the carrot bites back

In theory, the latest plan for rewiring my entire musculoskeletal system has me spinning on the trainer for a half-hour every other day, passing the time in somber contemplation of pedal-stroke mechanics. The first great flaw in this plan is that it's really, really boring. The second is that—with the exception of the biblical deluge I got for my birthday last week—it's not raining. And let's be real, here: indoor riding has nothing on June-uary.

Consequently, I gave up and rode-rode today (all of 30 miles). I had crystal-clear views of the bay; climbing was slow but survivable and descending felt like some sort of rapturous bear-hug from favorable laws of physics. And the-eeen I got home:

Post-Pinehurst-Wildcat. Seriously. 

Note the Cheeseboard carcass and the foam roller, intended for my rightfully pissed-off left hip and misappropriated—due to my inability to move far enough to use it—for couch cuddling. Eagle eyes may also spot West Wing DVDs and a pound of Trader Joe's dark chocolate.

Oh, this is going to take a while.

ca-rry me home to-night

The strategic error was trying to take the house photo at the end of the night. Apparently the moment everybody looked the same direction was also the one the hapas chose to get in touch with their Asian sides₁. Typical.

Photos by Alean ... I think.

There is no further record, which is probably a good thing. Suffice to say, my friends clean up nice—and if any attendees neglected to call their girlfriends, it certainly wasn't for lack of encouragement.

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1. Philippe is not actually hapa, just bears occasional resemblance to the young Keanu Reeves.

dreamer's just a vessel

Remember this? Circa fourth-grade music class, the lesson on singing a round?

My pad-dle's clean and bright
Flash-ing with sil-ver
Foll-ow the wild goose flight
Dip dip and swing

That is not quite the urban kayak experience, but I had a good time dispatching the kayaking list item with Agent Valencia anyway. Zig-zagging clumsily up and down the channel between Oakland and Alameda, I saw houseboats (one with my name, nearly), tugboats (they're not little at all!), sailboats (lurching at impossible angles), and best of all:

Belly of the beast.

Fantastic! I love the Oakland cranes like I love the sound of jets, or tall scaffolding, or the the concrete horizon of a runway. I'm supposed to be a treehugger; it doesn't even make sense.

Anyway, there was also a fluffy bird that the Internet says is called a bufflehead and a man repainting the red hull of a boat named RELIEF. It was a brilliant, stupendous red; he put it on with a roller and it was almost too bright to watch.

feet first, part two

[This is long for the sake of anyone Googling seemingly inexplicable knee problems. I feel ya.]

My processing limitations are such that I could not simultaneously follow what Curtis was doing and what he was saying. I know there was some poking and prodding; then I got on the trainer and watched my knee wobble around a laser sight indicating a straight line. The slick video setup also allowed me the novel view of my own ass on the bike, a perspective which in retrospect my ego might have been better spared. With some effort, I forced my mind off these mildly unsettling images and on to the Cramblett verdict: "The tail is wagging the dog."

The tail(s)

February 2009. Wa-waaaa.

It's been nearly three years since I broke my collarbone (small bone, big club) and scapula (the opposite). So I was surprised to learn that this stupidass crash is still quietly sabotaging me, the tightness over the point of impact twisting my entire body sideways. I was skeptical of this analysis until Curtis physically pulled me straight—or at least, the mirror said "straight"; my muscles said "turning, hard". It was a little surreal, like being in a really un-fun funhouse. Who knew?

That's one end. The other is my wretchedly pronated, draft-dodger feet. I wear orthotics, but Curtis's take is that those don't retrain the muscles that do the work every time I hit the ground or try to put power to a pedal. So how do you do that? Well, here's a funny video:

It's funny because it looks like nothing. But it's incredibly hard, both in terms of the precision involved and the force—somewhere in between trying to wiggle your ears and crack your back. ETA for the right position being "natural"? Eh, couple years.

The dog

The part I did know is that my core is kind of pathetic. Having been previously told I could get my kneecaps to track correctly by strengthening my legs, I'd focused on that—hundreds of wobbly one-legged squats. No good. Pro roadie Kristin Sanders covers Curtis's "canon on a canoe" analogy, so I'll skip that—but the point is that my disproportionate muscle is affecting more than my ability to find jeans that fit.

The part I didn't know is that I'm "hypermobile". Curtis posed a spectrum, with a creaky old man at one, the average at five, and a Cirque de Soleil contortionist at ten. Here, I made a diagram. Look at the swagger on "average"!

"You're maybe an eight," Curtis said, bending my thumb back on my wrist (painless) to illustrate his point. "Not a circus freak, but ... ." I sat cross-legged with my elbows on the floor, writing notes into a binder. "How many people do you think can sit like that?" he asked. "Can't everyone?" He laughed. Ah.

The most awesome part about this is that it means I won't be assigned a bunch of goddamn yoga, which I hate. The least awesome part, basically, is that if something can go wrong it will. When the tails wag, my overly pliable muscles follow them without resistance into arrangements that hurt.

The rest

I ... don't know yet, actually, what to do with this information. For now I'm trying to stop ricocheting between giddy fantasies of how much faster I might be if I could get this right and despair for how unlikely it seems that I ever will. Check back.

Pffffftttt.

feet first, part one

I had planned to spend the night before THE bike fit cleaning the cobwebbed Cannondale, preparing All The Right Questions, and sleeping. Instead, I met up with my erstwhile teammate Lee, who in turn made the mistake of suggesting a local establishment that offers free drinks to the builders of record-setting coaster-houses. With my over-budget bike habit on my mind, it was thus ruinously easy to allow beer before dinner to become beer for dinner.

