / operated businesses (for example). We talked about how we might create a better cultural imprint for the Co-op in our town which is still completely off the radar of too many people, or is viewed as some kind of hippie fringe establishment by many others. Suddenly the importance of events like "Freaky Food Fun Fest" that we have every year around Halloween have more meaning. We are imprinting the little children to believe that the Co-op is fun. It's not just about generating more sales on that particular day or even just about encouraging more (grownups) to join the Co-op right away. It's ensuring future generations of co-op member-owners. This is perhaps obvious, but I Since somebody in a board room is trying to do this to us just about every minute of every day of our lives, why not adopt these principles to things we really like and care about and would like to see more of in the world. We want to be a board room that uses our (limited) powers and budget for good.

I'm having these deep (and perhaps just slightly creepy) thoughts due to today having attended a workshop on Co-op Board governance, presented by the co-op network (a co-op made of co-ops) to which we belong. It allows member stores can pool buying power and thus stay more viable than individual little grocery stores might be. Also makes me think that even though there's now a giant Walmart in my poor old hometown, it was very very important for the message to get out that not everyone thought it was a fine idea, that quite a few people would rather it not be there. Bless all of you who have the will to say no, or even no thank you, right out loud, to whatever cultural steamroller may come rolling by. Good assumptions should withstand questioning just fine, and bad ones too often win by no contest. Getting steamrolled by a bad assumption can ruin your whole day but I think it feels better if you yell a bit (or whatever level of dissent with which one is comfortable and deems appropriate to the situation). So at the very least, they (steamroller operators) won't follow their initial bad assumption with the additional bad assumption that nobody cared / everybody agreed.

I'm all made of hinges...

...'Cause everything [sort of] bends. Good day at physical therapy yesterday.
Jeff (my PT) "stretched" me which meant that he bent my leg until, and considerably after, I hollered and / or gave him the grimacing of a lifetime. I remarked that apparently he hadn't yet broken it off which seemed to encourage him. But then he said "How about you sit on the stationary bike and just swing your foot back and forth--don't force it to go all the way around, but if it wants to, that's fine." So I did that for awhile, and after awhile it seemed like maybe I could go all the way 'round after all. No resistance. Just motion. After that we (he) did more stretching and my flexibility was greatly improved. He must know what he's doing.
Check out the degrees of flexion here!

Compare this
to the post-surgery photo. Just shy of two weeks since surgery and it looks quite a bit like a knee again.

Bad thoughts

It's really not nice to imagine running over someone with my bike, and I surely want Karla (and myself) to use our powers (generally) for good, but I'm wondering if it wouldn't ultimately help this woman change her perspective for the good of our nation. I think something that can run your dumb a** down in addition to taking people to work and school every day merits the label "transportation." This article is more than a month old and has probably already been thoroughly discussed in numerous other fora, but my profound hostility feels quite fresh. Who hired this imbecile? hmm. Well that probably explains it. GRRRRRRRR. They are so lucky that I can't ride right now.

Okay. For the sake of good research I looked up the original PBS article from whence came the obviously "spun" Treehugger.com piece. However, I think it's a fair spin. While she didn't utter the words "bicycles are not transportation," she twice stated that a good chunk of transportation funds are spent on non-transportation uses, including, inter alia, "...bike paths..." Maybe I shouldn't be too ruffled about this after all. When the oil empire crumbles and almost nobody can afford to drive, there will suddenly be bike paths all over the place, with clever names like Main Street, Broadway, Route 66, I-5, I-80, I-15...

Run, Forrest, Run!

I'm definitely not running right now. Still walking pretty slowly with assorted props. I'm already more than a bit weary of wearing this brace. The novelty of it has worn off and I'm feeling a bit like poor little Forrest Gump. (Special thanks to somebody who recently suggested there was a resemblance, too.) My goal for the coming week is to be able to unlock (i.e. bend) the brace when I walk. I'm not supposed to do that yet, nor does it feel like I should. My leg muscles can't quite hold me steady. Before my second physical therapy session last week I was lamenting the sudden dramatic loss of muscle strength in my right quad and hamstring. Amazing how quick it goes. But then the PT gave me quite a boost in pointing out that, unlike many people a week out of knee surgery, I actually have visible muscle tone (at least in my quad--my hamstring muscle currently just sort of flops, but it's then it's been through a lot). He also said I'm on or ahead of schedule with my range of motion.

So the moral of the story, if anybody reading this is anticipating knee surgery, is: get on your bike and ride. As much as you can. Up the biggest hills you can manage (understanding that not everybody has a 'Karla'). I don't think I realized how helpful it would turn out to be. Not just good fun exercise.

