If Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemon Drop Martinis

The discussion on the club listserve yesterday and today was the usual winter doldrums chat. Who is riding, going where, what pace, is the road actually clear enough, what about the ice on Elm Street, learned my lessons the last time I crashed in January, nope, sticking to the rollers, hey let's play street hockey, etc - then degenerating into some off-topic chat. Anybody on a team listserve no doubt had the identical discussion yesterday, today, last week and last year forever. It doesn't change the immediacy of the question though. We'd all rather be out riding.

I'd be happy to be engaged in the discussion in a serious manner but my butt is not cooperating. Yep, my back is better. I think it turned the corner yesterday; I'm about 75% mobile, the screaming pain at the base of my spine and radiating into my ass and leg is now just talking loudly like a drunk guy at a party, and like the drunk guy it sometimes even passes out and is silent for 25 minutes at a time. Instead of feeling like there is a railroad spike stuck in my back just to the right of my spine, it now feels like a two and one-half inch finishing nail, driven about halfway in. That sounds horrible but trust me, if you haven't spent a week with the kind of pain that makes you feel like you are panicking, hyperventilating and going cross-eyed, then you don't know what a great improvement that is.

I'm grateful for the improvement. But still, I'd rather be riding. Since breaking my butt ten days ago, I've been completely off the bike. No road, no dirt, no rollers, nada. I am desperate to be on a bike, any bike, I would even settle for doing VO2 intervals on a little folder on my crummy cheap (and generally very painful to ride) trainer that I only use for warmup at cross races. But I can't right now, because whatever the problem actually was (doc doesn't really know, though he pretends to think it's a torn ass muscle and with maybe minor disc/sciatica complications...) only just started to turn the corner.

It's not all bad news though. Even as unhappy as I am, this gives me the chance to take a handful of Vicodin (made from the best opiates on earth), then make like Kubla Khan, ponder whether the Alph does in fact run through caverns measureless to man down to the sunless sea, and to sit inside my stately pleasure dome (AKA the Man
Cave) this afternoon watching the NFL playoffs. You think Kubla Khan and the Golden Horde (the medieval version of Team Columbia circa 2009) had big screen hi-def coverage of the Hundred Years' War? I think not.

While I'm stuck inside here trying to get my Zen on and negate my own bad vibes, and accept the fact that sometimes the body needs a rest, my sincerest wish is that all of you take advantage of the day and have fun with it. Do what you can do. And appreciate the fact that you can do it.