My oldest son, Sam, took up residence yesterday at the New York Summer Music Festival at the State University College at Oneonta and, as Pam noted on Facebook, it was like dropping him off at college two years early. (And, for those of you who know Sam, he could easily handle the academics at any university already.)
Of course, as we live in Midtown Manhattan, we don’t own an automobile. So the opportunity of renting a vehicle to drive up and back to Oneonta to drop Sam off at the Festival, a couple hundred kilometers outside of New York City, immediately opened up some possibilities of combining the car trip with a bicycle ride. Pam suggested that I ride my bicycle up into the Catskill Mountains, where she could pick me up after dropping off Sam.
On Saturday morning, I took the 7:47 MetroNorth out of Grand Central, heading up along the Hudson River to Beacon.. about 80 kilometers north of Manhattan. The early Saturday morning trains out of town are officially “bike trains” so my Pinarello got its own padded seat for the 75 minute trip.
Here is the route and data for the first day, broken into two parts since my GPS decided to mysteriously re-boot after about 58 kilometers. This same thing had happened before and I had made the mistake of not saving my data into a separate file and had lost the entire ride. So, Saturday has two parts:
and
Saturday’s ride was relatively un-eventful after leaving Beacon and riding on roads that I had covered dozens of times. However, just as I was about to begin the climb up into Minnewaska State Park, while riding on a wide shoulder, I felt a car coming up right behind me and was suddenly whacked in the lower part of my left side, right where my jersey pockets are above my kidney. It didn’t knock me off my bike but scared me, particularly since the big yellow panel truck swept past me within inches. The truck pulled off to the side of the road about sixty meters past me and three guys got out of the truck, running towards me. I got off my bike and felt my left hip, but nothing seemed broken. Whatever had hit me had impacted right on my mobile phone, which I pulled out to find that it wasn’t broken but there was a nice dent in the battery cover. The three guys were asking me if I was all right and I said that I was and that nothing was broken. They were very apologetic and seemed nice although they had just come inches from killing me. I told them that, just in case, I would like to take down the license plate number and see the driver’s license, since I didn’t know if my injuries might not show up later after the shock wore off.
On examining the passenger side of their truck, I could easily see what had hit me in the back. The side mirror on the passenger side stuck out about half a meter and was one of those mirrors that easily bends back when hit from the front (thankfully for me.) I think that the truck was a rental and the guy driving it simply was unaware of just how wide his vehicle was.. and I got a glancing blow from a bendable mirror. Very, very lucky.
I took the opportunity to give the guys a lecture, having just narrowly missed being hilled by them. I told them that in life there are expensive lessons and there are lessons that don’t cost as much. I asked them to consider this a very lucky and very inexpensive lesson on how important it is to drive safely and to be aware of cyclists and pedestrians. They were sufficiently chagrined, chastened and seemed to appreciate just how lucky we had all been in this incident. They pulled off and I continued my ride up and over the Shawangunk Ridge.
The only thing to show from the accident is this dent in my Droid X.
It was a sweltering day and the high temperatures and big hills turned the day into a long slough, particularly since the end of the day included a long climb and the temperatures were above thirty degrees.
The picture above is the view looking north from Minnewaska State Park towards the Catskill Mountains.
I really enjoyed my stay at the Catskill Seasons Inn and will certainly try and stay here again if I get up in the region. The owner, Chago, is a Chilean New Yorker, who recently moved from Astoria, Queens where he was a contractor for years. They served Keegan’s Mother’s Milk, my favorite stout, on tap (and I managed to rehydrate and replace some calories with a few pints) and the food was really good. I had a iceberg lettuce wedge salad with blue cheese dressing and fresh apple slices, followed by a penne with pesto topped by blackened chicken. They also have free wifi and a Verizon booster, providing the only Verizon phone coverage in the region.
I slept early and soundly after more than six hours on the bike… and rose at dawn to head towards Oneonta in order to meet up with Pam, Kai and Sam by noon.
Here is Sunday’s ride:
The morning started chilly and crisp. Here is a shot while crossing the Eastern Branch of the Delaware River:
The entire 100 km of the day was spent on State Highway 28, that runs from Kingston all the way to Oneonta and is either going up or going down but never, never flat. 1385 meters of climbing is one hell of a lot of up and down before lunch.
Pam, Sam and Kai arrived in Oneonta just about ten minutes after I pulled into Stewart’s for some ice cream. We dropped off Sam and spent the rest of the afternoon driving back into New York City, my bike safely tucked into the trunk and the air conditioner on full blast.
The Bon Ton Roulet begins in twelve days and, after this two-day trip through the Catskill Mountains, I think I’m ready.
Nothing better than a good “col” to climb while in Europe!
A “col”, of course, is the European equivalent to a “gap” in Vermont or simply where the road crests going over a mountain pass. And today’s “col”, called the Col de Jaman is a classic Swiss mountain climb, twisty, steep, shaded by thick forests and the long traverses across pastures full of cattle and the sound of their bells.
After arriving in Montreux yesterday (while attending a meeting on Knowledge Management in the United Nations in the village of Glion, perched on the hillside) I rented a big heavy bicycle at the train station. I guess that it is a regular bicycle, but after getting accustomed to riding 8 kg bikes, this 12 kb bike feels like a tank.
This is the Victoria Hotel, where my ride started this morning.
The climb is so steep that a funicular railway runs from Montreux to Glion and up the mountainside.
The route went up on mostly 1 1/2 lane roads averaging between 10%-14% grades with pitches that topped out at 25%. But even though the bike was heavy, it had a triple ring in the front and I could keep the pedals spinning at about 70-80 rpm and move slow but steady progress up, up and up.
This is the Col de Jaman, lurking way up there. The road was switchbacks that snaked up the hillside.
Looking back down on Lac Leman with Geneva way, way off in the distance.
Up at the Col, looking back down the hill.
