Cycling

Kyle explained it to me.

As I lay face up, my back pressing against the pavement, waiting for the ambulance to come, my left arm began to curl into itself, bending at the place where the bones were snapped. In a few minutes, the bend came to 90 degrees, as if I had a second elbow.

I’d felt the curled, bleeding mass cradled against my ribs as I crawled on to the gurney.

Since then, pain has stayed about the same, sometimes more intense, sometimes dulled by drugs, but always feeling like a tightening, a pulling inward, a curling up.

Life is suffering. On the pavement, in the ambulance, and in the ER, I pondered my lesson. In the evening, after the surgery, I sat in my room—alone, in the dark, with a high-floor moonlit view of downtown Oakland.

The pain has been a constant companion, and I’ve accepted the pain, with help from some powerful opioids. After a day or two, the shock and the initial arsenal of drugs I’d received—Fentanyl, morphine, ketamine—wore off. I contacted the surgeon.

The fixing itself was, and is, a miracle. In the hospital, I was pleased by the surgeon’s bored demeanor. This is what you want in such situations, right? His team looked like they’d been bolting bones back together all damned day, and countless days before that. Somehow they sliced my arm open, moving aside arteries and nerves to dig down to the bones, then aligned the titanium plates on each, got enough screws in, and closed the arm up against invading bacteria.

Uncurled.

Which is, I think, part of the discomfiting feeling that goes along with the pain. I still have that wanting to curl up, to protect, but the arm is fixed straight, first by plates and now by a plaster cast, too. And it hangs off my shoulder like an alien. My fingers, emerging from the end of the cast, are painful and barely usable reminders of what was.

Life is suffering. I could accept the pain. I told the surgeon I couldn’t take the hydrocodone. I got him to upgrade so I could renew my expired stash of oxycodone, but after a few days, I was damned if I’d take that either. Both are really crappy drugs; both will, after a brief period of use, put me in state where I don’t know who I am or what I’m doing. I don’t know who else they affect that way.

The hydromorphone is much better, but 19 days now since the injury, I split my time between the pain—while working and caregiving—and drifting on the morphine cloud. I’m usually damned ready for a pill by 5 pm, if I haven’t already had one by then.

Life is suffering. I think the hundreds of hours I’ve spent meditating over the past few years has helped me cope with the pain and to function despite the pain and disability.

I don’t think I’ve learned my lesson, yet, though. I’ve spent some hours contemplating these new feelings of advancing age and frailty. I’ve let go some self-expectations. I’ve gently mocked myself for trying to do things I shouldn’t try to do. I’ve confronted myself for not taking time for needed self-care, and recognized that habit is part of holding on to past trauma. And I’ve also, just yesterday, dealt with my kid being defiant and melting down while simultaneously attending a Zoom meeting on one screen and writing a letter on deadline on the other. With my throbbing left arm elevated above my shoulder.

Today I finished some morning business and put on my rain gear before heading out the door on a walk, up through the City’s Hillside Natural Area, climbing above the cliff behind the old quarry, then through the residential neighborhood that straddles Arlington Avenue, where I admired the big mid-century houses, then down to Wildcat Creek, the rain beating down and turning the road into a slippery muddy morass, with my cast in a sling and my hand tucked into the pocket of the rain parka, emerging by Jewel Lake and the Little Farm, and talking with the client on my phone as I descended through Kensington and the Sunset View Cemetery.

I walked back in the door in time to strip off my wet gear and put on a blue button-down before joining a meeting with the managers of some of our local cities and towns.

An hour later, a bit chilled and shivering, I crawled into bed, watching the rain come down outside the window and feeling my forearm, up on pillows, shrink until it was no longer pressing tight against the cast. I felt at peace as drifted off to sleep in the waning afternoon light.

Now two weeks into recovery, I am, for the first time, attempting to keyboard and feeling ready to tell the story.

