Return to Serenity

You knew that last night would entail a ride of some kind, seeing as how I’d just gotten the green light to put a seat under my ass and a single tire in front of me. The weather looked iffy but I had a job to do; I had to hand off a couple of ride posters that contained info for an upcoming charity ride, in memory of a fallen Marine.

I shot up to Clydes to give one to Johnny to post at the bar, and the other was handed to Danno, to be posted at the VFW. Both locations should see excellent visibility and with any luck, we’ll have a few brave souls make the ride out to Worcester with us.

After doing the handshakes, hellos and handoffs, it was time to return to the homestead and finish packing for the Cali trip (tomorrow!!). But when I stepped outside Clyde’s front door, I saw a whole world of hurt standing between me and my home driveway. The sky had darkened up something fierce, there were bright flashes speeding towards me, and there was a rapidly increasing amount of H2O spreading upon the ground. Who cares! I’m riding again!! Woo-Hoo!! I slid easily into the seat, fired the ol’ girl up and off I went. Hell, I didn’t even take the direct route home, I meandered a bit!

The streaks of lightning were just ripping the clouds apart but I took it as a welcoming of sorts from the storm gods above. They were calling out to me, happy to once again have the opportunity to soak me to the bone. And while my ride wasn’t quite long enough for them to achieve that goal completely, they still did a masterful job with the time I allotted them.

Arriving back at the homestead, I tucked the bike into the garage and freed myself from the wet clothing. Ahhh, such a good feeling to be parking the bike again, instead of the Jeep. All was good in the world again.

And then with this morning’s ride, the return to serenity only deepened. The roadway offered me many gifts this morning; slow gentle curves on which to glide back and forth upon, long straightaways that allowed me to throttle up and pass folks going too slowly, and plenty of potholes for me to exaggeratedly swerve around at the last minute. Folks behind me must have thought I was off my rocker, but indeed; I was fully ON my rocker. The mind was clear and the body; responsive. Casual squeezes of the clutch, combined with determined taps of the boot, yielded the satisfaction of settling further into the seat as the bike pressed me onward.

I'm Baaaack in the Saddle, Again!!!

Got the word from the ortho doc this morning; the shoulder has excellent stability and things are progressing well. I can officially return to riding. YEAH, MAN!!! GOIN' RIDIN'!!!

There once was a guy not from Nantucket,
Who, for weeks now, had had to truck it.
But then the doc smiled wide,
and said "Now you can ride!"
** (Censored) **

The only other word I can think of to rhyme this verse out is a bad word, and I like to try and keep things clean, so you'll just have to finish it yourself...

Because I'm goin' ridin'!!!

Kiboshed!

My first PT session has come and gone. I didn't do much; just answered a bunch of questions, then had my arm moved in different directions to establish my current range of motion. All was going well...until I opened my mouth and asked if it was ok to be riding. And that's when the big kibosh hammer came smashing down; I'm officially banned from riding until my next appointment with the ortho doc...that's not for another two weeks.

Cue the depressing music...

Shhhhh....

Don't tell anyone but I rode the bike in today. I haven't gotten the 'ok' from my ortho doc yet, but come on; it's going to be 86 degrees today!!! How could I not take it!?!? Needless to say it felt frikkin' fantastical (right up until I had to park it and come inside my work). But you gotta understand; the itch has been killing me! And hell, Patty's been riding her bike for weeks now and I can't have her rolling up too many miles ahead of me.

I've got my first physical therapy session today. Nice! Let's get this healing process moving. There's bike trips coming in the near future and I need all my parts to be in top working order!

But if they tell me I shouldn't be riding yet, well that might be a bit of a problem...

Greg goes undercover...