The road ends at Col de Jaman, but a lot of people come up here to park and walk up into the Alps beyond.
The ride was about two and a half hours, or about two hours going up and a half hour coming down. 778 meters of climbing with no break.. just up, up, up.
As promised, after the big crash in January while descending too fast in Thailand, on today’s ride I focused on going up the hill much faster and down the hill very, very slowly. Not the same adrenaline rush, but I arrived back at the hotel without falling down, which is the simple goal these days.
Living in New York City has its great advantages, however being able to pop out the door for a quick ride in the countryside is not one of them. Between the cars that whiz along down the West Loop Road started at 8:00 and the threat of quota-filling NYPD officers issuing US$270 tickets to cyclists for running red lights at 6:30 am, Central Park is only the best-least awful place to ride a bicycle hard and fast in the City.
But, beyond the training/health reasons that I ride my bicycle, are two fundamentally important parts that cycling plays in my creative and spiritual life: process and flow. The first has to do with the informational and stimulation overload that occurs each day, where some of us are bombarded with input from when the New York Times arrives on my computer screen fully formatted at 5:15 am and the BBC news begins to play on Podcastalarm.com at 5:30 through the day with dozens of emails per hour, Skype calls, Windows Live Messenger chats with my teams around the world, websites that need to be monitored and the constant back-and-forth that leaves little time to just sit back and take in the big picture. So, I like to spend an hour or three on the bicycle, like today, just processing it all. It is on these long rides that I can look at things strategically and plan responses to the patterns of information or actions that I see, like pieces of a mosaic being randomly assembled in my mind’s eye. It is this pause to process it all that helps me to break the pattern of knee-jerk nibbling away at issues and problems and formulate ways to deal with the small stuff at a higher, broader level.
The second benefit of cycling, for me, is that it gives me the time to experience “flow” as defined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyiin his book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. From what I understand from his writing, “flow” are those experiences where time is compressed, you are totally absorbed by the experience of the moment and you lose a sense of self, and by extension, any kind of self-importance. For me, this happens on the bike, particularly when I am overwhelmed by the total need to concentrate on breath, legs, irregular road ahead, managing the pain and those inner voices all speaking at once encouraging a slower pace. As much as the body needs sleep, it also needs a certain amount of “flow” time each day.
But the cycling environment needed to both process and flow cannot be found either while riding through the urban jungle of Mid-Town Manhattan or with the Cat 1-6 riders in Central Park, and for this reason, I like to invest some time getting out of the City and into the countryside. Surprisingly, it is not that far away from NYC by train.
This morning, I left our apartment at 6:15 am, arrived at Grand Central Terminal (about fifteen blocks away) at 6:25 and was pulling out of the station on the MetroNorth Hudson Line at 6:41, bound for Croton Harmon. Less than an hour later, at 7:34 am to be precise, I started my Garmin Edge 800 and pedaled out of the train station and through residential neighborhoods up and up around Croton Reservoir.
My route was just 60 km on mostly rolling backroads, the occasional two-lane highway (usually with broad shoulders, particularly along State Highway 100) up towards the northeast and then turning back to the southwest through thickly forested hills bordering the archipelago of lakes that make up one of the two major watersheds for water in New York City.
The GPS is my cruel mistress, calculating my speed over the last dozen kilometers and projecting my arrival back at the Croton Harmon train station. The non-stop train to 125th St and then Grand Central leaves at 10:34 am, and today the Garmin reported that if I continued to laze my way up these hills, I’d arrive back at the station at 10:37, narrowly missing my fast ride home (although there is a second train that makes more stops leaving at 10:40, but there is a time penalty for taking that train since the ride takes 54, rather than 47 minutes.) As my pace increased and wattage soared, the ETA on the GPS began to drop to 10:30, then 10:25 and today I though that I had just enough time to spare to take a photo:
This picture was taken just about here, looking north
In the end, I arrived at 10:25, with lots of time to spare.
So, this is one of the best early morning training rides accessible from New York City by train. You miss the hassles of navigating Manhattan to the George Washington Bridge and the traffic of 9W up through New Jersey and are immediately out in the country after a short ride up along the Hudson River, which is spectacular most mornings.
So, today was process and flow and back to the office by noon. All mornings should be so glorious and surprisingly productive, since not all work is done sitting in front of a computer or while in an endless stream of online meetings and answering countless emails.
While descending a winding mountain road in Northern Thailand on 25 January 2011 I suffered a fairly serious accident when I miscalculated a hairpin curve and went flying off the road into what I thought was a brushy culvert with my bicycle. Although I didn’t realize the extent of my injuries at the time, I had ripped the little finger on my right hand back towards the wrist, breaking two bones and tearing the webbing between my fingers, as well as cracking two ribs (the 5th and 6th) on my right side, crushing my clavicle/sternum joint and shoulder and injuring my right ear. Now, almost thirteen weeks later, after much rehabilitation and some procrastination, I’m ready to tell the story of the ride that day, the accident, my treatment at the hospital in the town of Pai, my 70-hour journey home to New York, the surgery on my hand, the prolonged and opiate-aided recovery, the detox from the opiates and my current rehabilitation.
While some of the reverse-chronology details can be found on my Facebook feed, I realize now (after recently posting a video of my emergency room visit in Pai) that some Facebook friends somehow missed the updates and there are others who might follow this blog and were surprised to find the narrative of our cycle tour end so abruptly. So, here is the story from it last left off, on the road from Chiang Mai to Mae Hong Song.
Slow Easy First Day: Long Ride Ahead (message not posted on 24 January)
(This posting was written on 23 January but not uploaded since we were in rural Thailand, off the grid and far from a WiFi signal.)
Slingbox is a wonderful thing, except when the Jets lose. All the marvels of modern technology allowed me to sit in the breakfast area of the Thaephae Garden Guest House and watch my TIVO back in New York. However, despite a third and fourth quarter surge, all the coolest technology couldn’t get us a Division Championship. So, as soon as the Jets had lost, we loaded up the van and drove just outside of the heavily congested urban area of Chiang Mai and took off on our ride.
