Jigsaw Puzzle

An artist at work!

It's been a while since I started a Jigsaw Puzzle. This one is 1,000 pieces of fun, I think? As I started to work through it with a friend it became really clear that the blue sections were going to be really tough to figure out. They are. The easily identifiable pieces are done. The reds, greens and other unique colors are the easy ones, the blue colors in this puzzle are rough to say the least. It's making my head hurt, and that's usually not too easy.

It's Time to Ride My Bikes Again

That's me at some point during Riding to Recovery.
That's my boy Tugboat R.I.P.

It's been too long since I've ridden every day, or even close to it. You see,  I was hit from behind by an SUV in March of last year and it took me months of recovery to get over the long lasting effects of my concussion. I had extremely bad Vertigo for a very long time. I had no idea that Vertigo had so many symptoms, or that they were a part of recovering from
being concussed. Every day for months I felt shaky all over. I’d feel like the floor was spinning, and sometimes when I’d get up from a chair I’d fall back into it. It was ugly. I didn't dare ride a road bike. Instead I rode on bike paths that were wide, safe, an my bike of choice was a fat tired 29er. I also had some long-term issues with composing sentences as I wrote them. Writing is something that I love to do so that was a big hit so-to-speak. I'd type words twice, omit other words, and then the final problem to dog me was that I'd double type prepositions! Go figure.

An EMT friend of mine who just luckily

I nicknamed her the SuperHeavy -- 10K plus miles 

happened to be a part of the Southern Marin Rescue team that carted me off to Marin General Hospital on that ugly day last March, said to me recently, "The brain is a mystery." He'd laughed when I told him about the double prepositions thing. The brain is a mystery. The EMT’s name is Chris Lawrence and he also rides bikes. He’s an extremely good bike handler. I've seen him ride down sections of singletrack that no one else can clean. 

Lately, the problem for me in getting back onto my bikes has been my fitness. I weigh 20 lbs more than I did two years ago, and I’m two years older now. My cardio is maybe fifty percent from where it was back in the day. Aarf! So that’s a bummer. The good news is that I've overcome worse. My new goal is to get back down to 170 lbs before the end of this year. I can do that. All of the usual suspects will play into achieving that goal. No beers, a solid and healthy diet, and lots of miles on my bikes. My new work commute alone will shed weight. I’m up to the challenge. Bring it on.

I nicknamed her the C-Nago -- 20k plus miles

So, as of today I’ll write about each of my rides, just as I did during Riding to Recovery. I'll share my progress.  I hope to share some fun stories just as I did a couple of years back. After doing 1,000 consecutive rides, rain or shine, and almost beating Mark Weir’s one Million Feet of Climbing in one year was fun. Now I’m ready to have some fun again, but with different goals in mind. I have no idea yet where this is going. My seat belt is on!

This was the post that I wrote after reaching my last goal of doing 365 days of consecutive rides for Riding to Recovery. I’ll never regret that journey. The first year took my breath away. Doing another 635 rides were icing on the cake.

Funny Stuff

The last several years have been very challenging. I've actually never had so many hurdles presented to me in my entire life. Challenges that I never thought could have been thrown at me, and I'd already had plenty of them. Life's funny that way I guess.

During my entire life I believe that I've had  all of the ingredients for a great life recipe. Let's say for instance that there are three. A good partner, a good job, and also good health. Me? I always seem to have two out of the three ingredients. It's been pretty frustrating to say the least. At 49 years of age I'm pretty well resigned to just give up on the idea of having all three.

Having been beat up lately I've been digging really deep. What's been enlightening to me is how certain people that are around you, treat you once that they know that you're down. It reminded me of the fight scene in the movie Cool Hand Luke. Paul Newman was getting pummeled by George Kennedy, and some of the inmates just cheered on the beating, and then there were the few guys that turned their heads. "Just stay down Luke. Let him bloody your nose..." Stuart Rosenberg really caught a bit of our culture that's pretty true, unfortunately. People seem to like seeing others fall down, and then once that they are down they often want to kick them, instead of picking them up, and dusting them off,. In the blogosphere people call a lot of these people trolls, or haters, etc., but it's oddly endemic to our society.


That said, if you look closely around you, you just might find those that are like-minded. I've found some lately, and it's been great. I wish that I could find more of them, but it's hard and too infrequent.

Back to my main point, and yes, it took me a lot of time to get here. I'm surprised by just how many people
have kicked me in the gut since I finally hit the tarmac. Once people know that you're down, they tend to jump right in and make it worse for you. I guess that the word to the wise is to never reach the tarmac. I'm there, and I keep trying to get up.

I will get up... Believe me, I will get up.

Very Bad Statistics

I received this interesting report from one of mountain biking's founder, and it's disturbing. Here it is:

The Center for Investigative Journalism confirms something many of us already suspect. The Berkeley based non-profit news agency analyzed five years worth of data from 434 pedestrian fatalities in Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Mateo and San Francisco counties.

Sixty percent of the 238 motorists found to be at fault or suspected of a crime faced no criminal charges.

When drivers did face criminal charges, punishment often was light. Licenses rarely were taken away. Of those charged, less than 60 percent had their driving privileges suspended or revoked for even one day. Forty percent of those convicted faced no more than a day in jail; 13 drivers were jailed for more than a year. By contrast, those charged in accidental shootings often serve lengthy jail terms.

District attorneys fail to charge the drivers, saying juries sympathize with the motorists. Police occupied with other crimes don’t track down hit-and-run drivers. The state Department of Motor Vehicles doesn’t always pull licenses, at times hindered by the morass of paperwork required to get information from courts and police departments.

Echoing a common sentiment among prosecutors, San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said jurors see the cases as tragic accidents with no guilty party: “They’re all thinking, ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’ ”

Read more at CIR: Bay Area drivers who kill pedestrians rarely face punishment, analysis finds. H/T Mike S in Belmont, CA.

In other news, it appears a killer in Los Angeles received the memo that’s best to kill with your vehicle if you want to get away with the crime. The theme of murder by car is even occasionally used in TV crime shows.

 Here's the link if you care to share it: http://www.cyclelicio.us/2013/pedestrians-killed-drivers-not-prosecuted/