I’d estimate that, since taking up road biking in 2008, I’ve rolled at least 40,000 miles. The only mishaps have been encounters with drivers who chose to pull across the double yellow line directly into my path, suddenly and without warning–one in 2009 and another in 2012. Otherwise, despite the obvious hazards of the sport, I’ve been unscathed.

No longer.

What’s more, I am a far-from-cautious cyclist. On the urban arterials, I’ll challenge cars for right of way. On winding mountain roads, I’ll enjoy the thrill of a fast descent.

However, on February 27th, I was doing just what any kid or adult might do when taking a spin around the neighborhood–just riding along at an easy pace in the company of friends. In other words, this could’ve happened to anyone on a bike.

I do have a woulda coulda shoulda about it, though. The trauma probably affects my memory, but I do seem to remember thinking, oh, railroad tracks, they look like a hazard, angled 45 degrees across the roadway like that, but they’re not really, because you can just roll right across…

Except this time I didn’t. I distinctly recall the unexpected tug on the handlebars, and looking down at my front tire wedged alongside the iron rail, and heading at terrifying speed for the pavement.

And the sharp crack of the bones in my forearm breaking.

I didn’t hit my head or lose consciousness or anything. I think I was mentally calling for 911 before my body came fully to rest.

Because I wanted everything to be as calm and routine as possible. I wanted to be in that ambulance on the way to the hospital with no damned chaos or excitement and delay before I got there.

For the most part, I got what I wanted. Randy and Kyle were shocked and asking me questions, but a passerby said he’d already made the call. Then, somewhere behind my head, on the other side of the tracks, some lady angel had stopped, was making calls, bringing me a mask–mine was still in my jersey pocket–offering to come back with a truck to pick up my bike, making sure BNSF was told to stop the trains. I focused on breathing–in, then out– and moaning just as much as I needed to, and no more.

I heard the sweet sound of a siren in the distance. They were coming for me.

Yeah, I knew my name, and DOB, and the year. I was amused that they didn’t ask me the standard question of who’s the President. Too loaded, I guess.

The arm was kind of a problem. There was no way to get a splint on it, bent as it was. Eventually the EMTs just wrapped it loosely in gauze. I stopped them from trying to lift me. I could roll onto my good side while I cradled the arm against my body, and then I could walk on my knees to where I could swing my butt on to the gurney. From there it was a cinch for them to load the crumpled mess through the bay doors.

Inside, the paramedic was unwrapping supplies and hooking me up to the monitors. I was asking for the pain meds. It wasn’t long before she had a 20 gauge IV in my arm and 100 mcg of Fentanyl on its way.

It wasn’t near enough, but we got to Kaiser’s Oakland ER anyway.

From there, the care was attentive, professional, reassuring. They gave me a solid IV dose of ketamine while they put the arm back straight and plenty morphine as I whiled away the afternoon hours. And then it was time for surgery.

2015 was a whopping good year for me. Before I start setting goals or making resolutions for 2016, I’m going to focus on some things that worked out well in the past year.

The best thing I did all year was to participate in David Weinberg’s 10-week course, “Advancing in Stillness,” which advanced my mindfulness practice and helped me get focused on living my values. The prerequisite 8-week mindfulness course—which I completed in 2014—was useful in its own right. The 10-week graduate course, which ran from January to April, marked a turning point in my personal development. In particular, I made progress accepting how PTSD affects me, and how it has affected me throughout my life.

Most importantly, after finishing the course, I continued to meditate regularly for the rest of the year. I use Insight Timer, and after a free update came in May, the app started tracking my sessions. So I know I meditated on 35% of the days since May. My routine usually includes some yoga poses before I settle into my zafu.

I continued my weekly psychotherapy sessions—something I have done for eight years now. At times during 2015 I felt it might be time to cut back or even stop, because in general I’m happier than I’ve ever been. However, I continued and plan to continue this work as long as it is expanding the horizons of my emotional experience. It contributes a lot to my effectiveness as a parent and partner.