I was cleaning my guns this morning when I happened to glance out the window, only to see a dark figure come blasting into my driveway atop a blacked out cop bike!! Damn, hide the stash! Hide the plants! Hide the cash! Hide the....wait a minute...that's not a cop, that's Greg! And then I remembered...
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Cut to the past; towards the end of last year, a local township bailed out on a bike they'd ordered from the factory. The reason for the default had something to do with the all-to-familiar 'budgetary woes' theme, but the end result was that a mint, reconverted police-issue bike was sitting on the dealership floor. Greg wound up benefitting from that township's shortcomings, but it was a bittersweet victory, as barely had the ink dried on the contract before the bike was being wheeled away to hibernate for the winter months.
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Cut to the present; today was the day Greg was to pick up his bike. The poor bastard must have used up all his luck in landing the bike in the first place, for the weather today was not cooperating. Last Saturday? The temps were 75 degrees. Today? Ha, we'll be lucky if they get out of the 20's. That wasn't about to deter him, though. Bundled up and ready, he'd retrieved said bike from its deep slumber. Luckily, my house fell along the path of his travels so I was able to get a chance to check this beauty out.
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Which brings us to...pictures!
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Look at that sexy beast. (The bike isn't too shabby, either.)
All this talk about cops kinda takes me back... (Not to mention that this angle makes the pic look kinda like a mug shot.)

"Face forwards, look into the camera..."

"Turn to the left, look straight ahead..."

Ok, enough screwing around. Let's get back to the bike. It's an '09 Police Issue Electra Glide, complete with the 103" motor. (Drool) The dealership had to remove all the 'official' bells and whistles before releasing it to the public. But it seems like such a shame to have all that 'official' wiring in there and not have it doing anything. (Not to say we didn't discuss a couple of aftermarket ideas or anything...)

This bike is frikkin' sweet. One thing I've always loved about these bikes is the saddle packs. I love the hockey-puck style of latching mechanism, as well as the locks being on the back sides of the bags. I like this setup much better than what comes on the regular tourers.

And let's not forget the impressive declaration on the air filter housing...

Now once he gets the siren installed...er...ha ha ha, I kid, I kid. Let's move along, shall we?

The road was calling and Greg was soon off. There's an awful lot of zero's on that odometer of his and I know he's anxious to start erasing them.

Congrats, Man!

Quick Beer Review

It's Friday night. I'm thirsty. There's a sharp looking pint-bottle of dark beer sitting on the counter. I'd been saving it for a *special* occasion. Did I mention I was thirsty? That seemed special enough...
"World Classic Schwarz". The tall brown bottle implied that dark treasures lay within. The porcelain cap assured me this was a higher-shelf item. The fancy label promised an "Original Black" brewed according to the German Purity Law of 1516 (I'm no lawyer, but that sounds like a pretty sweet law). Anyway; suffice to say that I was pretty excited to kick this thing back.
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Just look at this porcelain cap - any beer that has something as cool as this for a cap, has to be good!

When I broke the seal (on the bottle, not on my kidneys), there was a resounding POP! and I feared I was about to lose some of this fantastic liquid in a bubbly fountain, but thankfully, no such travesty transpired.
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A tip of the bottle, a lean of the glass, and the liquid was flowing...all too quickly and thinly, as it turned out. And such was the first sign that things were not as they'd been promised...
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The head...what head? It looks like I poured a glass of root beer. There's no consistency to the head. Bleah, this isn't shaping up well at all...

All too quickly, the head was gone, leaving me with a flat looking glass of brown liquid. Damn.
Never one to let life's disappointments hold me back, I made the best of things and savored the flavors and body as best I could. But it was a stretch to do so, as I quickly found there was nothing terribly special about this beer after all. (Of course I pounded the rest. I may not have been a huge fan of it, but c'mon, it's still beer!)

Hopefully the next beer that gets reviewed will be better...

Playing Doctor

I had my first follow-up appt with the Orthopedic Surgeon this past Thursday and he brought me up to speed on how things had gone. He said that when he got inside my shoulder, he found things to be in worse shape than the MRI’s and X-Rays had indicated. But with a combination of sutures and anchors (drilled into the bone – sweet!), he said everything came together nicely and his prognosis is good.

But the best part of the visit was that he printed out his notes from the surgery for me. Notes from the surgery! Check this sh*t out!...

(And of course I had to add my own little comments from time to time - I colored them in red so you don't think the doc is talking to himself in his notes.)

DATE OF SURGERY: 3/9/2010
DIAGNOSIS: Biceps labral tear, anterior inferior instability, attenuated anterior inferior capsule.
PROCEDURE: Anterior inferior capsuloraphy and biceps labral repair

Following satisfactory induction of general anesthesia, the left shoulder was prepped (that means they shaved the incision spots – too bad they didn’t shave where the bandages were going to be!) and draped in standard fashion for arthroscopy. Through a posterior portal (“portal”? Call it what it is; a hole! You punched a hole into my shoulder so that you could peep in at what was going on!), the arthroscope was introduced. (“Introduced”? What do you mean, “introduced”? You mean it went something like this? “Hello ligaments and shoulder bone, I’d like you to meet Arthur. Arthur Scope.”)

