I've been off the bike for a solid week, now (a little over a week, actually). It feels like about a hundred years. Admittedly, a lot has happened in the past week — it's funny how life will roll along smoothly-if-monotonously for a while, then you put a few cards on the table, and boom! Suddenly everything is a chaotic riot of delight — but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Not riding has taught me that my tolerance for not riding is pretty low. I didn't ride *much* when I had the 'ENT special' infection a while back, but I at least got to hop on the bike to roll a couple of blocks to the store and so forth. This episode with the leg has been the longest I've been off the bike since last year, and all weekend I kept staring longingly at every bike on the road.
My leg, while still colorful, is feeling a lot better. It seems to be okay for walking, as long as I don't overdo it, though it does get sore after a bit. Likewise, I no longer have the unpleasant sensation that the muscle is trying to pull away from the bone (a sensation I couldn't figure out how to describe until it stopped). The swelling has mostly sorted itself out (I have an ankle!), and while it's still tender to the touch, it now takes a pretty good bump to make me see stars. I wake up a couple times each night having locked my knee into a hyperextended position (usually while hooking my heel over the end of the bed*), but that now produces a dull and annoying ache instead of a potent and nauseating one.
As such, I'm going to see if PT Guy thinks I'm clear to take the Allez for a little spin tonight. If he doesn't think I'm good to go yet, I think I'll be able to handle it for a little longer.
Swift is still at the shop — we had a bunch of fun Memorial Day stuff going on yesterday, so we didn't make it over there, but for all that I'm not sure they were open, anyway. I know he's in good hands, though (if I'm slightly embarassed that he made it into those hands in rather cruddy condition, having received several lick-and-a-promise rubdowns but no real spit-n-polish cleanings for a few weeks before my crash).
In other news, I finally got around to spending some time poking the new bike, and realized that my Allez is an Allez Pro**, rather than an Allez Comp. This isn't terribly important information -- I didn't even notice it before now, in fact. Primarily, it explains why the decals look a little different than the ones I've seen on Allez Comps in pictures. I'm not sure whether there's any real difference at all between an Allez Pro and an Allez Comp if the former is kitted out exactly as the latter would have been. The only difference is that the front derailer on mine is not, in fact, the 105 that would come with the Comp, but the 600 that came with the Pro.
Frankly, as long as the gears change when I toggle the little lever gee-gaws, the derailer could be cobbled together from four toothpicks and a twizzler, for all I care.
I'm looking forward to getting back on the bike. I'm guessing this will mean short, flat rides on the Allez to start with — no epic hill-rides or even commutes for me for a bit! There's a bike path near PT Guy's house that will probably fit the bill. I'm over there much of the time anyway, so I think that will work out reasonably well.
I also discovered a handy wrenching resource produced by a guy who once rebuilt a bike very much like my Allez. I'll be adding it to my list of bike links.
*In other news, until I banged up my leg, I never realized that I very frequently sleep flat on my back with my left leg fully extended, toe point and all, and my right leg flexed at the hip and knee, as if I was trying to practice ballet in my sleep. Gotta wonder what that's about.
**It even says so on the frame. Yet I spent a goodly amount of time trying to figure it out last week. Complex solutions for simple ... yeah, you know the drill.
No comments:
Post a Comment