The photo below is of Khun Jame loading the bikes and Markus, at our hotel in Chiang Mail
Our dilemma was that the distance from Chiang Mai to Pai was either one very, very long ride with huge mountains during the last eighty kilometers… or a two-day ride with a relatively easy spin the first day and some intense climbs and a shorter stretch on day two. Given that I had just done a twelve-hour time zone change and only slept about four hours last night due to jet lag, Markus and I decided on taking it easy today.
We rode for just two hours, from just outside of Chiang Mai to just before the huge climbs, leaving them for two big climbs tomorrow morning before it gets too hot and the traffic is still light.
Two hours on the bike averaging 30 km per hour is not necessarily an “easy” day. But, on a seven-day ride, the objective is to get stronger and stronger during the ride and not burn out on day one. The geography and topography was against us as we started and this was the best option. So, when we got to the lunch spot, rather than to decide to push on for the next three hours through some 15%-20% hills, we ordered Heinekens and our guide, Khun Jame, found us a very nice pair of bungalows for about US$20 a night. Our plans, tomorrow, are to fuel up on toast and eggs before departing just after dawn in the early morning calm.
We drank a few beers, had some good Thai food and saved the big push for the days ahead. This is a marathon, not a sprint and our worries were that we would hammer like hell today and feel like crap for the next seven days. My best multi-day events have been where I paced at the beginning and got stronger as the race went on. Let’s hope that strategy works here.
Below, a tasty Pad Thai as fuel for the day ahead.
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January 25 2011: The 80 km of hills from near Mork Fal Waterfall into Pai (almost)
Markus and I had breakfast at dawn, with the intention of getting out on the road early so that we would be climbing during the cooler part of the day. As you can see from the Google Earth image above, the route for the day rose and fell through a series of hills, gradually topping out at about 1400 meters. All together, we climbed about 2000 meters of vertical elevation during the day, which was about what we wanted to do on the second day of a six or seven day ride with some big climbing days to come later in the week (or so we believed at the time.)
The three charts above are a good story of the day.. the accident occurred at about 68 km on the descent into Pai. However, I forgot to turn off my Garmin so the speed and elevation from 68 km until we arrived at the hospital in Pai were not from cycling. You can see from the heart rate graph that right at 68 km it (and I) fell sharply. The Garmin data from the moment of the accident shows that I was doing just about 53 k/hr at the moment of impact. It is not the flying off the road that will hurt you but the stopping and that was a pretty brutal deceleration!
We stopped mid-morning for a bowl of soup at a roadside café, which also had some amazing cellophane-wrapped baskets of fresh strawberries.
During the long climb I turned on a little micro video camera attached to the handlebars and recorded two segments of the ride up through the National Forest. (Unfortunately, although I had my camera recording on the descent and at the moment of my crash, for some reason the file didn’t save properly and the recording of the accident is lost. We tried to recover the file using several tools, but nothing worked… so the video of the crash is lost, maybe for the better.)
The video below was taken about an hour before the crash. It is shaky and with very little narration, but gives a good indication of the terrain and how the curves on the road are laid out in sort of a predictable pattern, which is significant later in the day on the descent.
Just after 1:00 pm that day we met up at the crest of the climb and this is a picture of Khun Jame:
And, Khun Jame took this one of me just before the long descent into Pai and the accident about twenty minutes later.
From this point, the road descended downwards heading into the town of Pai. Most of the descent was a mixture of long easy curves and some switchbacks, in a fairly predictable pattern that allowed me time to anticipate and slow down as necessary. However there were two factors that I think contributed to the crash: 1) I was riding with some cars that had passed me at the beginning of the descent and as the road got steeper and more curvy, they were slowing in front of me and keeping me from going as fast as I'd wanted (bicycles can go down curvy mountain roads much faster then cars); 2) although it was in the early afternoon, only three days before I had been in New York where my body clock said it was just about midnight. So at one point in the descent when I saw an opening I passed the cars and was accelerating down the hill as fast as I could in order to stay in front of them, all the while with a brain that might have thought it was the middle of the night. Maybe I wasn’t at my sharpest.
As I had just finished going around one switchback and was going down about a 12% grade the road turned to the left and then suddenly got much steeper (maybe 18% down) and there was a switchback to the right that I had not anticipated. I was going exactly 53.8 km/h according to my Garmin 800 when I had one of those awful split second choices; either attempt to brake hard, lean into the curve and probably lose it and crash off the side of the road down the cliff, or dump the bike and head towards the side of the road into what I thought was a softer landing in the bushes.
Minutes after the crash, I walked about 25 m up the road and took this picture back towards the place that I crashed. This picture was taken right from the point where I decided that I wasn't going to make the curve and I headed between the small white road barrier and the sign. It looked at the time like a better choice. In the picture you can see Khun Jame in the orange T-shirt standing just to the right of the road marker and I had aimed just between those two road markers.
Over the last 11 weeks I've had a lot of time to think about the moment of the crash and what happened. I really had thought that I was going to be landing in some bushes rather than plunging down into a ravine and landing in a pile of dirt. In hindsight I probably should've thrown the bike away from me, because when I landed I think that my little finger got caught in the handlebars and got bent back towards my wrist and as my front wheel slammed into the dirt I fell right on the stem, which attaches the handlebars to the frame, snapping my two ribs. Somehow I also landed very hard on my shoulder and the right side of my helmet, spraining the joint between my clavicle and sternum and slightly separating my AC joint at the top of my right shoulder.
I was conscious throughout the entire event, however as I tried to climb out of the pit I had to stop as I went into shock and the entire world got very dark and I came close to passing out. Just after the moment of the crash, I caught my breath and looked up out of the hole to see the car that I had passed several minutes before slow and stop to check that I was okay. At that moment Khun Jame pulled up, called down to me to see if I was okay, and the other vehicle continued down the road.
