• Tomorrow is Saturday!

    From Joy Beeson@21:1/5 to All on Fri Aug 28 20:43:44 2020
    I think I've done all I can to get ready to go to the fairgrounds
    farmers' market tomorrow.

    I pumped up my tires -- the back tire was down to twenty pounds!

    I put two packages of egg cartons I plan to give to one of the
    vendors, my emergency-food packet, a little bag containing my sun
    visor etc., a bag of crumpled bags to cushion my purchases, and a can
    of potted meat into the un-insulated pannier.

    The insulated pannier has a fresh pad of newspaper on the bottom and
    is ready to recieve the bottle and four sandwich bags of ice cubes I
    stashed in the freezing compartment, one of the three bottles of water
    in the fridge, the bottle of switchel concentrate, the bottle of tea,
    the lettuce sandwich next to the bottles, and the single-serve tub of
    salad dressing balanced on the sandwich.

    I still carry a sun visor even though I dare not enter a glaring-lit
    store, but I'm getting accustomed to the idea that I can't pick up
    water along the way -- hence four bags of ice; ice doesn't leak, but
    it melts quickly when I put it into a bottle half full of warm water,
    and the bag flattens to nothing when empty. I had water left over
    last time, even though I used it for washing my hands and the produce
    that I ate.

    It's hardly any distance to the fairground -- I can see part of it
    from my back patio -- so I'm going to eat my lunch at the end of the
    Chinworth Bridge Trail and come back by way of Parks-Schram and
    Crystal Lake Road. I haven't been on either road in ages and the
    first part of Parks-Schram runs along the Tippy.


    --
    Joy Beeson
    joy beeson at centurylink dot net
    http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Joy Beeson@21:1/5 to All on Sat Aug 29 09:38:23 2020
    I thought of something as I was drifting off to sleep and thought "I
    don't need to get up to take care of that; I'll remember it when I'm
    putting my sandwich into my pannier tomorrow."

    I didn't.

    --
    Joy Beeson
    joy beeson at centurylink dot net
    http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Joy Beeson@21:1/5 to jbeeson@invalid.net.invalid on Sun Aug 30 00:31:08 2020
    On Sat, 29 Aug 2020 09:38:23 -0400, Joy Beeson
    <jbeeson@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:

    I thought of something as I was drifting off to sleep and thought "I
    don't need to get up to take care of that; I'll remember it when I'm
    putting my sandwich into my pannier tomorrow."

    I didn't.

    I did remember when I got to the fairgrounds: boxes to put my
    tomatoes in so I could pile stuff on top of them.

    But tomatoes and peppers were all there was, so the cushion of
    crumpled grocery bags was sufficient -- even when I ran into a post on
    the recreationway and fell off my bike. (I had also put the tomatoes
    into grocery bags, and pulled the handles of the bags through the
    wires before tying them elsewhere. And I bought only bite-size
    tomatoes.)

    I had met only one person on the recreationway, and that a mile back,
    so I was lollygagging along thinking about everything except what I
    was doing when I came to a "no motor vehicles execept ambulances" gate
    and steered without thinking onto the narrow path around it.

    The gates are put on wide spots, so that there is pavement left over
    when they put in a gate wide enough to let a motor vehicle in.

    Then I noticed that the edge of the pavement was a sheer drop-off into
    a stone-filled ditch and my hands were nowhere near the brakes. I instinctively twitched left and caught the top of the gatepost right
    in the sternum.

    The middle and ring fingers of my left hand were sore. The middle
    finger stopped hurting on the way home; the ring finger got swollen.
    It's quite sore, but doesn't mind typing much.

    It did object when I scratched my head just now.

    My chest is sore, but I haven't developed a mark yet.

    Left off writing at 2:41/14:41.

    ----

    18:55

    I thought all the sternum did was hold the ribs in place, but it would
    appear that a lot of muscles are anchored to it.

    According to Wikepidia, just one, the pectoralis major, but it has a
    lot of attachment points.