Throughout the year, I continued to bicycle regularly. I participated in roughly half the Saturday rides with the Oakland Yellowjackets. When I could, I went out for a solo ride mid-week as well. On the Yellowjackets rides, I didn’t hold back taking the lead of our Advanced Intermediate group. I found that I could be comfortable doing that, and I found that I could measure my success in the strength of the group’s camaraderie and by the glow in the faces of my fellow riders. And I could accept, with only mild frustration, the times when the group didn’t hold together as well as I’d like.

I finished one century ride in May. I trained for another in October, but a sudden bout of flu caused me to abandon that ride at the last minute. Most of the year, I felt fine and strong, if a bit more creaky than in 2014. Best of all, I remember feeling, on a few of those Saturday rides, that I was having about the best experience anybody ever had, rolling through the impossibly scenic Bay Area in the company of friends.

I got some inspiration from reading Joel Friel’s book, Fast After 50, in particular the advice about continuing to train near your cardiovascular limits as you age.

Another big help: Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert), in his somewhat odd and throw-away collection of thoughts titled How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, has some good advice on changing eating habits. I followed that advice—principally about refocusing your cravings to protein and vegetables, and staying away from carbs—and quickly lost about half of the extra 10-15 pounds I’ve been carrying around for a few years now.

As a parent, I accompanied Zoe into the “big kid” stage, with big emotions and suddenly, a lot of differentiation. She’s managing a big portfolio—including first-grade expectations, navigating the elementary school social landscape, and shuttling between Melanie’s household and mine. Looking back on the year, my recollection of her occasional tantrum is muted, as is my frustration with her not-so-occasional resistance to following my direction. Brighter, and sharper, are my memories of a lot of playful roughhousing, the pleasures of beginning to read together, and sharing the fun of learning new games and new skills. I drew a lot of insights from these books: Siegel and Bryson, No-Drama Discipline, and Ames and Ilg, Your Six Year Old: Loving and Defiant.

I worked a lot this year, billing over 1,600 hours, in addition to time administering the business and the occasional gig done for promotion or pro bono.

I liked almost all of it. My working environment is beautiful and suits me well. My clients are good people; I’ve known some of them for decades, others for a few years; we share values and for the most part common perspectives on environmental protection, bureaucracy, and other aspects of the work we do. My interactions with them are a real pleasure.

I got a lot of satisfaction from presenting my accumulated knowledge to new audiences and from preparing documents and tools that are used by many people in their work. This year, I often left meetings and presentations exhausted but also feeling validated and appreciated.

During the course of the year I realized I was enjoying planning and designing projects a lot more than I enjoyed dealing with policy and regulations. However, I’m not ready to give up the higher-level side of my work, as I am way invested in advancing in my ideas about how urban runoff should be managed, and I like seeing those ideas take hold (and less worthy ideas held at bay), when it comes to mandates and funding.

Toward the end of the year I invested in renewing my technology—moving my files to the cloud and upgrading my software to subscriptions. It’s taken a lot of effort to reorganize and reconfigure things, but I now can access email, calendar, contacts, and files—and do various levels of editing—on three devices: a Windows 10 desktop (with two monitors), an iPhone 6s+, and a iPad Pro. To my mind, this is another aspect of having a work environment that is, in fact, very pleasurable to be in.

I think that as time passes and I look back on this year from a more distant perspective, what I will remember most vividly—what I hope to remember most vividly—will be the vacations and trips, short and long. There were a lot of them:

