Public Service Announcement Involving Your Junk

Fatty's recent post on Power Faces, and the strain & hurts that come with riding real hard, put me in the mind to post a Public Service Announcement on a very important topic: how not to blow a testicle with an internal firehose gout of misdirected urine as you ride a mountain bike.

I ride with this guy, Earl (not his real name), who is a really nice guy. He's a faithful family man, devout Christian - in the good good way, not the Jimmy Swaggart send-money-for-hookers-and-blow way; he's a strong triathlete, a real straight arrow, and strong like an ox on a mountain bike. What he may lack in skill as a relatively new mountain biker, he makes up in sheer power and determination. He is a guy I like and generally respect, and I love riding with him because he's always pretty good natured, even when the going is very tough. So naturally I bust his balls constantly. And on that same topic, bad things seem to happen to his junk while riding.

Earl had suffered from significant pain all summer from "stemming" his Robert "Purple Guitar Neck" Johnson really hard on this epic ride we did in July. So it's not unusual to see him grasping his ham & eggs with his face showing a mixture of moderate pain and deeply philosophical thoughtfulness.

Then a couple weeks ago we were going out for an early AM ride with the Diesel, the Beard, Smooth Sven and some other folks, and as we were strapping the lights on Earl mentioned that he had to go see the doctor a couple days earlier.

Earl had noticed some unusual lumps on his testicles during a regular self-exam. Unlike everybody else I know, i.e. all my pervy friends, when Earl says he checks his pants yarblies regularly due to a family history of cancer, and not just as an excuse to Juggle The Boys, I believe him. Shoot, if I had a family history of cancer, I'd be locking myself in the bathroom twice a day just to, um, check. Not that I'd be using that as an excuse to fondle myself or nothin'.

I think Earl was having some trouble peeing too, and other unusual pain in the Hobo Bag. You know, beyond the pain you get from ramming your junk into a 100mm 6 degree Thomson mountain bike stem at 20 MPH. (Official Thomson Advertising Slogan: your bike will break before the stem does. Unofficial Mountain Biking Reality: so will any part of your body that hits it).

So Earl went to the DownUnderOlogist, who did the requisite 'ow's yer father?' on him. Earl was sure that he'd be referred to another NetherRegionOlogist for a consultation about testicular cancer, but as it turns out there was an innocent explanation for the lumps and peckerwreckage, besides his predilection for slamming his stemmage into his stem at 30 MPH.

The doc asked Earl if he'd been "lifting something really heavy lately." Earl hadn't, but he told the doc about bashing his Wedding Tackle off of a 100mm 6 degree Thomson mountain bike stem at 40 MPH. he also mentioned something about doing some really gnarly climbs a few weeks earlier on our rigid singlespeeds, stuff that takes a maxed out, full body effort to clean. It's like deadlifting on the bike, and sometimes your hands hurt, the knees get tweaked, the forearms burn, you burst blood vessels in your eyes, get twinges in the arms and the lower back, and you get the very unsettling feeling that somebody is removing stitches (without cutting them) from some unspecified locations in your gizzard. So Earl told the doc about that and the doc asked a few more questions. In particular, he asked whether Earl had been riding on a full bladder when he made these exertions.

As it happened, Earl had been doing so. Unlike the rest of my reprobate friends, who are probably in a state of near collapse from dehydration due to constant boozing and other forms of dissipation, Earl stays well hydrated and sober, drinking the government-recommended six to eight glasses of water daily, and an extra glass or two on hot days. Nor does he take joy in pissing in public; he holds his water until it's possible to discreetly offload. In fact it’s amazing that he tolerates us because he’s fundamentally moral, sane, well-mannered and tasteful. In other words, he’s completely freaking nuts.

The doc was relieved to find out that Earl drinks a lot of water and regularly rides with a full bladder.

He said that under a severe strain, urine can be forced down the wrong tubes into the testicles. This causes inflammation and pain in the Asparagus and Broccoli, and that sort of thing was completely consistent with Earl's symptoms.

That, and slamming his junk into a 100mm 6 degree Thomson mountain bike stem at 60 MPH.

The doc said that this is a fairly common condition, but I suspect he only said that to get Earl to stop crying.

So as it happens, when Earl makes a Power Face, it is only a prelude to super-pressurizing his bladder and blowing the stuffing out of a ball valve in his kidney plumbing. Earl's superhuman climbing efforts are obviously fueled by shifting urine around at high speed, in the same way that you could get a Chevy Nova to go real fast by rolling hand grenades out the back window and having three of your fat friends sit in the back seat and rock forward and back in unison. Yeah, it'd go fast. But it would be mighty tough on area around the exhaust pipe and possibly even damage the whole back end.

Earl is now undergoing treatment with various drugs that are fixing the problem. He can even ride a mountain bike again, but the doc advised him to make sure his bladder is empty when he rides. Apparently, if he doesn't do this, his testicles could blow up just like balloon animals, except they wouldn't be as much fun.

So when we ride now, I stop about every half hour remind Earl to go water the trees before he blows a testicle, shatters a bladder, or pulverizes a pipe. Contrary to what you might think, I don’t remind him about this constantly to bust his balls. My goal is solely to help Earl out and make sure that he stays in peak condition.

I don’t do this just for the Lulz. I do it, because I care so much. Seriously. You people know me better than that.