    When I was packing my lunch, I forgot that I'd saved an eight-ounce
    disposable bottle to carry milk in. It's just as well; I had
    altogether too many bottles in my pannier as it was. I didn't touch
    either of the water bottles in the pannier, and consumed only one and
    a half of the two in the cages -- which included a significant amount
    used for washing hands and rinsing tomotoes. On the other hand, I
    drank all of the pint of tea, and put a healthy squirt of switchel
    concentrate into one of my water bottles. I was back in Warsaw before
    I felt the need of switchel, presumably because there were starch and electrolytes in my breakfast and lunch.

    The potted meat was rather messy on my sandwich.

    I had rather a lot of pickle slices on my sandwich. I wonder whether
    any salt remains in PBL pickles after the alum bath.

    Still no mark on my chest. There are blue marks on the finger, but
    they don't encircle it as they would if the bone were damaged.

    -----------
    24:23

    I've heard almost nothing from my sprained rotator cuff today, partly
    because I can't play computer games or do anything else that
    aggravates it while riding a drop-handlebar bike. I did notice it
    when I tried to wave to somebody with my right arm.

    Google said the return trip was eight miles, but I continued west for
    a while before crossing to Crystal Lake Road and turning toward home.

    I left the simulated push-ups out of my sciatica exercises this
    evening.

    --
    Joy Beeson
    joy beeson at centurylink dot net
    http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Frank Krygowski@21:1/5 to Joy Beeson on Sun Aug 30 12:24:56 2020
    On 8/30/2020 12:31 AM, Joy Beeson wrote:
    On Sat, 29 Aug 2020 09:38:23 -0400, Joy Beeson
    <jbeeson@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:

    ... I ran into a post on
    the recreationway and fell off my bike. (I had also put the tomatoes
    into grocery bags, and pulled the handles of the bags through the
    wires before tying them elsewhere. And I bought only bite-size
    tomatoes.)

    I had met only one person on the recreationway, and that a mile back,
    so I was lollygagging along thinking about everything except what I
    was doing when I came to a "no motor vehicles execept ambulances" gate
    and steered without thinking onto the narrow path around it.

    The gates are put on wide spots, so that there is pavement left over
    when they put in a gate wide enough to let a motor vehicle in.

    Then I noticed that the edge of the pavement was a sheer drop-off into
    a stone-filled ditch and my hands were nowhere near the brakes. I instinctively twitched left and caught the top of the gatepost right
    in the sternum.

    The middle and ring fingers of my left hand were sore. The middle
    finger stopped hurting on the way home; the ring finger got swollen.
    It's quite sore, but doesn't mind typing much.

    It did object when I scratched my head just now.

    My chest is sore, but I haven't developed a mark yet.

    Posts or bollards in paths are signs of an ignorant designer. AASHTO
    standards have advised strongly against them for decades, yet they seem
    to be the default choice for excluding motor vehicles.

    One of our club's best riders crashed and was knocked out last year,
    despite falling onto a crushed limestone trail and despite her magic
    hat. She was swerving suddenly to avoid a bollard. I'm very aware of
    them and call out warnings when riding with others.

    You're lucky, Joy. It could have been much worse. https://www.bicycling.com/news/a20033788/paralyzed-cyclist-sues-unmarked-bollard/

    --
    - Frank Krygowski

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Joy Beeson@21:1/5 to frkrygow@sbcglobal.net on Mon Aug 31 17:11:20 2020
    On Sun, 30 Aug 2020 12:24:56 -0400, Frank Krygowski
    <frkrygow@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

    Posts or bollards in paths are signs of an ignorant designer. AASHTO standards have advised strongly against them for decades, yet they seem
    to be the default choice for excluding motor vehicles.

    One of our club's best riders crashed and was knocked out last year,
    despite falling onto a crushed limestone trail and despite her magic
    hat. She was swerving suddenly to avoid a bollard. I'm very aware of
    them and call out warnings when riding with others.

    This was a perfectly-innocent gatepost.

    When going around locked gates, one should be careful.

