Subtle hints

I found this on my desk this morning, perhaps my co-workers are trying to day something about my physique.

Also, pretty awesome that muscle milk contains no milk.

First recipe down

My colleague Cara and I were taking about how much we both liked Jamie Oliver, and then, as a complete surprise, she got me this awesome cook book. I guess I'll have to order up some black pudding, or maybe as Jennifer suggested, "Go bleed a cow," and make my own.

Pollen count

My brake hoods prove what my eyes and nose had been telling me; pollen count is pretty high in Philly about now.
I'm lucky not to suffer any real allergies, but even so, there is something in the spring air here that makes it feel like I'm snorkeling in a sand box.

Jennifer's attitude to her impending doctorhood.

Squiggly Legs

After several years of working with a power meter on my bike, I still only have a loose understanding of what all these numbers mean.  I guess I’m just not that much of a numbers guy, I’m really simply a bike guy.  What those squiggles up above mean is that I pedaled my bike far, and I pedaled it hard.   My legs have been working well, like, REALLY well over the past two weeks.  Not only was I able to race without problem on a tight and technical criterium course, but I very nearly made the winning break at this past weekend’s Philly Phlyer.  Very nearly making the break is not as good as making the break, but I was pleasantly surprised by how well things went.  It didn't hurt that the weather was 63 degrees and sunny, but it would have been nice if I didn't drop my power-gel on lap 2.  Always bring  extra snacks is my new rule.

I guess that my legs just had good memories of the Phlyer,—I ended up winning the Brompton National Championships in 2010 and 2011 at the very same race.  It was also on that weekend that I got an email from my current boss asking me if I wanted to come work for MOTU.  Good memories on that park loop indeed.

Back in the saddle again

I'm pleased, though somewhat apprehensive, to announce that I'll be doing my first criterium in over 2 years. The season is upon us, and though I'm still feeling a bit slow and a bit sore, I am really looking forward to the experience.  More notes when I return with all my skin and bones intact.

Ructation

I came home from a lovely evening out with some neighbor friends to see my Aventinus clone exploding all over the fermentation vessel. Go yeast, go! Just don't go all over my floor.

From the Himalayas, with Love

My sister Claire got Jennifer and me this giant block of salt from the Himalayas to cook with.  At first, I thought that maybe you should just shave off little bits of it as seasonings, but then I read the instructions.  YOU JUST COOK WITH THE WHOLE DAMN THING!

Shrimp, meet giant slab of 500 degree salt!

Delicious, unless you let it cook too long, in which case, salty-licious.

Motorvational speaker

So, perhaps I have given my cho co- workers too much info on Jennifer's dissertation status over the past few months. Earlier this week she made brownies in an attempt to stave off working on her dreaded paper. My colleague Kristin had some choice words for jennifer when I offered her some of the spoils. The post-it note was a nice pep talk to encourage her onward. What she really said was something like, "These are delicious, but why dissent she knock it off and do the fucking dissertation?"

The brownies were a hit with everyone but Jennifer who found them inadequate, too cake-like and far from the idealized brownie in her head.  I reminded her that the best is often the enemy of the good. Advice that applies to baked goods and scholarly writing alike.

What kind of "athlon" would this be?

Took myself out for a snow ride and ski this morning. The ride to FDR park was chilly, starting temps were around 11 degrees, but by the time I had stashed my bike and gotten going, the sun had warmed things up considerably.  I broke trail for about an hour and them doubled back on my steps and did the same course in 30 minutes.

I have so few chances to ski in philly that I have to pounce every chance I get.

Some Christmas Creations

As a toast to the recently released members of Pussy Riot (and because it's a fantastic name for a drink) I innvented a pretty tasty coctail over the holidays.

To a chilled glass add 2-3 cubes worth of ice, crushed or not.
Then pour:

• 1 shot vodka
• 1 tbsp pine-flavored simple syrup
• 1 tbsb porto
• 1 tbsp Cointreau

Stir briefly, Garnish with a twist of orange and add soda water if desired.