I made it through a whole day yesterday without any Norco. Before that I was down to half a pill every 24 hours. Looks like I can manage alright with just Vitamin I and ice at this point. Good progress. I also have a fridge and freezer loaded with ready-to-eat food. Mom left me with a big pot of chili frozen into meal-sized portions, which I'm enjoying for lunch with my Sunday football today, and my friend H left a lasagna I'm going to bake for dinner...wanna come over?

Going to work tomorrow. Don't know if I'll stay the whole day but I'm ready to give it a try. Our office manager will pick me up bright and early at 8:30.

vice / vise

Oops. The aforementioned "vice clamp" would be something that helps one get a firm grip on ones addictions, perhaps. A rather secure coffee mug holder, for example. I think I really meant vise.

On the related subject of the bruise(s) my physical therapist says they show up downstream from the trauma site...that I could even end up with bruises on my foot from having knee surgery. Sure enough, there are some. Physical therapy felt pretty good. We took off the brace and I tried to let gravity bend my leg to 90 degrees dangling off the edge of a table. Felt sort of good to bend, and sort of not. All my pre-surgery biking definitely paid off. The PT and the assistants commented on how good my quadricep strength is considering we're four days after surgery. I can unlock the brace for sitting around so that I can get more bending practice, but it has to be locked at zero (straight) to walk on it.

The Yes leg, unwrapped

Looking at these photos might not be everyone's idea of a good time...there is some dried blood in them...but hopefully your sense of morbid curiosity is just a little stronger than your aversion. Weren't you just on the edge of your seat, along with me, waiting for the 72-hour point where I could undo the straps and roll up the ace bandage and peel back the gauze? Either way, here's what it looks like.

We'll start with the bruise that's coming up on my shin. The Yes Bruise, if you will. My mother suggested maybe they stuck my leg in a vice clamp to hold it still. Perhaps the Dr. built some dovetail joints for his cabinetry or tied a fly or two while he was at it.

Next we have the knee itself. On Wednesday I'll ask for a map / legend to the various incisions. There is one more tiny one not shown a few inches below the spot in the lower right of the photo (or a few inches above the spot, rather, as the human body is typically oriented feet = down, head = up). I think the total number then is five. The one at the top of the picture (lowest on my knee) is a couple inches long. I dabbed each one with some neosporin, put new clean squares of gauze over everything, and wrapped it again.

fall fashions

The view from the sofa.

The small tube is for my cold pack -- it connects to a little cooler full of icewater that I use to recharge it when it warms up.

And for the latest in weatherproofing accessories, we secured this attractive trash bag with duct tape. Actually the weather outside today was lovely but I was eager to take a shower and this is how the nurses said to do it. The silver duct tape cuff at the ankle was a nice accent (the photo doesn't quite do it justice).

The Yes leg

The nurse wrote "Yes" on my leg at around 7:00 a.m. yesterday and commented that it was the current standard in the industry because a big "X" was thought to have negative connotations. I think other things are written on my knee but I don't get to unwrap it for awhile to read it.

While Dr. K was poking around in there he found a small meniscus tear, which he fixed, and he cleaned up a bit of messy cartilage behind my kneecap. Appears that I had a little runner's knee going on. A little arthritis. My whole leg was numb yesterday and I felt pretty good. Since it thawed out overnight it rather hurts but I've been very conscientious with my pain management schedule. And I have some fabulous German chocolate cake. I'm hanging out with my mom. Life is really pretty good.

Very like a whale

The fuzzy white spot in the middle of the picture is the spray from a whale spouting just off Cape Arago near Coos Bay, Oregon, on my birthday. Either that or it's the Loch Ness monster, or Big Foot out for a swim, or perhaps a UFO splashdown.

[It really was a whale. Just hanging out. Too bad all I had at the time was my cell phone to try to photograph it.]

a week ago today

Can hardly bemoan my fate, since I'm leaving on vacation today and will be back at the coast by Monday...but it's hot as hell in Chico this week. At midnight last night it was still like 85 degrees or something. Or 80 at least. Bloody hot. I'd rather be where I was in this photo. Doing what I was doing, for that matter. So it's nice that more or less I will be, in a fairly short time from now.

a little sleep + a little chain = big difference

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a drivetrain! The bar-end shifters have an indexed or a friction setting, and the index doesn't seem to line up all that well, but in friction mode the derailleur shifts to all nine cogs in the cassette. Translation: it works. I think I'll be able to bring this bike on the trip after all. Left to do:
1. adjust front derailleur (cable still too long, won't shift into largest chainring)
2. adjust brakes
3. attach bottle cages, toe clips, pump, and (oh yeah) a saddle
4. put on fenders and headlight
5. attach rear rack
6. install computer
7. test drive

The brake adjusting can take a little time but all the hard stuff is done. Now it's basically a matter of turning little bolts.

And here are my pretty handlebars (tried to find an angle where it isn't obvious that I messed up one end of them).

deraille[ur]d?