    The bypass of the gate between Oakwood Cemetary and Beyer Farm Trail
    is a zig-zag, forcing one to get off and walk. (I think; I've never
    used it, and I haven't seen it since early last winter.) But I think
    that it was pedestrians that they had in mind when they installed a
    bypass -- I rarely met another bike when it was safe to ride on Beyer
    Farm Trail, but lots of walkers, particularly nurses on lunch hour and
    flocks of young children on field trips from schools. (I rarely met
    anyone at all in the only spot where it would be possible to get off
    the trail to let him pass at a safe distance.) The zig-zag would be
    to inhibit the import of stone-toppling machinery.


    But when I was in Upstate New York, a truly terrifying bollard was
    common. As if it were not enough that it was short enough that even a
    small child could land on the top of it if he happened to trip or fall
    off his bike near it, it was *hollow*, so that the child would be
    cored.

    And, of course, the wobbly children had to ride between two such
    bollards.

    --
    Joy Beeson
    joy beeson at centurylink dot net
    http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Joy Beeson@21:1/5 to jbeeson@invalid.net.invalid on Tue Sep 1 21:44:21 2020
    31 August 2020

    On Sun, 30 Aug 2020 00:31:08 -0400, Joy Beeson
    <jbeeson@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:

    I left the simulated push-ups out of my sciatica exercises this
    evening.

    Yesterday evening, when I got down on the floor, I noticed that
    pushuplets didn't hurt, so I did them.

    As soon as I rolled over, I realized that that was a mistake, and this
    morning I knew that it was a big FAT mistake. I probably set the
    healing back at least a week, and I had to skimp exercises that don't
    even use the pectoralis major.

    The finger is still swollen and off-color, but when I put E-oil on it
    this afternoon, I was able to move my ring back and forth to get oil
    under it.

    I'm still trying to figure out what happened when I hit the post.

    ----------------

    Tuesday, 1 September 2020

    Today I rode to the teller machine, then to Sweet Corn Charlie, then
    picked up a "pizza burger" to go at Flavor Freeze. Only disaster was unshipping my chain so thoroughly that I had to get off and get my
    fingers dirty -- and I was wearing light-gray knickers. (plus fours)
    Luckily, they are very beat-up knickers that look natural with black
    spots.

    Also found myself behind a semi-trailer that was headed for the back
    of the old Milnot cannery. McKinley Street is *not* wide enough for a
    very large articulated lorry to make a right-angle turn while backing
    up. The driver appeared to have done this before, and waited until he
    could see that I was stopping *way* back before he started to reverse.
    Came pretty close to a three-point turn. Would have been more
    interesting if my pizza burger hadn't been getting cold.

    I wonder how the guy who opened the door on the loading dock knew he
    was there?

    Back to the crash. Afterward, I found myself on my feet embracing the
    post, and the bike was on its side at right angles to the trail, with
    the seat toward me. I don't recall whether or not both feet were on
    the same side of the top tube; I think both feet were close to the
    post and the bike was at a slight distance.

    I think that in grabbing for the post, I must have tried to put my
    left hand through the gate; the injury to my ring finger is very
    similar to the injury to my left pinkie that I incurred when I grabbed
    for something on the printer without giving due attention to the
    location of the rim around the monitor of my TRS-80 MOD II.

    There will never be another daisy-wheel printer as well built as that
    one was; I hated having to send it to the dump.

    The red mark the pressure of my ring created appears to have healed,
    the swelling is less, and the red areas have turned purple. I've been
    rubbing the finger with E-oil.

    Still no visible mark on the breastbone. This was definitely the
    first point of impact. I think that what happened was that I leaned
    to the left when I saw the hazard on the right, then (for a change)
    the rider stopped and the bike didn't.

    I guess that that is all I'll ever know about what happened; I should
    hire someone to follow me around with a video camera. At least there
    was a witness to the crash on Fort Wayne Street, who told me that I'd
    turned my front wheel sharply to the right and steered the bike out
    from under myself. I'd been approaching the stop light a bit more
    slowly than is possible. (Also, I was verging on heat exhaustion.)


    --
    Joy Beeson
    joy beeson at centurylink dot net
    http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Joy Beeson@21:1/5 to All on Sat Sep 5 23:55:59 2020
    Saturday again. I grinned grotesquely while putting a band-aid on my
    chin.

    Hum, that sort of scans and rhymes. I had been annoyed by a bandaid
    popping off when I grinned, and decided to stick it on a grin. It
    worked.

