A 525 acre fire started in the Mamoth Bar area in the Auburn SRA. I haven’t seen the damage but it appears it was mostly contained on the south side of the ridge, primarily burning the OHV area. It appears that most of the Auburn trails are unscathed but I haven’t heard from anyone who has ridden in there yet. The Fire fighting effort was staged in a large part near Grizley house which is the primary Forest Hill Divide trailhead so it’s entirely likely that some of the beginning sections of the FHDL are damaged by bulldozer and perhaps backfires.

KCRA has some pretty decent video footage of the fire and thread on MTBR where a few of the locals have seen the damage a lot more first hand than I have.

Looks like it’s going to be another rough fire year for Norcal.

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I had an appointment scheduled to have my staples removed on Friday but my doctor’s office was CLOSED how lame is that? So by Sunday my staples were driving me NUTS so I did what any slightly insane person with reasonable pain tolerances would do…. I pulled them out.

I don’t recommend you do this yourself, but I boiled some wire snips and some forceps over the stove then proceeded to pull them out one by one. The staples curved in a bit so I had to snip the top then pull the staples up then sideways. Overall it took about 30-45 minutes and was not particularly painful. No gushing blood, and the leg feels much much better now that they are out. The gory pictures.

I am also now completely free of pain meds which is good news. My sleep is a little off now because my body is expecting that little extra helper for snoozing but overall the pain is manageable and I’m liking the pill free lifestyle.

Physical Therapy (finally) starts tomorrow. I’m doing out-patient PT at a clinic, hopefully they will be at least a little familiar with cycling and physically active people.

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Today and Yesterday are my best days since getting home from surgery and pain is continuing to be less an issue. It’s still plenty of work moving around and if I move wrong the pain ramps up quite a bit. My appetite has returned but I’m trying to keep my eating pretty minimal. I see the next 3 months as a huge challenge fitness and weight management wise so I’m trying to get an early jump on things. I tried to weigh myself on the Wii Fit today but I couldn’t hop up onto the balance board fast enough to get a weight.

The other big concern is weaning myself off the pain meds. It feels like right now beyond being tired a lot during the day I’m not seeing a lot of side effects any more. More important, my alertness and focus is nearly back to normal so I can get back to work and some of my non-cycling hobbies.

On Friday Char and I changed out the bandages ourselves. I’m not exactly sure what’s going on with the home health situation but we can certainly do a comparable job to the clown they sent out here before so until I get someone else arranged we’re going to take care of that end of things and just keep an eye out for anything unusual. The staples should be removed on Friday which means the cut should be mostly healed by then.

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My days seem to be broken up into little chunks. For a while I’m feeling nearly ok. Then I’ll use the bathroom or just pass out asleep and then feel horrible for a bit. Sometimes sitting at my laptop, I’ll be IMing folks and just drift off in the middle of a conversation. It’s quite frustrating to be completely reliant on folks around me. I’m a pretty independent person and now I need help using the mens room (when I’m not stuck using a bedpan). Read the rest of this entry »

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Last week someone offered me free entry into a race near Clearlake, CA at a great park called Boggs. I’d been thinking of going to the race and getting the free entry sort of tipped me over the edge. The race is a 24 hour endurance race.  I did a solo entry and figured on taking it easy and just seeing how many laps I could in 24 hours. Never really thinking in terms of it being a “race” more just an endurance event.  I started out at a fairly moderate pace. The first lap was a pokey 1:12 minute pace. Between laps I recharged my nutrition and did a little tuning of the bike.

The second lap was more fun than the first. Folks were spread out and I was rolling at a good pace and chatting with other racers. Nearing the end of the lap, there is a long climb then a really fun section of singletrack. It’s not very challenging, in fact I often recommend it for beginning riders. It’s called Gail’s trail. Primarily just fast, smooth rolling trail with occasional easy to avoid rocks or trees. The only tricky bit about Gail’s trail is the fact that the edges are soft and covered with slippery pine needles. I was cruising down Gail’s at a good clip, really enjoying myself. I’d just passed someone and the fun meter was set to about 8, then my front wheel found those pine needles. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in MTB Events, Mountain Biking, recovery | 4 Comments »

Had a great ride today… a friend took me to a place called Pipi Valley east of Jackson. It’s an OHV park but we had lots of fun. There was plenty of mud, a few creek crossings and Bruce broke his rear derailer. Overall not a bad time.

No real ride report but perhaps once I’ve been there a few times I’ll put something together. We rode trail 25, about a 15 mile loop. I would suggest if you ride this place you do it soon or wait for another rain, it gets lots of moto traffic and turns to moondust early in the summer.

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As I pushed my bike up a steep section of 2” deep sloppy mud, I couldn’t help but think “What kind of an idiot rides in crap like this in the middle of the night?” Then the inescapable thought bubbled to the surface “What kind of idiot composes blog posts in his head while riding in 2” deep oatmeal at 2AM”.

Our drive to the Coolest 24 Hour race (that’s the name of the event) was interrupted about 15 minutes short of our destination on the climb to Pilot Hill. Pilot Hill is a little town off of Highway 49 at the top of a steep windy road. When we got to the steep part of the hill the engine was running great, but the RV was slowing down, until eventually we had no power at all. I managed to pull the RV onto what is probably the only section of dirt shoulder on the side of the road big enough for a 34’ RV in the 5 mile climb, even so the RV stuck out into the narrow road for a foot. Read the rest of this entry »

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When you are putting the cleats on your shoes make sure you use the correct sized bolts. My shoes came with two screwes and I inadvertently put the longer screws in which poked into the bottom of my feet. I didn’t walk much on them so it wasn’t bad but potentially painful if I’d gone on a long hike-a-bike. Also putting short screws on is a recipe for trouble.

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