Hmm. Working on the new bike with the idea of taking it on my vacation, realizing that I'm a bit short on time what with it being late Wednesday night and leaving Friday. Concerned that the top little black cog of my derailleur seems to be touching my cassette. I don't think it will work so well if it's doing that. Though the chain isn't on yet [come to think of it, won't work so well without the chain on either]. If I weren't so busy troubling myself about it I'd take a picture so that the problem would be more apparent even to those readers who may not really have a good idea about whatever it was I just said. Maybe putting on the chain will help, at least then the derailleur cogs will be in their right places to know if they're touching things they ought not to be touching.

I may have begun this phase of the project a bit too late. Might need to bring the old bike on the trip instead.

The handlebar tape looks really cool except for where I kind of botched it on one side. First attempt at wrapping handlebars, didn't expect it to be perfect.

On a totally different subject, I went outside on my balcony a few minutes ago and now have about five mosquito bites, basically one or more per appendage. I'd better let the cat back in before they carry him away.

Also not shown...

...are the curious tan lines on my right leg from wearing my knee brace hiking and in the kayak. I was hoping this would happen by the end of the summer. Mission accomplished.

Juniper Lake

Went camping here last weekend.
Climbed Mt. Harkness and turned around. [When you click this link, Mt. Shasta appears in the photo.]

Made new friends. (Well, I didn't catch her name, exactly...but she was such a dear.)



On Saturday night,
watched the sun set behind Mt. Lassen.


Paid attention to detail. (Really, click on that link, I had no idea the picture was that big.)

Not shown: the sky full of stars, or the view from the middle of the lake as I paddled across in the neighbors' kayak (a couple from Marin County who go camping at this lake every year around this time), or those neighbors and their exclamations of delight over the smoked sturgeon and brie with green peppercorns I shared with them, or the beautiful guitar playing and singing of neighbors on the other side of my campsite. Just all around a nice place to live (but for the lack of any kind of modern plumbing) for two days. Far enough up a washboard road from town that I felt quite motivated to eat whatever it was I brought and / or participate in community cooking ventures. On Saturday night I contributed Annie's Shells & Cheddar and a pot of fresh broccoli simmered with garlic, and the kayak neighbors had hotdogs and grilled chicken and chocolate chip cookies. Good deal all-around. Later I went over to play some music with the other neighbors, who seemed not so much the hotdog eating types, but they were adventurous and willing to try the fair trade organic coconut curry chocolate bar I bought at the Co-op. It helps to speak a couple different languages when one goes camping. I speak hotdog, vegetarian, and numerous dialects of chocolate. To name a few.

More bike miles

18.5 miles on Sunday in Folsom on paths of the lovely American River Parkway, and 17.6 this morning up a ratty godforsaken stretch of road that parallels Highway 32 east into the hills above Chico. Humboldt Road. So many potholes and cracks that kids don't even seem to want to spray paint it very much (unlike Honey Run Road, which reads like a yearbook). But I made it to the end where it joins Hwy 32, took this photo, then came down on the highway to avoid serious teeth-clattering. Notice our lovely Sacramento Valley air in the distance. Thought about the itsy-bitsy bits of rubber to which I was commending all my health and well-being as I watched my speedometer climb to 31 mph. I've been down this road before and don't remember it feeling quite as scary as it did. I think there was a headwind that made me feel like I was going faster than I really was. Maybe I'll get some new fresh brakes anyway.

Home by another way

I was up near Mt. Shasta on a little campout with some friends from the football team Saturday night. Sunday morning as I drove away I found myself turning left to head further into the mountains, rather than right to go back to I-5 and head home. State Highway 89 takes you to some amazing places. Stopped at Macarthur-Burney Falls State Park for awhile. It was more than worth the $6.00 to sit on a rock in the pool and be blasted by the wind and mist coming off the falls; it was probably 65 - 70 degrees down there compared to 90 - 95 up top. The water is so deep blue green. Pool is supposedly 18 - 24 feet deep, and [not supposedly] ice cold, so I imagined what it would be like to be in the pool rather than literally trying to find out. No signs that say "no swimming," but people seem naturally deterred from anything much beyond dangling their feet in the water. Which I did. There's just a lot going on in this pool as you can see. It almost looked like a tiny ocean. I noticed that almost everyone hiking back up the short switchback path from the falls was smiling. Something about charged ions and waterfalls? I can't remember...the positive ions make you happy...or something...maybe I've got it backwards. The sun caught individual droplets of the spray and turned the falls into liquid light.

I still wanted a swim so I headed down the road for Lassen and any convenient lake off the main road. Summit Lake was perfect. People there, but not too many. I was wearing my new "bionic" knee brace and I can report that it feels fine in the water. Better than without it, I think.
I swam across the lake (not at the widest point, and it's not a huge lake, but far enough). I floated on my back with my eyes closed (this is something best done in a lake)--the sun was still high in the sky and soaked it all in. No photos of this...couldn't take my cellphone swimming with me...but if you can think of a bright blue lake with happy little clusters of big and little people and their floating devices around the edges (no motor boats), surrounded by pine trees, at about...8,000' or so?, and if you can think of floating in the lake like a big pink waterlily with the sun filling you up, then you don't need a photo anyway.