This is the hole that I landed in, about four meters down from the road and most definitely not a soft landing.
As strange as it might sound, one of my first thoughts in getting out of the hole, was to take some photographs of the crash site and the road up and down from where the accident occurred. I had been in too many incidents where it later occurred to me that I should've taken some pictures and so this entire event and follow up is pretty well documented.In the photo above, which was taken about 3 min. after the crash, Khun Jame is climbing out of the hole where he was checking to see if anything had fallen off of my bike. The photo below, taken later, is of my helmet which was pretty much destroyed by the impact. For anyone who needs to convince their children that they should wear bike helmets, please feel free to use this photograph as part of your sales pitch.
Within minutes of the crash, Khun Jame had loaded my bike into the van and I had absolutely no idea how badly I was injured. It's amazing how adrenaline kicks in during these times and makes you feel like a Superman. In the picture below, I was smiling but I can see by the droop in my right shoulder that it must've been slightly separated and I thought at the time that my ribs were only bruised and that my right little finger might only have gotten sprained.
The two pictures above are both taken looking back up the road from the crash site. You can see from the pictures that the road curved to the left and then immediately dropped off and hairpins off to the right again. At 50+ kilometers per hour I must've been almost airborne when I tried to brake off of the first curve.
Khun Jame and I got into the van and started the nearly 10 km trip down the hill into the town of Pai. I was mostly worried about my little finger and took a picture of it (see below) as we are heading down the road.
We drove that last stretch into town slowly, looking for Markus who had ridden on ahead and was unaware of what happened. I tried several times to call him on his mobile and send some text messages. We finally reached him when we got into the town of Pai and found him at a little restaurant drinking a beer and waiting for me to ride into town and join him. He certainly didn't expect us to pull up together in the van and certainly didn't know what to do when suddenly the gash between my fingers started spilling blood on the pavement and we all decided that rather than have a beer we would head to the hospital. I honestly at that point had no idea how badly I was injured and thought at the time that it might be best to check into a hotel in Pai and wait for a day before starting to ride again. Until there was major blood, only when we got into town, did I have an inkling that perhaps our cycling adventure was over and that this was much more serious than I had thought.
Khun Jame, Markus and I drove over to the hospital and walked into the emergency room. There was no wait and they attended to me immediately. Marcus took pictures and helped me remove my glove, rather than cutting it off. I'm still now firmly convinced that without the protection of my riding glove, that little finger would have been torn completely off. There was just enough structure in the glove to keep the finger attached to the hand.
It was probably my own stupidity and a fair dose of self-denial that I thought my ribs were only bruised rather than broken. So the nurses in the emergency room concentrated on my hand and the lacerations on my ear, and sent me off only for an x-ray of my right hand.
This is a snap of the x-ray taken in the little hospital in Pai, with a clear fracture of the right fifth metacarpal and although I did not see it at the time, a fracture of the next joint past the knuckle; the proximal phalanges.
The nurses began to work, cleaning up the hand while Markus pulled out his phone and began documenting everything. I don't think they let you do that in US hospitals, but Marcus took my favorite approach to these sorts of situations; it's better to seek forgiveness later than ask permission. The following two videos are not for the squeamish and probably have too much information, but there are fascinating look at the treatment. In one I learned the word for "pain" in Thai (GIP! GIP!) as I'm injected with painkiller. In the other one the Dr. puts one or two of the seven stitches between my pinky and ring fingers.
Not for squeamish! Injecting pain killer into finger
Stitching that finger up
Kudos to Markus for this shot and these videos, since I would never have been able to sit there with a camera and shoot this stuff.
The Dr. also attended to my right ear, which had gotten pretty torn up probably by the helmet shards as it broke on impact. They thought that they needed to put in some stitches to reattach some places where it'd pulled the skin from the ear cartilage, but they just fixed it up with a number of butterfly bandages.
Markus also grabbed a picture (see below) of the two of us in the emergency room.
The doctor there, who spoke very good English, said that since I was from New York and "they have very good hospitals there in New York", I should go home to have my hand operated on within the next 10 days.
So after about an hour of scrubbing up the wounds, some x-rays, stitching back on my ear and my finger and a prescription filled for Advil, it was time to pay the bill. I was a little nervous and thought that I should call to my insurance company back in the United States to let them know that I've been admitted to an emergency room so that I could later get reimbursement for the hospital bill. However when the total bill arrived it was for 720 baht, or about US$23. I know that back home in the States this would've been a $3000 bill at least. So needless to say I didn't contact my insurance company and we paid the bill, loaded up the van and decided to head back to Chang Mai immediately.
It took us about 2 1/2 hours to drive from Pai back to Chang Mai. Markus had already called his wife Lisa, who had sent an e-mail to Pam telling her that I'd been in an accident. I decided that it was pretty important for me to call Pam so that she could hear my voice and know that I was okay before she got the e-mail from Lisa.
So, even though was only about 4:30 AM back in New York I called Pam, waking her up with the not so good news that I'd been involved in a bike accident and was going to make arrangements to come back to New York as quickly as possible. Although not pleased to have gotten a phone call at that time of the morning, she said later that it was the best thing to do so that she could hear directly from me that I was okay.
It was on the ride back, particularly going around those hairpin curves and going over bumps that I figured out the probably my ribs were more than just bruised. Later, on arriving back in New York, the radiologist who examined my x-rays said that he had no problem finding the two broken ribs. My biggest worry at that point was the pain involved in taking a deep breath and what in the world I might do if I ever had to cough or sneeze.
By early evening we were back in Chang Mai, where we had started two days before. Somehow I got out of my riding gear and somewhat cleaned up in the shower, but between my head, shoulder, ribs, and hand I was feeling pretty beat up. Lying down was a real problem, particularly rolling over on the one side. For that first night in Chang Mai, all during the trip home and for the next several weeks I slept sitting up in a chair or recliner.