Two anterior portals (there’s that word again. They’re holes!) were created for instrumentation. Through the posterior portal (hole!), the pathologic changes were documented with photography (it’s true, I have the pics at home. Maybe I’ll get a nice frame and mount them over the fireplace).

A 4.0 resector was used to debride the disrupted biceps labrum and to visualize the exposed subchondral bone along the anterior rim of the glenoid from the 11:00 to the 1:00 position. (Now before we continue, I’d like to ask if any of you know what a ‘resector’ is? No? I didn’t either, so I looked it up. And I wish I hadn’t. This thing is basically a saw/grinder combination that fits inside a tiny little tube. They shove it up against anything that’s torn and needs cleaning up, and then they turn it on. And voila! It shreds the loose tissue and sucks it out at the same time. And you’re doing all this inside my shoulder?? I dug up a couple of clips on You Tube that showed this thing in action. Freaky stuff!)

This chronically attenuated (torn!) and detached labrum was freshened (“freshened?” You mean ‘cleaned up by chewing all the loose stuff out’!) broadly with the resector until subchondral bone was microscopically bleeding (“bleeding”? What do you mean “bleeding”? You ground at my bone until it bled??) The anterior rim of the glenoid to the 6:00 position was vigorously debrided (scraped!) while using a liberator to free the attenuated (torn!) labrum. With the capsule and labrum broadly released, the bone and chondral margin were broadly freshened (ground clean!) to stimulate biologic vascularization (again with the bleeding?!?).

With the capsular complex prepared, strategically placed orthocord sutures were used to secure the anterior capsule and attenuated labrum to the 5:30, 4:00 and 2:00 position along the glenoid. (Cool - let's have more of the "fixing things" stuff, and less of the "grinding and bleeding" business.)

The strategically placed push-lock anchors were then used, securing and supporting the capsule to the rim of the glenoid. (Excellent – more repair work!) This was done from the anterior to superior position while maintaining 30 degrees of external rotation at 30 degrees of abduction (“Roger, Roger, What’s our vector, Victor?”). Individually placed anchors and individually tensioned orthocord sutures along the way. With the anterior capsule secure, the most superior suture was used securing the anterior labrum just posterior to the biceps tendon insertion to the labrum. A simple orthocord suture was placed (simple? Nothing about this whole process sounds very simple so far…) corresponding to this position.

A 2.9 push lock anchor was used via predrilling and then inserting the push lock anchor under proper tension to reduce and stabilize the biceps labrum from anterior to posterior. External rotation was maintained throughout and tested at 30 degrees of rotation at 30 degrees of abduction as described above. Copious lavage and irrigation was used throughout. (I know that ‘lavage’ means rinsing, but what’s this about irrigation? You’re planting crops inside my shoulder now?).

An 18-guage needle was inserted and 30 cc of .12% marcain with epinephrine and 4mg of Morphine were instilled (18-guage? That’s not very big. I know for a fact the holes you punched into my shoulder could handle a much bigger needle. And since we’re talking about administering MORPHINE, we should have gone with a bigger needle. Just my opinion.).

The debris (debris??) was vigorously debrided throughout the course freshening the chondral margins and the attenuated labral capsular complex until the joint surfaces and joint cavity were free of debris (What do you mean; “debris”?) along the way.

Bleeders (“We’ve got a bleeder!!!”) were carefully cauterized along the way, as well. The incisions were approximated with 4-0 monocryl and a dry sterile compressive bandage applied (yeah; applied with liberal amounts of super glue).

The patient tolerated the procedure well and left the operating room in satisfactory and stable condition. (I tolerated it well? I was unconscious! It’s hard to complain when you’re out cold. Although…I was curious why my pants were around my ankles when I woke up…).

And there you have it. I still need to wear the sling for another week and a half, and there’s no physical therapy yet - which means no riding yet. I don’t know when I’ll get the green light to hop back onto the bike, but my next ortho appt isn’t for another 5 weeks.

Not sure I can wait that long to put some handlebars into my lap…