Month: July 2009

Auburn SRA/ Mamoth Bar Fire

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.

A Little Bit Insane

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.