The Long Trip Home from Chiang Mai to New York City: 70 hours!
That evening while in Chang Mai I called up United Airlines and spoke with the Global Services representative to see about booking my flight back home for the next day. She was able to get me a business class flight out of Bangkok to Los Angeles and a First Class flight from Los Angeles directly back to JFK. I then called Ian Hamilton, my travel agent in Cape Town South Africa, who was able to book me on a flight out of Chang Mai the following afternoon to make my connection on Thai Airways to Los Angeles.
Markus helped me to break down my bicycle and get it into the bicycle bag and to pack my gear in my duffel bag. After a fitful night’s sleep, Khun Jame drove me out to the airport where he and Markus helped get me checked in, my bicycle and duffel bag as well as my briefcase checked all the way back to JFK and escorted me as far as immigration and security. From there I was on my way alone, with a one-hour flight from Chang Mai to Bangkok, a short layover and a 12 hour flight into Los Angeles.Thailand is one of those places where you can go into a pharmacy and get just about anything you want without prescription. Looking back on it now, I probably should've gotten some heavy pain killers like Percocet, OxyContin or Vicodin but I really didn't want to do a long plane flight looped out on drugs. So I stuck with the one painkiller I know well and basically drank vodka tonics all the way home.
It was not a comfortable flight from Bangkok to Los Angeles. The business class seats on Thai only recline to a not flat 160° or so and every single bump and every one of my twists was painful. Looking back now, I probably should have tried to get a first-class seat on a more indirect route but would've had a better journey across the Pacific.
On arrival in Los Angeles, both Thai Airways and the United Global Services representatives were extremely helpful in getting me through immigration and customs and provided transportation over to the check-in counter for my flight from Los Angeles to New York. The only glitch at LAX was that while I could walk just fine, carrying my carry-on bag with my laptop computer and other equipment was just a little bit too much for the broken ribs. The counter attendants at check-in requested disabled assistance but the woman who showed up with the wheelchair said I had to sit down in the wheelchair and could not just put my bag in it. So I sent her away and went back up to the counter where one of the nice Global Services walked with me through security, carrying my bag all the way to the First Class lounge.
However at this point in the journey back home the only glitch was the weather in New York. A snowstorm was approaching and although they thought that they might get my flight off, after delaying it for five or six hours, they finally canceled the flight and made arrangements for the First Class passengers to be transferred over to a nearby hotel to spend the night, and we would be rebooked on a flight the next day as soon as JFK reopened. Normally this wouldn't of been a problem, but I was feeling fairly uncomfortable and just wanted to get back to New York and check myself into a hospital. I even considered at one point just getting into a cab and going straight to a hospital somewhere near LAX, but finally thought that maybe it might be better to get all of this taken care of back at home.
United Airlines was unable to provide direct disabled/handicapped assistance to the hotel, but I did sit in the wheelchair at this point and they took me to the pickup point for the shuttle bus to the hotel where I spent the night and returned to the airport the next morning. It took longer to open JFK after the snowstorm than they had imagined and the flight was delayed several more hours but finally I boarded and arrived Thursday night at JFK, just about 70 hours after having left Chang Mai.
This picture above was taken by my car service driver in the JFK parking garage. I've done a number of endurance events in my life, like triathlons and marathons and long-distance cycling events, but nothing quite compares to this journey from Thailand back to New York City. After the drive from JFK back to our apartment in Manhattan, I collapsed in sobs, so happy to be back home, wounded but at least safe and sound.
The Recovery
Pam accompanied me the next morning to my appointment with Dr. Beldner, the orthopedist hand surgeon, who took further x-rays, cleaned up my hand and made an appointment for surgery 10 days later. Pam and I then went to see Jeff Buckner, my personal family practice doctor, who prescribed some pain killers to help make me more comfortable.
And then four days later, Jennifer, who works with me in the IISD New York office, accompanied me down to the radiologist who took some pictures of my chest to see what was going on there. He had no problem finding the two broken ribs and when I returned to Dr. Buckner's office he increased my pain medication and we had a good talk about how to deal with broken ribs.
What I learned is that there is no treatment for broken ribs, no wrapping or protection and the only thing you can do for them is rest and wait. My two broken ribs, five and six, are both breathing ribs and therefore particularly problematic. I've tried staying very still and not breathing in order to give them a chance to heal but usually can't last for more than about 45 seconds (that's a joke) so these ribs are always moving and that makes the healing process that much more prolonged.
The other big problem is that we normally cough occasionally in order to clear fluids out of our lungs. However my breathing ribs were broken and therefore I was doing everything in my power not to cough and having problems taking deep breaths, actually fearing the thought of sneezing. I learned that most patients with broken ribs are prescribed pain medication in order to be able to withstand the agony of coughing. Because, if one does not cough, the lungs can fill with fluid and this can lead to pneumonia.
Beginning several days before I had begun taking 5 mg Percocet and the dosage was increased to 10 mg, which made me much more comfortable although I don't recall with great clarity everything that took place during February and much of March.
However, in my opiate induced haze, I did have the courage to cough and my pain was managed successfully so that despite some really broken bits I was comfortable and sedated enough so that I didn't try something stupid like trying to exercise. The biggest temptation was to sit down at the computer and do business, since friends don't let friends do business while on opiates. During this period, Jennifer provided a great buffer between me in Lala land and the organization that I lead in Reporting Services at IISD.
I have learned more than I wanted to about the physiological effects of large opiate doses particularly on one's general intestinal tract. I have a greater appreciation for G.I. regularity than ever before. Enough said.
On 7 February my right hand was operated on at Beth Israel hospital in New York, 13 days after my accident in Thailand. It was an outpatient procedure however I was under general anesthetic and woke up in the recovery room speaking Portuguese to a Brazilian nurse who was overseeing my return to consciousness. Dr. Beldner had inserted two pins to set the proximal phalanges and used two screws to repair the fifth metacarpal.
