Never done.
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Turns out the plate in my shoulder is made of Titanium. Not clear whether it will set off the airport scanners, but I’m now carrying a little card from my surgeon to help explain if it does…
Guess I’ll find out the hard way the next time I get on a plane.
That’s my clavicle and its new best friend. For what it’s worth, I hate it. Definitely better than having those bones shifting around, but I really don’t like this.
…is they break if you hit them hard enough.
I think it is required, given my previous posts on all the benefits of cycling, to disclose that a few days ago I went out on a snowy morning when I probably shouldn’t have and broke my collarbone in two places. While this has provided lots of entertaining stories, it certainly raises some tough questions about something that I love to do. I’m scheduled for surgery on Wednesday to have the bone repaired and a metal plate inserted. I’m encouraged that apparently Lance Armstrong is wearing one too, but I suspect that his is some advanced carbon fiber molybdenum composite…
Earlier this week I stopped for a red light on Park Avenue. Like most mornings, it was a school of yellow taxis and me, and a few other hardy bikers. Temperatures were in the 20’s and I was sporting a functional but perhaps hilarious look. I snapped this after fumbling my camera out and raising even more questions in the minds of those cabbies. Ninja alien tourist? Psychotic bike commuter? Both, probably.
Not sure if my Latin is correct, but my meaning was to seize the coldest day.
I just got into the office after a fantastic but normal morning commute. My bike is leaning against the wall by the window, and I’ll feeling way too warm under all the layers I’m wearing. Hard to believe I’m overdressed for temps in the 20’s and cold winds.
Riding through Central Park on the way here I was thinking that there’s a special pleasure in seizing something wonderful that other people don’t seem to see. All those people on the subway, packed in and unhappy (you can see it on their faces and read it in their bodies) — I know they can’t all hop on a bike and ride to work, but some of them could. And if they did, wouldn’t they find the same glorious parkway, almost empty except for a few hardy runners and the very occasional cyclist? The trees are leafless, bare and structural. The sky is available, cold but embracing. The buildings are at the periphery, a reminder but distant enough. I can’t say the air is much sweeter, but there’s certainly less diesel in it.
And each day, I get the warm, fluid feeling of using my body to move me around. Sitting at my desk is a rest between the rides. I’m about to run for the Y around the corner and try to slip in a fast swim before I shower and dress in more office-appropriate clothes. But I have to say to anyone reading this: it’s available to you, in some form. Right now. It turns out that “freezing” cold weather really isn’t so cold with a little bit of clothing and your body making its own heat.
I’m grateful every day I ride for many things, including the wise friends who urged me on or supported me in crossing over the line from seeing it as crazy to realizing that everyone else is just missing it. Think I’m crazy for riding my bike to work in mid-January? Then you need to try it out and discover what’s out there that is vibrantly alive and rewarding.
Each time I encounter another cyclist (in this weather especially) I say hello or good morning and see if they’re up for a little conversation and commuter-shop-talk. This morning I met two and had great little human exchanges of a kind that you don’t get on a subway. Camaraderie in the cold helps, but they both had the same light in their faces that I knew was shining out of mine: we were out in it, seizing it and loving it, and all the people bundled up against the cold and stepping down off the curbs could barely see us go by.
I’m going to get a mounted camera so I can start posting some images from these rides and capture the changing seasons of the city.
To the water!
Through achingly slow steps over the past …who knows… I have finally gotten myself to the point of writing some new code in an area I’ve wanted to explore for awhile. I want to create richer UIs for interacting with information, like the old days in a way that’s been lost to me since I took up living in HTML and architecting on the server side, mostly.
I want to draw shapes again. Interact with them and the data they model.
This week finally brought the feel of winter to NYC streets. The wind reached inside and straight to the bones. The light was thin but blinding in the mornings, fast and short in the late afternoons. It’s tough when the sun’s setting by 4:30 and the avenues are filled with edgy taxis. The steam from my breath at red lights makes me feel a part of Con Edison’s underground network, sprouting my exertions up and out through the pavement too.
Morning commute temps ranged from 20’s to 30’s, and I tried a variety of gear to be comfortable and warm. Fingers are the hardest, because of the wind chill I guess, and they’re so isolated. I’m seriously tempted by the “lobster” style of gloves like these:
At least some of your fingers get company for warmth. Pearl Izumi makes one with two and two that I’ve heard good things about. For now, I’m using old snowboarding gauntlets that aren’t bad but a bit too thick in the fingers. A thin balaclava under a BMX helmet seems pretty good for the head (I’m only riding for 30 minutes each way), and my trusty Keene sneaker/shoes with wool socks do alright for the feet (another vulnerable spot on a bike in winter). I get pretty warm through the rest of my body, and have been just wearing loose jeans, or sometimes thermal bottoms underneath. My trusty Marmot insulated softshell over a winter biking jersey does a decent job of wicking moisture off me as I go, though by the time I hit midtown traffic I am working on my own terrarium. If I get out early enough I can usually squeeze in a quick swim at the Y before a hot shower, dry off in the sauna, and get to my desk around 9.