    I'd been planning to get in an extra mile by coming back around the
    south end of the lake, but on Thursday, I read in the paper that the
    Legion was selling chicken today. It isn't as good as their pork
    chops, but it is very, very good, and for ten dollars I got two meals
    for two people, and there is a serving of chicken breast left over.

    Getting to the farmer's market early enough to find some vegetables
    left led to leaving the market about half an hour before the chicken
    was done, so I took a look at Rotary Park, where I'd planned to eat a
    sack lunch before riding around the lake, and might next week.

    There is a water fountain at the park! There hasn't been a place to
    refill my bottles on that side of town since Owen's supermarket went
    broke. The fountain at the City-County Athletic Complex had been
    removed long before because, a maintenance worker told me, there had
    often been a line-up to use it.

    The park looks complete, except that there are no signs up to tell you
    the name of the park and the significance of the huge gears that have
    been put up as a sculpture. They came from a local factory of
    historical significance, and were the first improvement intalled a few
    years ago.

    I was surprised to find a curb all the way around the park, except for
    the wheelchair ramp at the intersection. Not one parking place!

    Hold, I didn't inspect the Center Street side with that thought in
    mind. Might be an entrance for maintenance vehicles on that side.

    The old photos on Google Maps show that the plot really, really needed
    to be made into a park -- or *something*.

    --
    Joy Beeson
    joy beeson at centurylink dot net
    http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Joy Beeson@21:1/5 to jbeeson@invalid.net.invalid on Sat Sep 12 22:56:58 2020
    On Tue, 01 Sep 2020 21:44:21 -0400, Joy Beeson
    <jbeeson@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:

    Still no visible mark on the breastbone.

    I think I'm back to where I was before I did the pushuplets. I am
    skimping or aborting every exercise that causes pain in the chest.

    Found a couple more casualties of the crash.

    Last Saturday, I think it was, my downtube water bottle suddenly
    slumped to the side and caught on my pants.

    I stopped, pushed it back, and managed to tighten the hose clamp with
    my pocket knife well enough to get home. I've got to get around to
    replacing the screwdrivers that I lost with my much-lamented tool kit.

    At home, I fetched a large screwdriver and found that I couldn't
    tighten the hose clamp any more. Most of the clamp was stainless, but
    the screw had rusted, and the crash (I presume) broke off a few
    threads, and it took a while for vibration to loosen the rust holding
    it together.

    The only hose clamp that wasn't way too big was half a millimeter too
    short. I think that it would have fit fine if I'd been able to push
    it in far enough for the screw to get started.

    So on Wednesday or Thursday, I rode my wheelchair bike to the Trail
    House. only to find they were sold out of bottle cages and didn't know
    when they'd be able to buy more. But the mechanic suggested an
    auto-parts store, so on Friday, yesterday, I made a short ride to
    AutoZone and now my bottle cage is firmly attached. I took the cage
    with me intending to install it on the spot, but forgot to take a
    screwdriver.

    It wasn't quite true that dressing took longer than the ride, but
    mainly because I fiddled around opening the package and trying to
    unscrew one of the hose clamps before starting back. Popping off my
    pants and shirt and putting on knickers and jersey doesn't take long,
    but I also have to scrub my feet before putting on shoes, comb and
    braid my hair, wash my face and put on bandaids and sunscreen, then
    I've got to verify that I've got all the stuff that belongs in my
    pockets, fill my water bottles -- one bottle in this case, and check
    my tires and panniers.

    I wore the bandaids the rest of the day, since they were neither loose
    nor sweat-soaked, and it was a great convenience when carrying out the
    garbage etc.

    ----------

    Today I wanted to write a note on my map and found my pencil strangely reluctant to emerge from my pencil pocket. Finally I gave up and used
    the pencil in my notebook. (There's another pencil in the coin
    compartment of my wallet; unlike screwdrivers, pencils are
    *essential*.)

    When I got home and inspected it, I found that it wouldn't come out
    because the middle part had been smashed into splinters.

    --
    Joy Beeson
    joy beeson at centurylink dot net
    http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)