I had a foam splint attached to my cast to keep the hand immobile and upright.
Just about 10 days later I returned to the doctor's office and they removed my larger cast and replaced it with a smaller cast just up as the wrist. And then about 2 1/2 weeks later they removed the cast and the doctor pulled out the two pins, leaving in the screws.
I had fully expected that as soon as the cast was removed I would begin Occupational Therapy and I'd be back to cycling and have the full use of my hand within a week or two. However I learned that whenever the hand and wrist are bound up for a long time like this that the joints become stiff and scar tissue forms in the hand blocking the free movement of tendons. I had the cast removed on 4 March and had my first occupational therapy session on March 7. Now almost 7 weeks later I still have very little movement in my right pinky finger and am struggling each day with finger exercises and trying to get my wrists to bend without pain.
However the biggest challenge that I faced was coming unglued from the opiates. As Dr. Buckner explained to me there are two types of addictions that can take place with opiates; physical and psychological. On 7 March, I decided it was time for me to stop taking the Percocet and went from 16 tablets a day to just one tablet a day almost overnight. I had no psychological addiction and could stop without any problem, however over the next several days I got more and more paranoid and very irritable so that by Thursday of that week, when in a staff meeting, I totally lost it and started yelling at people.
What I now realize is that as I was coming off of the opiates the pain in my hand, shoulder and ribs were coming “unmasked.” The opiates had been doing their job and without them, Iwas in pain! I was feeling invincible and thought that I could simply tell my body it was time to come back to normal and had gone for a jog on the treadmill. Then my ribs really hurt again and I started taking the Percocet, thinking that I had read damaged my ribs. Suddenly, taking the pain pills again the paranoia and the irritability went away as well and I booked an appointment with Dr. Buckner to try and figure out what was going on. He explained that while part of my brain could tell myself to stop, another part of my brain felt that I had promised to give it opiates and that I had a physical addiction that needed to be taken care of through a gradual scheduled reduction. He prescribed a lower dose painkiller, Vicodin with acetaminophen, and over the next three weeks I slowly reduced my dosage so that by 13 April I was totally off the opiates and just taking Excedrin extra strength tablets up to the maximum 4000 mg a day.
The entire opiate and painkiller experience has been a fascinating one for me and I can now understand how seductive they are how easily it might be for some people to become addicted. I really didn't like the way they made me feel since I couldn't form sentences, quickly remember details or make good decisions. They were great for what they did but I'm very glad to have put them away.
Getting back to moving again has been a whole other experience. For two weeks in March, from the 14th to the 25th, my good friend and yoga teacher, Davi Cohen, came by the apartment to do some home yoga sessions. Just getting moving again was so wonderful as my body remembered the positions and the ways that it had moved two months before. In yoga there is the expression "samskara" , which refers to the etchings, lines or patterns in one's yoga practice. As I twisted and turned my body knew the samskara and it gave me great pleasure, a warm glow and even a tingling sometimes when I'd move back into old asanas. These last two weeks, when I've been taking public yoga classes at Yogaworks on the Upper East Side, it has been the best physical therapy possible. I'm also firmly convinced that having an active, advanced yoga practice four or five times a week for the year before my accident was one of the factors that both made the accident less worse in the recovery much easier. The core muscles and the overall tone and flexibility that comes from a vigorous yoga practice provided a base level from which it was easier to come back.
So today, 24 April, three months from the day of my accident in Thailand I finally felt recovered enough to tell the story. I'm still in a great deal of pain, as my ribs are healed but still very tender and my shoulder, both in the clavicle and AC joint, still move with some discomfort. Every day I spend hours working my fingers, doing hot and cold contrast baths and trying to get full range of motion back in my hand and wrist. Last week I rode my bicycle twice up and back to yoga, but only my fixie bike with the flat straight handlebars that I can grab easily with my right hand. Although my new Pinarello Dogma was finished last week and I had it delivered by John from Conrad's bicycle shop 10 days ago, I still don't have the confidence in my right hand arm and shoulder to go for a ride.
So for the time being it sits on the rack in the living room waiting a few more days until I feel strong enough to ride. Maybe there's just a little bit of hesitation too about getting back on a bike. I’m dealing with that.
The upside to the downside is that I have two great takeaways from the experience. One is that I have mastered the Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice recognition software and have written and edited this entire piece without using the keyboard since it's still very difficult for me to type with my right hand. Even though I may gain the entire use of my right hand again I don't think I'll ever stop using the voice recognition software for writing and controlling the computer.
The second thing that is my take away from this experience is something that my management coach, Steven Marks, told me. He said that for the rest of my life I should concentrate on going up so much faster and going down hills much more slowly. I think it's excellent advice!
This morning, just before dawn, I was riding north on the East Drive of Central Park just past what is called the East Green when the early blooming Kwanza cherry trees, crabapples, cherry and magnolia fragrances brought me to a stop on my bike. With fallen blossoms carpeting the ground, the pink glow of morning Manhattan rising above the blossoms and hundreds of people out far too early exercising, the experience was overwhelming. The photo can’t even come close to capturing it… you had to be there.
These are those unpredictable weeks of early springtime when cycling in and around New York City is hit or miss. Too many rainy days, mixed with periods of cold, which make planning and then dressing for rides an adventure in meteorology. Today the rains are predicted at noon, so I braved my first early morning ride with the temperature hovering around 9 or 10 degrees. It turned out lovely and the much safer riding in the Park than I have been experiencing recently when doing laps at noon while dodging clueless tourists.
After the crazy traveling in January, February and March, I’m mostly home in Manhattan for almost two months, enjoying the pleasures of a single time zone. Life is work, ride, yoga, family, repeat. And now, as the mornings warm and this end of the planet tilts toward the sun, making the dawn come earlier and earlier, I’ll be in the park most mornings riding hill repeats, cranking out the 350-400 watt climbs of the Great Hill and Cat Hill alongside dozens of other aging lycra-clad urbanites on overpriced carbon steeds.
