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Tomorrow will be a year since I picked myself up off the road with my skateboard under my arm and my right arm twisted backwards and braced across my head. I now understand why this pain is being visited upon my Achille’s heel. My mind was trying to ignore this date, but the body demands its observance. That crash, forever known as the necessary crash, changed my life.

Without that decision to drop the car at the shop and skateboard home I could never have become a Vicodin zombie. I would not have watched every episode of Wife Swap and written extensive notes on that show’s significance to solving the nation’s intransigent political divide. I would not have gained that extra fifteen lbs that carried me into dangerous new territory. If I had not gotten on that skateboard at the top of the road and pointed it down into a 90 degree corner I would not be dropping suckers on the trails like I have been lately, and will soon be doing again. Enjoy the holiday suckers, it is my gift to you. And to those who drop me? It is a holiday for them too, because I don’t care if I ever catch them, they know I am back there trying. Rust never sleeps for any of us.

That crash, forever to be known as the Crash of Great Clarity, tumbled me through the rocks and dumped me on the banks of humility. That crash turned me inside out physically, mentally, and spiritually. I highly recommend a hard slam to the pavement if you are ever at loose ends about what you want from this life. Thanks to that crash, where my head bounced off the road like a croquet ball, I walked up the stairs to a place called Journeys in Yoga. There, I was reintroduced to my body, my breath, and my mind and I found a lot worth saving in those places.

After that crash, which will forever be known as the Great Confrontation with Reality, I walked out this front door every morning and night and guided by the voices in my head, walked damn near 50 lbs of baggage off of myself. I let the good folks at Natural Health Consultants teach me how to eat. Here’s the secret- food has stuff in it that your body needs.

This is not the Academy awards. I only won back 95% of my right arm after all, but I have a lot of people to thank. I’m not one to put people’s names out on the internet, so I’m going to do the best I can and you can figure it out from there.

Thanks friends and family for hanging tough with me when I really, truly needed help. Thanks for picking me up and taking me to Stinky’s Fish Camp all those times. That, and watching the Tour were the only fun I had in July. Thanks for Wellness Camp. Thanks for the good counsel and the deep slumbers on your couches, and the grocery deliveries. I will try to get better about asking for help before things get to the skateboard point. Thanks for that too, the skateboard that made it all possible.

Thanks to Dave B, who I ran into outside the grocery store that day. You cheered me on before I could even feel a difference, before I believed I was actually trying to change my life. That carried me for weeks. Thanks also to Walt D, who poured over the Chinese medicine book with me and helped me think through the famous brown rice and kale diet. Again, I heard everything you said that day and I wrung months of encouragement from our conversation. Thank you Bill and Sonia, for hooking me up with the yoga. Bill told me “It’s your body Juancho, you can do whatever you want with it.” It would have been far easier to never mention yoga to me again after the first 30 sarcastic remarks out of me. Sometimes it just takes that many tries. Hey y’all, that’s your body right there, you can do what you want with it.

Thanks to my riding buddies. My desire to not just return to the bike, but to shock you all with a true return to form has been the burning coal in my heart from September until today. I did it for all of us and I hope you believe that. Thanks also to the greater cycling community of Tallahassee and beyond. I have never been one to ride with anyone but the same poor saps I write about all the time. That is complicated enough, but this year I have enjoyed rides with:

BC crew
Tallahassee Mountain Bike Association,
Thursday Night Forest Loop,
Dogboy, Nat King, and Uncle Todd for administering some sublime beatdowns
the Robot Army
Some Mexican guys on their way to their restaurant jobs
Random strangers I met only by jersey color and a few miles of trail.
That one road ride

Every ride matters for all kinds of reasons.

And thank you, my internet community, for taking that ride with me.

See you on the trail,

Juancho

Hell is waiting.

I ignored the tenderness in my left heel for the past week, riding hurt about 4 times, most of those rides at a nuclear pace. I could stagger to the bike dragging my maimed left foot, clip in and forget about it. Once the blood started flowing it felt fine. The pain would subside and by the end of the ride I could walk almost normal. I figured riding was good for it. When it got stiff as the day went on I took it to yoga class and stretched it out with a little Adho Mukha Svanasana, thinking that ought to straighten things out.