To make pine-flavored syrup, add 2 cups of sugar to 1 cup of water in a sauce pan and heat to the boiling point.  While the pan is heating, walk over to the christmas tree and pluck off 2 loosely packed cups of pine needles.  Place the needles in the heating syrup mix and bring to a boil.  Cool and place the entire mix into a jar.  If you want to kick it up a notch, you can whack the cooled mix into the blender and then blend until all is green and fragrant.  Let the particulates settle and then strain through a sieve.

Or, if you want to be a sissy about it, you could use a good piney gin like Tanqueray.

Leg Pain

My legs hurt today and it's awesome. This past weekend I went out for two 60+ mile rides with 'the fast guys'. See spot ride. Spot rode far. Spot rode fast. Spot is tired. Spot has trouble getting up the stairs. Spot has 40 stairs to climb from the basement to the 3rd floor in his new house. Woof. After two years of dragging through the aches pains and eventual surgeries that resulted from my screwed up leg, I'm finally seeing some real progress and remembering what it's like to go hard on a bicycle again. My legs feel fantastically pummeled after the weekend, tired in a way that I haven't felt ages. It is awesome. I had the idea a couple of weeks ago that I wanted to do Battenkill again. 3 other speedy dudes from the club are thinking of tackling it, and I've got some unfinished business with that race. It will be a great goal to shoot for, and after this weekend's riding, it seems that it is actually doable. I'm looking forward to the challenge.

Yeah,I hauled that

Turns out that my trailer can haul 320 pounds of crap. Not sure if I want to do it again though, my legs did not much care for it. Also, things were groaning and creaking pretty badly behind me during the ride. Better not to push my luck until they make some lighter weight cement.

Hot stuff

In advance of the coming frost I picked about 10 ghost peppers from one of the neighboring plots at our community garden. At first it must seem like am awesome idea, growing a weaponized chili plant. But then you taste the things.    Most sensible people realize upon eating the smallest sliver of one, these are not peppers to be trifled with.

Fortunately, no one has made the mistake of calling me sensible.Tonight I made death sauce.

I wore rubber gloves and long sleeves as a precaution, but I probably should have added a gas mask to the list.  Blending up peppers aerosolizes little tiny spice particles that make for an unexpected dose of capsaicin to the air. After a quick hit with the blender the air became rather spicy. Jennifer was coughing all the way in the living room and I had to flee upstairs to escape the fumes .

Now that it's bottled, the plan is to let it ferment a bit naturally and "mellow" before blending it up once again and straining the chunks.  Anyone stupid with an asbestos palate interested in trading the mix in a few weeks?

So, more house equals more house repair.

Even though the new place needs MUCH less work per square foot of real estate than the Mole Hole, 3 times the house is 3 times the house, and we want to put our stamp on the whole shebang.

I've been spending evenings in the basement with my cement; mixing up some slurry to spluck onto the walls of the basement to shore up any crumbling mortar.  I was getting my rhythm down pretty good and then I ran out of mix, so I shifted from putting up mortar, to knocking it down.  I spent Friday night knocking a hole in the kitchen wall to open up a window from years past.  While dirty, that part is really rewarding because it satisfies my long-standing need to take things apart.  It's even more satisfying than peeling off the label on a bottle of beer.

New House

So, after about 2 years of looking we finally bought a new house.  On Friday the 11th Jennifer and I closed on a house on 15th street, about 2 minutes walk from our current house.  It's got everything we were looking for, plus about 1000 extra square feet and $70,000 extra dollars, but hey we can't complain.  The whole deal seemed set to fall apart the whole time, so I didn't want to really blab to the world about it, but we've got the keys now, and the deed so it must be for real.

There are a lot of cool original features; doors with glass paneling, crown molding, cast iron heater vents--the works.  As good as it is, we of course want to fix it up and make it our own.  The kitchen will be redone and we'll fix up one of the bedrooms (there are 7 listed) before we move in.  The nice thing is that since we still have our current place, we won't have to sleep and wake up in a construction zone.  Plus, there are enough rooms that we can simply shift our bedroom to one of the spares if we decide to re-do something.