But this morning, at that particular instant, the whole experience was so overwhelming that life just gob-smacked me and I stopped riding, got off my bike, inhaled all the prana … and took a picture.
The Argus Cycle Tour is the biggest timed bicycle race in the world and one of the greatest events each year on the international cycling calendar. Basically unknown in the US, the race attracts riders from throughout Europe, a large number of expatriate riders in the middle east and tons of Aussies and Kiwis. However, this is, by and large, a national event and a South African "rite of passage." Last year, after the race, I saw an article about South African corporate executives posting their Argus time, comparing executives' times across organizations. Cycling is big in South Africa and this is their biggest event.
I've come in for business meetings, which I held yesterday and have the weekend free for the race. Then, after taking Monday off to recover, I'm heading to Germany and the Netherlands for fundraising events. But, for today and tomorrow, I'm just one of the 39,000 riders starting the 110 km race on Sunday morning.
Last year, in a fast, hot ride, I'd managed to finish the 108 km route in 3 hours and 33 minutes, which earned me a nice seeding in this year's event. Since this is a timed event, they can't have everyone starting at the same time, but thanks to RFID technology each rider has his or her own timing chip and they can send off the riders in several dozen groups, beginning at dawn.
So, the riders are released from pens into the starting area in big groups. Here is a picture of some of the workers erecting the pens today near the starting area. And this is the starting area around mid-day on Saturday. By tonight this will be ready to go for the first (and fastest) riders in the professional seeded groups. The Giro goes out at 0615, the licensed riders in groups that start at 0620, 0625 and on until 0636. Our "pen" starts at 0718 and I'm about in about the first third of the seeded groups. Then the other pens full of cyclists are released until almost 1000.
Today was registration pick-up and the huge cycle fair, with both international vendors but some national vendors with cool products not available outside of the country.
So, this morning I went on a quick tune-up ride. It was quick (only an hour) because I was heading along down the coastline when that awful sound started. It was a pop and then a spinning whistle, and since I was riding with some other cyclists, I hoped that it was not me. But, it was my flat tire and I pulled off to the side of the road to deal with it.
It was a stupid pinch flat and was my own dumb fault for not putting enough air in my tires. I should have used that hand pump to get them up above 100 psi, but I figured that nothing would happen. Well, that was enough to anger the flat tire gods. They are fickle. They are vigilant and they abhor hubris. Just when you think that you are somehow better than the flat tire gods and tempt them, by going out without a tube, without a pump, without a patch kit, or without enough air in your tires, they will give you a flat.
So, I have publicly made my peace with the flat gods, purchased a new tube and will ride tomorrow with a spare tube, a patch kit, a can of compressed air and a pump. I will pump up my tires. I promise. So, please, NO FLATS.
Tomorrow, I'll be roaring up this coast with the finish line in sight. But, starting at 0718, as the doctor might say, "the following procedure will involve some minor discomfort."
First of all, I’m weary and probably over-trained.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if you string together three weeks of hard riding on three continents, throw in twenty-four time zone changes, and combine with several overnight plane flights, that at some point the body’s ability adapt will reach its exhaustion point. Yesterday, after an hour and a half yoga class with Noam Renov, I came home and crashed out.
My theory is that while your physical body might be able to travel multiple time-zones in one day, your body-clock is only capable of changing one or two time zones per day. Which means that on a fast eighteen-day round-the-world trip, my poor body clock was lagging behind me for most of the trip. Just as soon as my circadian rhythms got to Thailand, I was off to South Africa. When I left Cape Town, my body-clock has just cleared customs in Johannesburg. Then, yesterday, when it finally arrived in New York, it knocked me over the head in utter frustration and laid me low for the entire afternoon. I slept, sometimes off but mostly on, for about sixteen hours. I would wake to eat, pour a glass of red wine and then fall back to sleep. Now, at fifty-five, it takes me longer to recover and sometimes I just “hit the wall.” Usually, when the body says, “that’s it”, it takes the form of a sudden flu, some kind of nasty bacterial infection (like a bad eye stye), or a physical collapse. Yesterday was the latter.
But still the legs are not back to normal. They say that multi-stage race cyclists train on off days, just to keep the body from shutting down and going into repair mode. After my long ride on Monday in Cape Town, I didn’t ride on Tuesday but did spend about an hour on the indoor trainer both Wednesday and Thursday, and did tough yoga classes on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. For some reason, I didn’t have the power today in my legs that I had last week and my heart rate was climbing too fast up into the 160-175 range. So, I’m going to take two full days off the bike, see if I can get past this “over-trained” stage and start feeling normal again.
All the said, I just had to get out and ride this morning. Yes, there is a fine line between discipline and compulsion and today I did slip over into the dark side of that line. But this morning at 6:00 am it was 10 degrees on the 8th of February. This is so unusual and it doesn’t look like there will be another chance to ride outdoors during the coming two weeks, so I took my bike out of the Tacx cycle trainer, pumped up the tires, layered up and rode across town to the 38th St. NY Waterway Ferry station for the ride across the Hudson River to Port Imperial on the Jersey side.
Every cyclist in the New York/New Jersey area was riding on the 9W bicycle route this morning. There were hundreds of cyclists, all taking advantage of the weekend thaw. Packs of no-joking-around A23 riders went whizzing past, in both directions. I ended up riding for a few dozen kilometers with a group of triathletes from New Jersey who were doing my A19 pace (30 Kmph). This was good for company, but with the ice melt-off the roads were wet and dirty and there was a lot of wheel spray. At the Runcible Spoon in Nyack there were two dozen cyclists, who all looked like jockeys, covered in mud splatter, having coffee and sweets. No one could believe that it was warm enough to ride this early in February, particularly after the cold temperatures and heavy snows of late.
Just south of the Bear Mountain Bridge, looking north the ice floes were almost touching across the river.