Boys and their moms

I posted my second bedroom for rent recently. So far two responses have resulted in someone...actually multiple someones...showing up to have a look. Both of them were shy somewhat awkward young college boys, who arrived with mom in tow, or rather mom arrived with them and asked all the relevant questions. Not really many questions beyond the basics so it's hard to say what in the world moms thought about me; I have a feeling I might not be topping their list of preferred housing providers. How old was Anne Bancroft in "The Graduate?" Am I anywhere near that old? Do, do-do-do, do-do, do-do-do-do, do-do-do. Dee, dee-dee-dee, dee-dee, dee dee dee.

Whew. Just checked. Anne B. was at least 36 in that movie and I'm not even 35 yet. Either way, moms, your young sons would be pretty much safe, I'd even watch football and eat pizza with 'em. I think, however, (not to express any preference in violation of state and federal fair housing law) I might like a roommate just a little bit older though, one who maybe left the nest a little earlier than first thing this morning.

Random stuff. Can't think of a title.

Rode my bike about twelve miles yesterday, up to Horseshoe "Lake" to the end of the paved road, then back down through town. The pedaling felt fine. There are a couple very short climbs on this route and I stood up in the pedals for short stints, no problem. The thing that started to not feel so good was twisting my right foot to unclip from my SPDs (for those not familiar, a type of pedal / shoe combination with a binding similar to snow ski bindings. Though I haven't skied in probably ten years so this comparison could be totally inaccurate at this point). My knee is a bit puffy today and I'm wondering if it was the overall effort, or that twisting motion, or the ongoing moving project this morning, or sympathy pains from watching some of the Tour de France stage in the Pyrenees this morning.

C came up to gather up as much of the rest of her belongings as would fit in her little car, and to take Amonke
back to the Big City with her. Whew. I can begin to understand, just a little, what would drive somebody going through a divorce to kidnap their own child(ren). Of our two cats it seemed like Amonke would do better in the city. Kato, he's a bit of a ramblin' man (despite the early curtailing of his manhood). It was very hard to say goodbye but it was the right thing. C and 'Monka will take good care of each other, and we've agreed that either of us can visit the cats whenever we want.

Back in the saddle

I rode my bike to work on Monday. And to physical therapy on Tuesday (and then to work). Had to drive to appointments in another town today that is theoretically accessible by bike if one has a few hours and the legs to devote to it. But I'll ride again tomorrow. Maybe I'll try something easy this weekend, a little 8-mile round trip through the park up to Horseshoe Lake and back.

Also got measured for my brace. It comes in three different models. One is the couch potato model that protects you from throwing your knee out while you're sitting at a desk or using the remote control. Two is the intermediate that allows you to go jogging and make the odd quick cut to the side to avoid stepping in dog poop, or shoot hoops, or play a little tennis. Three. Three is the one I need. [Guess what you can do with three.] The woman taking the measurements said only once has she heard of Three getting damaged (and it has at least a two year warranty or something): man with this brace was bodysurfing in Hawaii and a wave picked him up and threw him into a pile of rocks, denting his brace. But his knee was just fine. You just never know when you might be thrown against a pile of rocks.

The Evils of Peer Pressure

Up here in Westport with some friends and friend's sister's family. Eight-year-old nephew B last night announced, with wry grin, "I want to see Emily try the Bertie Botts," or something to that effect. Referring to some unique jellybeans produced by Jelly Belly on behalf of the Harry Potter empire. Now it may not normally seem like such a throwing down of a gauntlet to challenge someone to jellybean tasting, except that these particular beans came in flavors of Sausage, Earwax, Vomit, Earthworms, Soap, Rotten Egg, Dirt, Boogers, and Black Pepper. As it turns out we all sat around the table (three kids, and three "adults") and passed the box around. Of the five flavors I tried I was able to chew and swallow three; one I had to spit out, and one I chewed once tentatively and then swallowed whole like a pill with a Dr. Pepper chaser. I will say additionally that I did not get around to trying the Earwax, Soap, Black Pepper, or Dirt (I figured dirt would be redundant after the Earthworm anyway.)

I think the point of these ill-favored beans, or a point, is to laugh hilariously at other people's reactions to eating them, and then to be laughed at in turn. It's [s]not like anyone is eating them against his / her will and doesn't therefore deserve to be laughed at when they make a horrible nasty face at the oddly realistic flavor of Earthworms. Not that any of us really know what earthworms taste like, of course. But they can't be all that much worse. Just less sugary.