Nice bike that Mister. Shame if anything happened to it. Something has happened to it alright, it’s become a shed queen. Along with the other *ahem* trophies from my winning strategy of N+many.
Lately I’ve struggled to reconcile the number of bikes with the number of legs, but right now rideable ‘N” is zero. That’s a challenging theorem counting a room full of expensive bikes numerating no new stories. Unless adding dusty pages counts.
It doesn’t. It feels more like how the end starts. When important artefacts defining the thing you did instead become accusatory statues recording an imperfect history landscaped by a hinterland of the “further back you went, the better you were“.
That was pretty much my happy thoughts as I saluted the six* with a recovery cold beer after a hateful hour on the turbo. Prefect conditions to ride outside, terrible conditions in a hot and humid shed. Showing great restraint not to be adding a triple whiskey chaser as images of all my friends doing the stuff recently mostly my world pile in on the WhatsApp groups.
Well that’s just pitiful isn’t it? It’s not like I’ve lost a limb regardless of some pseudo bullshit that riding bikes for 30 years somehow makes them a recognised appendage. It’s a broken bone, annoying yes, life changing no. Longitudinal analysis suggests bullets dodged, reward crushing risk, limited ability punching way above its weight. Sure it’s okay to grieve for lost summer, but everyone is fucking bored of it now. Even me.
So let the eye of negativity roam a little wider to the institutional despair of the county hospital. An oasis of beige furnished by the lowest cost bidder. Short of almost everything including technology solutions with appointments arriving by text, post, app and barely rage suppressed phone calls. Often at the same time, leaving one Brownian motioned in the eye of an informational tornado.
Feels like it’s doing its best but probably not quite good enough. A reflection on the logistics, politics, funding and the sheer clusterfuck of complexity rather than the lovely people who battle on everyday with tired smiles attempting to shove massive square pegs into tiny round holes. Heroes without capes indeed.
But fuck me from a sample size of me, it’s bloody frustrating. Four weeks, four different medical professionals. One I paid for myself who charged me about 25 quid a minute selling a future I wasn’t sure I wanted. A whiff of the US system where everything is possible, but nothing is free. Ask yourself the question if a fix with a five figure price tag beats the weary chaos of the NHS.
Hint. It bloody doesn’t. But shit it’s not without mental effort to zero in on the intersections of a Venn from four white coated individuals all telling you slightly different things. Those things include “It’ll probably heal, but it might not“, “It’ll be as strong as it was but it may not be“, “It’ll be fixed in 12 weeks but also could be 12 months“, “We could operate on it, but then again we probably should not”
Practising medicine and all that. Not helped by my mate Simon suffering a similar injury a week later (must be a summer bug, go outside, catch the broken collarbone virus) only to be under the knife 7 days later. I’m not a medical man but on examining his x-ray I couldn’t help think “well that looks less shit than mine, I now have plate FOMO”
All of which has made me an absolute shitball to live with. I’ve done my best but again it’s not good enough. Not even close. As a bloke who is officially “not great” at doing nothing, apathy has become my strategy. My post crash plan had lots of aspirational stuff around doing things normal people do, see some stuff, do some stuff, don’t lament the stuff you can’t do. Not gone well. Bodes poorly for the future.
And then two days after my three week “splataversary“, I was summoned back to Gloucester Royal for what I expected to be a very disappointing consultation where being mostly ignored then vaguely patronised would outcome a “come back in four weeks if it’s not dropped off before then”
Enter Tim. A man of many words often impervious to raised hand questions, but nevertheless a script spoken by a man clearly knowing his shit. We had a fifteen minute conversation back and forthing over surgical interventions. A further five of prodding and whirling the previously sling bound arm on what felt like an organic roller coaster of free movement. An abrogation of NHS responsibility transferring those decision rights to a man chaffing at one armed disability.
“See you in two months, good luck” he said. “At which time I expect your multi-part collarbone couples counselling will see it again conjoined and we’ll all do a lap of I fucking told you so. If not, it’s full on Winter Soldier, but really do you want to go there? Are you a betting man?”
I am not and he didn’t say that. Well he may have, but my heart was already singing a little ditty named “I’ll take it from here“. Agency is quite the thing, dump the sling, drive my car, ride the turbo on the drops*** but better still in FOUR WEEKS I can ride a bike outside. Okay maybe not a proper bike and not proper outside, but that’s a target I’m going to smash though a month of sweaty Zwift sessions.
Because when I get back out there, I’m going to be in the best shape I can. And come the next Al-Tim meeting, I’ll be shoving him aside to get a damn good look at the new x-ray. If it’s not fused, at least I’ll have one good arm to punch him with 😉
I swaggered back into the big shed finger pistolling the bikes with a “we are so not done”. For a while there I forgot I was – and will probably always be – a mountain biker. It’s so fucking good to be back.
Too Early For A Beer. I think probably not.
*Too Early For A Beer? A semantic proxy when FFS is also a little to early in the morning.
**Amusingly I sold one exactly two days before “splatter-day”. It was only the gravel bike tho so it doesn’t really count
***Trust me this is A BIG thing. Ask my arse. Sitting up on the turbo feels pretty much like dropping the soap on your first day in D Wing 😉