•  Our family started the year where I am as I write this: In Monterey, tide pooling on New Years Day at Point Lobos State Reserve.
•  Late January: The first of four seasonal family trips to Yosemite, sightseeing in the valley and stopping near Crane Flat to find a patch of snow—rare in the drought winter of 2014-2015..
•  February: Four nights backcountry truck-camping in Death Valley National Park with Zoe, including a memorable day wandering down upper Monarch Canyon.
•  April: Spring Break exploring Mexico City, with day trips to Teotihuacan and Xochimilco.
•  Memorial Day: Another family trip to Yosemite, leaving the crowds behind to bicycle around the Valley.
•  June: two nights family birthday backpacking to Coast Camp, in Point Reyes National Seashore, including tide pooling at Sculptured Beach. Another day playing in Stinson Beach.
•  July: an 8-day family road trip through Humboldt County. Bicycling on the Avenue of the Giants. Whitewater kayaking (in IKs) and rapid-surfing on the Trinity River.
•  August: I joined my old friend Stephen Zunes for a 4-day backpacking trip through the Hoover Wilderness and Yosemite Wilderness.
•  September: A weekend at Camp Tawonga, and then another family trip to Yosemite, this time to Tuolumne Meadows, on the last day before the high country closed for the season.
•  December: Zoe and I visited by dad Ted and his wife Laura in Albuquerque, and awoke to a lovely snowfall.
•  Also in December, our fourth trip to Yosemite, skating at Curry Village and stopping on the way out to sled in fresh, abundant snow near Crane Flat.
•  And back to Monterey for New Years Eve. This is the fourth year we’ve done that, both times including kayaking in nearby Elkhorn Slough.

Politically, I found the year frustrating, painful, and more than a bit enlightening. Donald Trump is astonishing in his crudeness and directness, but he is characteristically American, and his popularity shouldn’t be surprising to anyone. Bernie Sanders’ 15 minutes of fame, on the other hand, is more troublesome to me. He is a leftist, and I have been a leftist all my life, and what is wrong with his campaign is—I’m thinking—what is wrong with the left, and has been wrong with the left. I think Barack Obama has been a great President and I think Hillary Clinton will be an even better President (I’m just finishing reading Hard Choices, and though I’m a critic of US foreign policy, and don’t accept many of her assumptions and views that are consistent with that policy, I think she is thoughtful, and capable.) I think that in a few more cycles liberal Democrats will control all three branches of the Federal government, which is cause for hope.

I found some time to improve my mind through reading, and I advanced my perspectives on science and society: Ta Nahesi Coates’ Between the World and Me, and the strange and wonderful The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time (Ungar and Smolin), which I am still working on, have been especially worth the time invested.

So those are my reflections on the outgoing year. Next up: My view ahead.

I’m still recovering, and have a ways to go.

It all started Friday, when some kid on a BMX came tearing across the mulched median that separates the newly renovated Ohlone Greenway path from a neighboring apartment building parking lot. I didn’t see him until way too late. I remember grabbing for the brake and probably slowed just a little before the front wheel of my bicycle clipped the rear wheel of his, and over the handlebars I went.

I picked myself up off the pavement, and tersely explained my feelings regarding the relative wisdom of his recent actions. &#8220I think that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen someone do&#8221, I said, which in retrospect is certainly an exaggeration. However, I didn’t feel that way at the time.

He rode off, and I pursued, making sure I got some video of our eventual conversation, neither of which (conversation or video) was to any purpose.

What pissed me off most was, I was planning to meet friends for a very long bike ride the next day. I slept poorly, waking again and again to plan and re-plan the coming day. Spend the day nursing my injuries? Go on a shorter ride? Wait until the afternoon to see how I felt?

For some reason (well, the usual reason) I was up sometime before 7. I felt OK. I’d already laid out all my gear and stuff I needed to take with me, and so only 20 minutes later I’d had some breakfast and was rolling off to BART.

It was a great day. Nine hours, 95 miles, 8,000 feet of climbing, across the Golden Gate Bridge, up and across Mt. Tamalpais, out the Fairfax-Bolinas Road to Fairfax, then to Nicasio, Point Reyes Station, Stinson Beach, back to Sausalito and across the bridge again. I got the agony on the climb up from Stinson, but a few minutes rest brought my legs back. I could feel my wrenched back and neck the whole day, and the bumps on the descents made my head ring, but I didn’t care. At about mile 90, on the way back through the Marina, I saw a fellow cyclist get hit by a cab. Right in front of me. He survived, probably with nothing broken, but it was an ugly thing to see.

