A body of evidence

The good news is that I've recovered enough from my injuries to be able to blog again. I know, I'm sure you're all terribly relieved because there's nothing better to read on the planet than the indulgent ramblings of this particular nutter.

I took these pictures about a week after my rib-cracking flight over the Don Valley, the second crash in almost the same week I think...? It's a shame I didn't get these pics at the time (there was lots of blood/mud and the wounds looked really impressive) but it hurt way too much to pick up my camera! Actually, it hurt too much to do almost anything. Of all the injuries the two gashes to my left elbow (see picture right) are probably the most annoying. I must've landed in the trail elbows-first because a not insignificant amount of my skin and AB+ was invested in the dry earth there. It's annoying because I can't get them to scab over properly - they're both right on different sides of the bone so there's not much flesh underneath. Also, they're right on the pivot point of my elbow where the skin is constantly stretched every which way. Hence I've been going to bed wearing a long-sleeved top after waking up one morning to find that the bedsheet had mysteriously become part of my arm during the night. You'd be surprised how much one leans on one's elbows in an average day, although I'm starting to finally learn that hurts so probably shouldn't be done.

The most innocuous wound is where some vicious flora stabbed me in the back of my right thigh (see picture left) as I was somersaulting through the air...or should I say undergrowth. This makes it hurt when I sit down, and being the GAD sufferer I am I just assume everyone thinks I have haemorrhoids.

The most serious, and yet disappointing injury by far is the bruised and/or cracked ribs on the left side of my rib cage. There's no photo because there's nothing to see, and this is the disappointing part given how much it hurts.

And in different ways too. At the peak of the painfulness, getting out of bed was a humiliating five-to-ten-minute affair. As you can imagine, bending or stretching out from a prone position was impossible because of the ribs, and I couldn't prop myself up on my left elbow because that hurt too much too. I tried to roll myself out of bed and onto the floor and got trapped halfway on the ledge that runs along the side of the mattress one morning. Thankfully I didn't drop any money at this time, because reaching as far as the ground was an utter impossibility, and attempting it was enough to make me yelp out loud with the pain. If it had've been a $20 note then I'd have just had to stand on it with one foot, and remain in that place - wherever it was - for three or four days until my flexibility returned.

Good job it didn't happen on the street somewhere.

Basic bodily functions became a battle of endurance too. I lived in fear of the humble sneeze, which would take me by surprise and made me actually scream out loud. Coughing was out of the question too, particularly when you consider that it hurt too much to even clear my throat. This for a couple of days I sounded like Darth Vader dying of cancer as the phlegm death-rattled and rasped in my throat whenever I spoke. I couldn't blow my nose either so had to rely upon fingernails a lot of the time.

Going for a poo wasn't a barrel of laughs either. Did you know you used your ribs to poo? I didn't until I tried it. Damn, that hurt. My Mum had previously suggested I eat lots of fruit to make sure I didn't have to strain too hard, and I think she meant it as a joke but it turned out to be uncannily accurate. I'm not one of these people who treats dropping Mr. Brown off at the coast as a genuine day trip - I don't disappear into the bathroom with a book or a magazine for 45 minutes. Either I just don't appreciate it all that much or it doesn't stimulate my prostate gland as much as it does in other men. However, during my period of injury I found myself sat on the throne one day wishing there was a bottle of cod liver oil somewhere within reach. The idea would have been to chug the entire litre so that everything would just pour out of me as I finished off 'War and Peace'.

It's (literally) a relief to have all my *cough cough* movements working again properly, although the ribs are still twinging enough to make my shy away from the idea of an off-road ride anywhere. In a way this works out well because it gives me time to get the two pairs of wheels I've damaged fixed at the bike shop.

Equally, non-cycling parts of my lifestyle have been affected too. I haven't been able to grocery shop because there's no way I'd be able to lift the rucksack, get it on, or carry the additional bags I usually carry. Lifting weights is out of the question too, so the combination of zero exercise and only intermittent eating has my body looking in pretty poor shape...before you even consider the 'orrible yellow hue that the bruises currently are.

Anyway, the good news about all this is despite the pain and the inconvenience, I'm not really put off riding again, nor riding that particular trail. This is one of several signs of improved resilience lately, along with the communication breakdown I had with my magazine editor the other day. I seem to be coping better, which reminds me - I need to update my 'moods' line graph.

The simple love of a good woman...

...is what I'm really missing right now.