This would prove to be a stupid treatment plan. For want of a nail the shoe was lost, and the horse, the soldier, the war. Now I have spent this long and lovely weekend back in the healing place, living the shut-in’s schedule. Now that I have acknowledged the injury, and given it due respect, I can feel it getting better. Crutches, ice, heat, ibuprofen, epsom salts, and a whole lot of pushing my bottom lip out as far as it will go.

Waiting is hard work, and one must train for it as with any other discipline. I have experience now, and I know what must be done. Nothing. Rest means rest. No more staggering around dragging my lame hoof behind me. When physical expression is hampered, I retreat to the life of the mind. I could practice guitar, paint a picture, write on my blog, edit the manifesto, file my files, or make the cat a new costume (I’m thinking a Lebron James jersey?) I could do those things, but instead I choose to watch the clock, afraid that if I take my eyes from it time will stop, and my foot will never heal.

As Wrecking Ball would say, “That ain’t shit. Call me when you have a real problem.”

Juancho

I stopped in at ZONE 5 bikes and coffee (and beer) today to see what all the hype was about. The hype is quite justified when a new shop opens up sporting 5 beers on tap, an espresso machine, a Euro lunch menu, and an Ellsworth dealership. While he had me in the spell of his shock and awe campaign he showed off the 2011-12 BikeChain Posse cycling kit. Kit is a word cyclists use to describe their clothing, a term I have never accepted. I prefer bike stuff, or manotard. Anyway, while displaying both a strong present and an attractive future, he asks me an innocent question.

Where’s your crew been?

I have to say, that is a damn good question. I can only account for Mystery, who is on temporary medical leave. The rest of this hypothetical (hypotenusical?) crew is enjoying a prolonged hiatus. Sure the reservists rearing babies account for their one weekend a month, but the former full-timers are pretty much AWOL.

One robot is running above average and quickly moving towards earning his non-robot name back, but one robot does not an army make.

BC’s got a clubhouse, and BRC ain’t even got a club.

Juancho

Ninety-five degrees in drought conditions used to guarantee a man some peace if he was brave enough to ride the Munson Hills trail. All you had to do was deflate your tires to 8 lbs and get to suffering. Now that it has been reduced to every trail USA status and paved over like a pitcher’s mound it is a straight-up race track. I pulled into the parking lot bumping that new Lady Gaga and crowds of riders receded like the tide. There had to be 100 of them, or at least 30. The Wrecking Ball was there, grinning like Timothy Leary and I knew it was so, so on.

We rolled out a first lap at a sporting, but conversational pace and I began to doubt the on-ness of the evening. Maybe a nice, friendly ride was in order after all tonight? We finished that first lap in the same Soviet-style form in which we began, wheel to wheel, no gaps, no passing.

The second lap thinned the herd a bit and all doubt of the on-factor fell away. The dust was thick towards the back of the pack and WB’s and my commenting tapered off with the rising of the pace. Swoosh! Riders were blowing up now, yanking out of the way in desperation, gasping on the dust. Many fell victim to the brown ice and crashed out. I could hear WB’s asthmatic rumble pumping like the bellows, but you could not fit a sheet of paper between his wheel and the one in front of him. During a discrepancy in the trees I made a quick move using my superior handling skills and edged him out of the way with a little gentle elbow contact. He countered moments later using what I am certain is an unauthorized line. It all seems a blur now, but at some point WB was no longer in front of me, but laying down off the trail in a swirling cloud of dirt. I flashed him the whites of my eyes and focused on the next wheel ahead of me.

From that point on I knew only pain and hypoxic dreams. I wasn’t on my bike anymore I was 10 years-old and playing in the hose in the front yard. I wasn’t on the bike, I was taking the GRE the day after Halloween in 1997. I wasn’t on the bike I was an old hound dog sleeping under the porch. In truth, and you probably figured this out already, I was on the bike- and getting dropped.

Still proud,

Juancho

I am back at the BRC bridge and ready to get to work. I am a little wobbly after such a long break, but throw off the lines and weigh the anchor, we are going to take this blog to sea once again.

I missed an incredible week of comely weather here in Tallahassee and what seems like a year’s worth of riding events. It is a good thing I don’t participate in riding events or else I would be really disappointed. Instead, I am excited about clippping in and pointing in some random direction tomorrow and reacquainting myself with the Titus.

This doesn’t count as much of a “post” but at least I used some bloggy quotation marks.

Juancho