So, after 84 km and 3:44 of riding, I pulled into the Garrison MetroNorth station for the train trip home. 1,160 meters of climbing and 3,231 calories burned.
Yes, there is a lot of ice in the Hudson River!
The Cape Argus Classic is exactly four weeks away. The next two weeks are crucial for training, particularly in dropping a few kilos and doing those ten-twenty minute 300 watt intervals, pushing my maximum heartrate for longer periods but foregoing the long two-four hour rides for shorter sub-hour long sprints.
The Cape Argus Classic is a seeded start, with groups of riders going off in heats based on previous race times from 0600 until after 1000 on race day. Last year, without a race time for seeding, I started with the unseeded International riders at about 0845. This year, with my fast time from 2008, I received a start time of 0718, starting in the “R” Group. This is nice and early in the seeding and I should be riding with others who will be keeping my pace, which will avoid having to ride around slower riders like last year. Also, I should be able to get into a large drafting pack, which will help with my time.
So, now for two days off the bike and a little rest.
I think that any 123 km (76.5 mile) ride is a good ride, but it is even better just before getting on an airplane for a long, long set of flights. Although longer than I had hoped for today, I have made it back to the hotel in time to get my business done, inhale some food and pack for the airport.
My plan for today was to ride, as close as possible, to the actual Cape Argus Classic route. The first third of the route is done on race day on closed highways, which made for some improvisation. Richard Sherman helped me with my navigation and said just to head through Woodstock and stay on Main Road, which runs through Mowbray, Wynberg and The Dell before joining up with the usual Argus route in Lakeside. 18 degrees at 0630, it climbed steadily through the 20s as I rode south through Muizenberg and Simon's Town. The picture above is shot looking north from around Murdoch Valley, up to Simon's Town. These are all places that I had ridden through at full blast during last year's Cape Argus Classic race, and had wished that I could stop, look around, take pictures and search the rocks for beached seals. This time, I did!
Several cyclists who I met along the ride warned me that the really spectacular route along the western coast through Chapman's Peak, which winds up high on the cliffs above the ocean, was closed. The only route north along the coast required a long detour with two sharp climbs.
While riding towards the northwest between the eastern shoreline and Scarborough, I met a South African rider, who gave me the detour instructions and said that this was probably going to be part of the detour route for the Argus in 2009 if "Chappy's" does not re-open in time for the Tour. As we were riding along, I saw what looked like a pile of brown boulders sitting on the roadside ahead. Remembering the Tacx Fortius RLV video for indoor training, there had been some simian looking animals that lumbered across the road during the filming. I asked the other rider what they were and he said that there were always baboons sitting by the road at this spot. Indeed, there was a whole troop of Cape Baboons sitting by the road, looking like they were waiting for a handout from passing cars. A little further up the road there was a sign:
It just seems very South African that they might put a Springbok on the sign, but label it "Baboons" since they probably didn't have any signs with baboons on them. It is a country of some glaring but unmentioned contradictions.
On the ride profile, you can see the two long climbs in the middle of the day. When I got to the Chapman's Peak turnoff, there was a big signed that warned, CLOSED. So, I went up and over Ou Kaapse Weg (Silvermine Road) and then went through Constantia before crossing back over the mountains to Hout Bay.
As on the day before, I stopped at a little roadside stand to get a Boerewors on a roll and a real Coke. This is the best South African fast food, particularly with a large dollop of Chutney spread across the top.
So, the totals for the day's ride were 5:24 total moving time, 1825 meters of vertical climbing over 123.07 km. Lots of stopping and starts, some lazy climbs in the head, with a temperature that went from 18 up to a high of 25 degrees.
Believe it or not, but this is a shot that I took with my Google T-mobile phone (and uploaded to Twitpics for my Twitter feed.) Today was such an amazing afternoon, even my little phone camera couldn't mess it up!
This shot is looking north from a point just about 20 km before the finish of the Cape Argus Classic bicycle race. I can certainly remember red-lining here last year and was visualizing feeling much better for this year's Argus, just a month away.
I have stopped off in Cape Town for business meetings this evening and tomorrow, after a short stop-over in Bangkok. Tomorrow, Monday morning, I'm riding the entire Argus route before breakfast.
The MotionBased software says that this ride took place in Chiang Mai, but of course it did not. I think that the first trackpoint from the GPS device was in Chiang Mai. As much as I tried, there is no way to edit the GPS data to remove the errant trackpoint from the history.
Anyway, I had hoped to ride longer today, but had a bad headache and the road along the coast was so busy on a Sunday afternoon that it was a bit dangerous. So, I headed back to the hotel and have planned the longer ride for Monday morning.
Honestly, the Garmin GPS says, 3074 meter elevation gain, 3164 elevation loss. Seriously, we were mad men on the sixth day of this trip, attacking whatever was thrown at us. But, these are also some big numbers for one day of riding. Jeez.
It was one hell of a day, with some brutal climbs.
This was the view most of the first few hours, just going up, up and up. But, things didn't get much better later, since each downhill was followed by another climb and even the "flat" stretches were just a series of rolling hills. The nice thing was that this was forested national park in a remote part of the planet, with birds, blue sky.. OK, those things don't much matter when you are climbing. This was all about gearing and moving up the mountains.
After almost five hours on the bike, I pulled up last (as per usual) to find Markus and Marco with their bikes already in the van. I was still pumped for the last few kilometers, but decided that having a beer and climbing in the air conditioned van was a much better alternative than getting my butt kicked by two sweaty German guys.
We drove to the closest town and I ordered beer, duck and rice. Oh, the perfect meal after six days on a bicycle riding big mountains.
In this photo, Markus captured me articulating the first consonant of the adjective that described the hills today.
Markus ordered two beers. And we ate and ate.
Now, back in Chiang Mai, we are headed out to dinner at Miguel's Mexican Food restaurant, to have mega calories and margaritas.