Perhaps the biggest downside thus far is that I feel like a total douche when we've showed the place off to friends.  The house is so big and nice that it seems like pure ostentation rather than something reasonable to own or live in.  That should probably go away once we put in enough sweat equity, but for the moment we're THOSE people.

The awesome light fixture in the entry way.

 Jennifer's at the back, and I'm at the front and it is a loooong way away!

 Toasting our success and bragging to family in the second floor bathroom.

 Jennifer's favorite 'room'.  This one is either the punishment box or the 8th bedroom, depending on how you look at it.

Here we are surveying the back of our property.  Huzzah! The fence is YARDS away from us rather than feet.

Look ma, I'm in the news!

http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/homepage-feature/item/59504-bike-share-program-to-bring-more-cyclists-less-helmets-to-philly?linktype=hp_impact

Now I'm almost as famous for bike share as I was for the Brompton race!

What they actually did to my hip

I went in for my post-operation 4 week check today.  Turns out, they did a lot more work on me than I had thought.  Not only did they stitch my labrum back down to the pelvis, they also had to 'microfracture' the socket of the joint where some cartilage had pulled away from the hip.  Here's the full text.  My favorite is that I now know that there is such a thing as "bone wax".

OPERATIVE REPORT
PREOPERATIVE DIAGNOSES
1. Femoral acetabular impingement, right hip.
2. Suspected labral tear, right hip.
3. Suspected chondral lesion, right hip.
POSTOPERATIVE DIAGNOSES
1. Femoral acetabular impingement, right hip.
2. Chondral labral lesion, right hip.
3. Large chondral delamination acetabulum, right hip.
NAME OF PROCEDURE
1. Femoral acetabular arthroplasty, right hip.
2. Repair of torn labrum, right hip.
3. Removal of chondral lesion, right hip.
4. Microfracture, right acetabulum.
ANESTHESIA: Spinal.
DETAILS OF THE PROCEDURE: Following meeting the patient in the preoperative holding area and identification of the extremity to be operated on, the patient was brought to the operating room. Anesthesia was induced. The patient was positioned supine on the operating table. All bony prominences were padded. The right lower extremity was prepped and draped in the usual sterile fashion.

Utilizing a small anterior incision and modified Smith-Petersen approach, the hip capsule was exposed. An I-shaped capsulotomy was performed. The labrum was examined. There was evidence of tear from 10-12 o'clock position. labrum appeared to have ossification also. The slight ossification was removed. The labrum was reflected free of the acetabular rim. The acetabulum was exposed. There was a large chondral lesion at the 11 o'clock position, which was unfortunately full-thickness. The chondral lesion was removed. Microfracture of this region was performed. The hip was irrigated extensively. This was followed by repair of the labrum to the acetabular rim. 

At this point, attention was turned to the femoral neck. There was a large bump at the femoral head and neck junction, which was removed. Once adequate osteoplasty had been performed, the hip could be flexed 110 degrees and internally rotated 30 degrees. Bone wax was applied over the area of osteoplasty, followed by irrigation of the hip-and closure of the capsule and overlying tissues. A sterile dressing was placed over the incision.

The patient was then transferred to the postanesthesia recovery unit. The patient tolerated the procedure well and there were no intraoperative complications. Dr. Parvizi performed the entire procedure. Three Arthrex Biotech anchor sutures were utilized for repair.