The next morning I went to turn on my laptop. It had been in my satchel Friday night, of course, and when it booted up I saw it must have been underneath me when I landed. Maybe that’s why I barely had any bruises. One more laptop with a damaged screen (I’ve got a small pile of them) and the last couple files I was working on Friday&#8230 recoverable, but only after I figured out to use an HDMI cable to connect the broken laptop to the TV.

And I wasn’t going to miss some Sunday time with Zoe and Melanie, on bikes and Skuut out on the Bay Trail in Richmond.

So the week starts with a new laptop and all the connectivity and upgrade problems that come with a new version of Windows and MS Office.

And now I’m leaving for Buellton, where I’ve got a meeting in the morning.

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve ridden the single-speed to work a few times, and around town on errands.

I can now put Zoe in a rear-rack-mounted seat on the old hybrid&#8212much to her delight&#8212and make it at least as far as the preschool.

However, today, almost 8 weeks after the crash, was the first time I’ve put on my cycling shoes and taken the road bike around the hills.

It’s a different experience. In addition to the speed and agility of the bike, and the feeling of the road flying by under the skinny tires, there’s the workout: the sustained elevation in heart rate and breathing, the leg and arm muscles working close to their peak, the abdomen and back providing the balance and counterpoint.

Today it felt weird, and wrong. I was fatigued, then strong, then queasy.

Usually, climbing tires out the quadriceps and gluteus muscles. Today, my knees and calves and ankles and toes felt painfully out of alignment. Usually, a sustained climb brings a general weakness as blood sugar dwindles. Today, with each turn of the crank, the out-of-line, out-of-sync feeling in my lower legs, and the knocks and vibrations of the road, brought back the spacey out-of-it feeling I associate with the brain injury. Usually, an hour or two later I feel pleasantly tired and relaxed. Tonight, I feel a bit raw and needing quiet.

In the first days after the accident, I felt bruised; I could still limp around. I spent much of the weekend with Zoe, and took her to a playground on Saturday. I went to the office in the mornings, and even went back in the late evenings to fulfill some overdue promises. I gave a talk up in Napa on Tuesday, and delivered a presentation in Martinez on Wednesday.

I felt unbelievably tired and wanted, above all else, to lie alone in a quiet room.

Driving back from Napa Tuesday, I had trouble finding my way home. I kept missing the exits, backtracking, choosing a different route–oh, I’ll just go this way instead–and then missing the next exit, again. Hmmm. Something was definitely wrong.

On Wednesday night, the agony in my legs set in. I upped the dose of Vicodin to the maximum, but the pain was still excruciating. The only relief was to lie perfectly still with my legs slightly elevated.

Thursday, my regular Kaiser doc checked out my legs and changed my prescription to Percocet.

This morning, the pain is resolving a bit, and I can differentiate what’s OK from what’s damaged (other than inside my skull): My left knee took a huge whack on the left side, loosening the patella and overstretching the MCL on the opposite side. My left calf muscle is separated a bit. My left ankle is sprained. The Achilles tendon is strained. My shin and the top of the foot are bruised. The right side faired a little better–sprained ankle, mostly, and considerable bruising on the shins. And a pulled calf muscle on that side as well.

So that’s what’s hurting worst. I also have some upper spine and neck pain, for which I got some chiro adjustments yesterday. Today I’m going back and hoping she’ll work on my shoulders.

I took a closer look at the photos of the car that I took from the gurney. it looks like there was significant damage to the front left fender. The bike came back from the shop OK–wheels knocked slightly out of true, and the handlebar tape scuffed, but with an intact frame–so I’ve got to guess that the impact from my body is what damaged the car. Ouch.