You can't take me anywhere.

Needless to say, I did not enter the Cramblett garage studio the next morning at my most articulate, and I resigned myself to a repeat of the same unproductive interview I've already had with my doctor, my PT, and an orthopedist. What hurts? This, this, sometimes this, sometimes that, sometimes that, too. When? A little bit all the time and a whole lot other times. What does it feel like? Oh, it's a sort of numb, buzzing, stabbing, aching, pulsing, hot, cold, searing, dull, piercing twinge ... sort of ... thing?

As someone whose love and livelihood is the neat arrangement of words, a problem I can't corral into a sentence is a problem I can't manage. And chronic pain is all about loss of control; it's like sharing your skin with a medieval despot or an untrustworthy drunk. My legs might carry me uncomplainingly up Half Dome, or I might pinch a nerve walking to the grocery store. I might ride merry laps around Tamarancho in the morning, but pedal home one-legged from my carpool's house in the afternoon. The medical term for this is "episodic". The legal term is "arbitrary and capricious". The lay term is "gggggaaaahhhhhhhhh".

I've spent the past ten months obsessing over why I am sometimes functional, sometimes not. If I could just pinpoint what I was doing wrong—riding hills, riding hard, riding long, riding in the morning, riding this bike, that bike, riding on the full fucking moon, whatever—that would at least give me back some agency, let me plan. But I have gotten nowhere at all playing Whodunit. And one of the first things Curtis did—almost imperceptibly—was steer the conversation away from my breathless recitation of the infinite variables and toward the one constant, which is, of course: my own body.

[More later. Two posts to recap two hours is pretty absurd, but they were a long time coming—and I trust the bike nerds at least are curious.]

since auld lang syne

Cloud's Rest, Half Dome on the right. And I'm in there, too!
Photo poached from Jacob SB (Jacob IMDB?)

After the snow cave I decided:

1) I definitely want to spend New Year's outside.
2) I definitely do not want to spend New Year's outside.

So I booked a platform tent, with heat. We ran it all night, John Muir, forgive me.

*****
Among my clinical observations from a rather reflective year was this: My body has ceased to manufacture ambition beyond that for friends in/and high places. I feel fine, though.

By Jacob SB and the attending GorillaPod.

*****
Much of the trail is ice. It's slow going but ooh-aah beautiful; I could look at it (and poke it) for hours. As I walk I root around for words and can't find anything even close. Nabakov? Minnesotans? Muir again? Who has the vocabulary to freeze the frozen?

I took this one myself, which is why it's not EPIC. Whatever!

*****
We're watching the sun come up on the new year, looking down the long valley as the shadows fade. The sky is pinned with the pink-tinged trails of ascending airplanes, rising steeply and slowly into the dawn. They seem to stream banners in their wake, to sound a fanfare—it's quiet and dim, I know, but still I'm sure of trumpets and the flash of brass.

*****
I have gone just slightly too far up for my own abilities and shoes and the fact that no one knows where I am. It's fine, really, but I know that the interview with the paramedics would be unflattering. "I just wanted to get close enough to touch it!" I'd be saying as they splinted the ankle or wrist or whatever. "I just wanted to touch the wall!"

*****
I'm crossing the sparse wood behind the Ahwahnee, which looks like a Lincoln Log window display and reeks of cinnamon rolls. A woman walks hand-in-hand with a ponytailed child alternately jumping and kicking up dry pine needles. They're singing a call-and-response I can't quite make out: When you something-something mountain? When you something-something river? But the answer from the little girl is a thrilling, gleeful shout—

You find a way! YOU FIND A WAY!

bless this wine, it is Merlot?

Christmas at my place

Or, doing what you can

1. Half my family is on the subcontinent for the holidays. My mom left the stockings stuffed and the freezer full, but, you know.

Dinner and dessert

"Fruitcream!" declares my dad, who in halving a dozen grapes has just completed the most meticulous kitchen task I've ever seen him undertake. "It's a dessert!" "That is some bullshit," says my brother. "Or some Indian bullshit," I counter. This turns out to be true₁.

2. We top our mod tree facsimile with the avenging angel, a creepy, balding mess of spray-painted cheesecloth I made in fifth-grade art class₂. I didn't intentionally sculpt a faceless harbinger of death! I just sucked at crafts; that's all.

Hark!

You can imagine what this looks like in the dark, lit red as if hurling curses from some glittering column of hellfire. Merry Christmas, all ye sinners in our living room.

3. I did not anticipate weather like this when I picked December for the Hail Mary bike ban. Half-crazy from watching roadies whiz past the kitchen window, I go outside and just start walking. This is a much more rewarding exercise than it is in the urban jungle, and within a few hours I've made it to Christmas mass₃.

Revere in the shade, exalt in the sun.

It's not a large park, and I'm nowhere far from echoes of garrulous family outings or the thumping tread of runners up the trail. But ankle-deep in leaves and loam in the dim crease of the hill I find a thick and heavy silence crouched amid the noise—a presence, not an absence, something I'm with and not without. An attendant ring of laurels form the buttresses, hold it in. The first, last, best cathedral. The first, last, best hope.
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1. Don't worry, Mom; I imagine the leftovers will still be in the fridge for you to try when you get home.
2. Our tree in Berkeley sports medals and a vicuna that Uncle Anand brought me back from South America.
3. I've also walked my left leg into uselessness, which calls into serious questions the merits of said bike ban. Next (lame) step? Hoping Curtis Cramblett's got some serious game.