At that point, I’m ready to eat every scrap of food stashed near my desk, yogurt and granola and frozen berries, dried fruit and nuts. Sometimes a banana and an apple. On Wednesdays, there’s a great farmer’s market on 47th where I can pick up veggies and fruit after swimming. Lately the carrots have been a dream of crunchy, sweet and almost juicy. The apples and pears are delicious too.
Ironically, when I walk out for lunch, I feel much colder than when I’m pumping on the bike. But really, I’m just excited for Solstice so that I’ll know the light and warmth are coming back. I’m determined to make it all the way through the winter on the bike this year, though I haven’t sprung for those Schwalbe snow tires yet…
I left my old HP Laptop for a shiny new Mac early this year, and have barely used it since. I have fond feelings for the old slab, ugly and utilitarian as it was, for all the work it did for me. But I wasn’t prepared for the nasty smell of something burning coming from deep inside it when I finally plugged it back in yesterday. If you’ve worked around computers, you know that is a truly bad smell because it conveys the sense of painful loss and mortality that digital living is so good at obscuring.
But this story has a happy ending, honestly. And through a miraculous combination of technologies I now have that dear old laptop running perfectly right here inside my new Mac, whenever I need it. It’s hardware can never fail again, and it will never get old and die.
Here’s what I did:
What’s really amazing about this is that even though the laptop’s hard drive presumably was fine, I never even used it to resurrect the machine. This is the way it’s supposed to work but never seems to when you need it. The end of loss. Eternal life for your old devices.
Of course the irony is that you never really go back to use them…
I came back from a really nice ride (bike) around the North end of Manhattan, restored by crisp Fall weather and the pleasure of stealing an escape on a Sunday afternoon. At times, on a bike, the city opens up and the waterfront offers beauty while the streets offer vibrant life. I lost count of the delicious smells I went by, and after 90 minutes I was really ready for something satisfying back at home. But I was totally unprepared for what I found when I walked in to the kitchen. Milo handed me an aluminum foil package and said “I made this for you.”
Inside was a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich on a toasted english muffin. Still warm, with ketchup. Like some kind of little dream from every time I’ve come in from the cold, the wet, the mud, tired and hungry and ready to eat everything in the fridge, here was my own son handing me a delicious sandwich he made and saved for my return.
There are many frustrations and challenges of parenting, and there are many unexpected joys, too. Teach your children to appreciate food, to cook it, and share your pleasure in it with them. And some day, they may just hand you a delicious surprise.
Most of the time I feel happy with the exchanges of aging, and don’t really wish I could be my younger self. But I was just looking out the window, thinking about Fall weather and the winds on the water, and I remembered about 20 years ago when I was out on the water all the time, constantly chasing the wind and windsurfing with a good group of people. In the Fall, the strong winds would come and we would go out on stormy days, crazy days. The ’small craft advisories’ were like candy to us. When it was big enough, a handful of us would sail out from Napeague Harbor into the bottom of Gardiner’s Bay, under wicked skies and huge green rolling waves. I remember feeling scared and exhausted and excited before we even hit the big stuff. And then the wild time of it, flying chattering against the chop, speeding back and forth from the beach out into the deep and back again.
Launching up those waves was like taking a plane flight, looking down from 15 feet up in the air as the back of the waves dropped out under you. I learned to fly, to control the board in the air, hold my body, feel the wind across the sail while I was out of the water. Smacking down, landing, hanging on, tasting salt and blinded by spray, trying not to get thrown, or hurt, promising myself that if I made it back in I’d take a break. Laying down on the edge of the sand, water running up over me, in my wetsuit, laughing and gasping for breath, watching the sky and the seagulls and always the wind howling, my sail bumping up and down. I miss that so much it makes me want to cry. I miss being a member of a group that did that together. I miss my fearlessness, my younger energy, my young man’s joints and resilience.
I could say more, but reading the years back out of my body opens up so many places and people. I do wish I could go back sometimes and visit, just to stand there on the empty road, smell the heat of the day coming up, enjoy the richness of that present in its simplicity and passing.
But the seasons are changing again, and most of my flying takes place on a bicycle.