In another spectacular crash in the same section of the Don Valley trails I managed to plant the front wheel, 'endo' the bike, and bounce on my handlebars before being thrown over them and into the shrubbery. Similar landing as before, with the bike being another two-to-four feet down the slope.

I have bruised ribs. Well, I assume they're bruised by the symptoms. I don't think they can be broken because nothing in my rib cage moves when I press on it. So now I can't laugh, yawn, breathe in deeply, cough, blow my nose, move, or reach my hands over my head. Sneezing is fucking agony. Sitting down and getting up take 5-30 seconds each, as does getting in and out of bed. Anything that gets dropped on the floor, well, it's history. I'm typing pretty slowly too, though I am able to use my left hand as well. In fact I'm typing a lot faster than I'm actually moving right now.

Times like this make me remember I'm single - when you know there's no-one there when you get home. Nobody to dote, to nurse, to reassure, or even help me get into a comfortable sleeping position so I'm not screaming out loud as I try to wriggle myself comfortable. Nobody to tell me they love me despite the fact I feel like an invalid right now.

I'll type more when it hurts less. At least it gives me time to get the now S-shaped back wheel fixed while I can't think about riding anyway.

The jagged learning curve

I'd forgotten what a big deal career change is.

The last time I did it was from retail management to public relations, which required a trip to university in 1994 for three years, and a total of 123 rejection letters before I finally made it into a PR agency in London.

When I think back to that time, there was a lot if industry lingo I didn't understand. I didn't know the significance of 300dpi. I didn't know what "solus" meant. I had no idea what a DPS was. I even had to look up "stet" the first time I got a news release back that had been proof read by my boss.

Similarly I am having to learn many things the hard way when it comes to writing for a living.

The first thing I learned was that PR people tend to be reliable only for specific requests. I lost the best part of a week by e-mailing all my PR contacts just after receiving my first commission letter. I can now better understand that few PR people know their client organisations well enough to be able to select particular individuals that meet a story brief. However, I'd have appreciated more than two replies, and it was this that threw me the most. I thought my e-mail wasn't working, and the way I learned PR one ALWAYS responds to journalist requests, even if it is to say that you can't help this time around. I'd usually reply within 24-48 hours too, because it builds integrity with that particular journalist, and means they know no content is coming and its time to invoke the back-up plan. It's the best thing you can do when you can't actually give the journalist what they need.

It turns out that I need to scale back my expectations a little. Seeking information that way is very similar to applying for jobs. You send your request or application, and then hear nothing. Perhaps this lack of response is more a Canadian thing than a jobhunting thing?

My second mistake was in not getting back-up spokespeople. For one story I had a specific day and time in my calendar, as proposed by a spokesperson. He failed to show, and has failed to answer any of my e-mails since then. This lost me several days because the article I'd been commissioned to write needed to be based on an interview. I had no back-ups.

The one thing I've learned is that writing directly from web research is actually much quicker and easier than I'd previously thought. The trouble with interviews is just the basic logistics of them. Even when I'd found the right person to interview, just the simple task of pinning down a day and time when we could speak proved to be the most frustrating and time-consuming aspect of the whole process. Some interviews have been only 20 minutes long, but they've taken several days to identify the right person, and another few days to reach them...and another few days to find a slot in their diary.

The odd thing about writing is that the writing part doesn't take that long - it seems to be more about the research beforehand.

In terms of my ability to cope with all the above then I don't think I'm doing too badly. I'm a bit stressed when I'm on, or past deadline (for that has been the case a couple of times). However, depression has been noticeable only by its absence, and for most of the time I have been able to divert anxiety into action. I just wish my first proper writing assignment had gone more smoothly. I feel a little bloodied by the jagged spikes on the learning curve, and I'm embarrassed by the fact that my editor, through no choice of her own, has been 'along for the ride' on my rollercoaster of falling flat and picking myself up again.

The only way I can make it up to her is via better, more timely stories. So I'd better get on with it - I also need to drop my main MTB wheels off to get the cones tightened, the broken spokes replaced, and the rims trued. The new bottom bracket needs to be re-tightened and I may have to fork out $20 for the wrench that fits it. I need to find references for my application to the Apple store. The washing up is overdue, and I still haven't set up my 'work' phone line that'll enable me to claim the tax back in April next year. And I need milk and lime juice, amongst other things.

We live and learn.

plentyoffreaks.com

Phew.