For the near term, it means that I can continue letting pain be my ever-vigilant guide.  I've been cleared to do anything that doesn't involve high impact, like running or tackle football.  Fortunately, I've got a bike that needs some riding.   The pain should generally subside over the coming weeks and months, and I should see an increase in range of motion and strength after 6 weeks when the bone is fully healed.  The doctor said that 6 months is when the labrum should have reattached fully and any replacement tissue from the microfracture should be in place.  This means  I should be essentially back to 100% by February and in time to actually race bikes next year.  Cool.
Long term, this also means that I'm at a higher likelihood of needing a hip replacement down the road, but probably not untill well later in life.  Dr. Parvisi thought that some time between the age of 65 and 80, I'd likely need a new joint.  Not so cool.  Also, I'll need to keep an eye on my other hip for similar pain so that we can catch it early on.  If we had gotten this one figured out earlier, it wouldn't have required removal of that chunk of cartilage, which would be better long term.  Now that I know what I'm looking for in terms of pain, I can hopefully catch that one in the early stages and save a lot of pain and annoyance.

For now though, I think I'll focus on a nice easy bike ride this weekend.

Let Pain Be Your Guide

I am pleased to report that I'm limber enough these days to ride back and forth to work.  My leg still isn't really working all that well, but certainly well enough to make the 1.5 mile trek in to the Municipal Services Building from home.  The doctor said, "Let pain be your guide as to what you can do."

Turns out my pain management strategy involves bikes, surprise surprise.

Since I'm not supposed to be bending my right leg past 90 degrees while riding, some modifications were in order-- I added a stem extender which moved the handlebars up about 4 inches, and then added a 80mm stem which I turned around backwards.  

Position so upright that it would make a Pashley Roadster blush.

BE HEALED

So, surgery went well I think. It's 7 days later and I am hobbling around pretty well without a crutch, though I still take one while walking to the subway and for longer trips.  I took last Tuesday through Friday off of work, expending some of my 42 remaining sick days.  An easy decision to make.  I had initially intended to go in to work on Friday, and probably could have managed it except for one critical oversight: poop.

I learned a valuable lesson in medicine this past week.  Opiates jam your shit up, very literally.  Since getting a drink of water was a pain, and going to the bathroom a bigger one, I didn't drink enough liquids on Wednesday or Thursday.  Also, I was enjoying the prescription of Vicodin that I was on, and the liberal instructions allowed me as many as 8 of those babies within 24 hours.  Well, as it turns out, that was dumb.  Friday morning I found that I had to take a poop but couldn't.  Not just a little constipated, but seriously impacted.  I've always had a pretty speedy digestive system, and this worked to my disadvantage this past week.  I spent the better part of the day on the toilet heaving and screaming and the like.  Look up "impacted stool remedy" and you'll get an idea of how things went.  I tried everything that they suggest on the websites and eventually succeeded to a degree, but gave myself a painful hernia in the process. Nice. The whole time I was sitting on the toilet I was paranoid that I was going to a) explode and b) wreck my surgery.  The one strict doctor's order was not to raise my leg to 90 degrees or greater if I could possibly help it.  I defy anyone to squeeze out a frozen cliff bar of poo with your legs at an obtuse angle.  Can't be done.

As for the surgery, I was in at 5 in the morning for pre-operation prep, was drugged up around 7 and was out of the operating room around 7:50 when I woke up to some paralyzed legs and a cozy hospital gown with heater built in.

It took about 6 more hours for the spinal anesthetic to wear off and for me to be able to move my toes again. Once that happened I was encouraged to see if I could move, pee and be on my way.  I still can't believe that i was able to walk out of the hospital some 9 hours after surgery.  Granted, I had crutches, and wan't particularly comfy at that point, but given that I'd just had hip surgery, doing pretty good.

What appeared in the MRI last month to be a torn labrum, actually ended up being a knob of cartilage on the ball of my hip and a matching cyst on the labrum.  Whenever I would bring my leg up to a seated angle, the knob of cartilage would bump into the labrum and throw my hip out of alignment.  This is certainly consistent with what I felt; it seemed as if I had a small gummy bear jammed in my hip joint whenever it moved.  Dr. Parvisi excised the nubbin and the cyst and put me back together.  I am supposed to let 'pain be my guide' and can start riding my bike as soon as tomorrow, if all goes well.  I'm going to make a test ride later this evening and we'll see how it goes.  Whee!