Everything is an effort right now.

It's half-past-two on Sunday and I just staggered back with the grocery shopping, an experience made all the more interesting by the two days that preceded it.

Friday night was a bit of a sesh with the chaps, and as a result I had a bit of a sleep in on Saturday. Well, quite a large sleep-in on Saturday. OK, I admit it. I didn't actually get out of bed on Saturday at all. So, cue Sunday lunchtime when I eventually surfaced, one day and four hours behind in my drug regime. I popped the pills anyway, showered, brushed my teeth, dressed, wrote a grocery shopping list and stumbled out the door and into the street.

Cue weird withdrawal effects again, though this time I felt so sedated I was barely capable of emotions at all - they felt like too much effort. I walked slowly and carefully South down the street, feeling like a decent gust of wind might blow me over. My T-shirt felt a little slacker on me than usual, contributing to my overall conclusion that I am wasting away.

Tim Hortons was the next stop. No milk and no bread = nothing for breakfast and no coffee possible so a pit stop was essential to stop me from fainting from somewhere along the way. Surprisingly my dark glasses weren't enough to prevent the most persistent of women from speaking to me in Tim's, even though they and my overall body language clearly communicated, "Leave me alone". I wolfed down a BLT and guzzled my coffee so I could leave all the sooner. As I drifted into and along the Danforth my thoughts dwelled on the invisible woman again.

It's a week since I e-mailed her to say how I felt, how much I wanted to see her, and what information and preferences I'd need from her in order to visit her in hospital. For example, the name of the hospital might help me narrow things down a bit. That's where she's been, and that's the reason for the lack of communication of late. Yet a week has gone by and I've heard nothing, so it looks like it's all over. There doesn't seem to be a role that I can play in her life. I'm pretty sure she could use having me around, and all week I've had daydreams of showing up with a bag of grapes (which I'm lead to believe is the traditional thing to bring someone who's in hospital) and a tea light. Why a tea light? Because I could have lit it and placed it on her bedside table as I popped the occasional grape into her mouth, thereby proclaiming the occasion our first candlelit dinner. What a terrible waste of such thoughtful and romantic consideration.

The good news is that I don't feel depressed. I don't even feel sad right now, just exhaustively resigned to the fact that I am wasting my time trying. In retrospect, I have tried everything possible to invite her into my life and to get into hers without invoking a restraining order. From the start I've only asked two things of her, to be honest, and to keep me in the loop. Yet she seems unable or reticent to do either of those simple things. I am always out of the loop, usually last to know, and frequently fighting for even the slightest sliver of information. Sometimes that sought-after snippet of info arrives, but then it isn't always true so it makes the waiting worthless. And all that before I even mention the cognitive distortions I get every day, telling me she's not really real. I've tried to get these eliminated too, by asking her to meet with someone else from her life - her Dad, who also mountainbikes I'm led to believe. Her ex-husband, who appears to be doing the majority of the care taking right now, lives only a few blocks from me I'm led to believe, and could probably use an extra person to split the load with. Yet all these requests have been e-mailed into a black hole and never, ever returned.

It just makes me feel that I can't be that important to her. So, why am I even bothering?

This train of thought got me as far as Zellers as I ambled along, steering clear of other people and trying to disguise the fact that I was blatantly light-headed, and probably walking as much from side-to-side as I was walking forwards. I fought to maintain the absence of smoking I'd enjoyed by being passed out for a day but gave in by the other side of Zellers, stopping at a convenience store to grab some smokes. I already felt like I needed to go to the bathroom despite doing so before leaving the house, so I had a very slow walk under the shelter of the storefronts around the parking lot. I finished my cigarette at the ashtray affixed to the wall, and fumbled in my pocket for the quarter (25 cents) I'd need for the shopping cart in Metro. When I turned into the store, I wondered where all the shopping carts had gone before I realised I was in Staples rather than Metro.

OK, so despite the food I still wasn't functioning as well as I should be.

I turned around and made it into Metro, a few steps further along the sidewalk. I floated my way through three Men's Health recipes, the deodorant, and facewash I needed. Thankfully they have a customer bathroom there so I parked the cart and headed in with my rucksack, clutching my stomach as I went. The floor was as wet as the shower room in the last gym I was in, but - thank heaven for small mercies - they did actually have toilet paper. I mopped the seat thoroughly.

It was good that I did risk the public bathroom. Let's just say that what came out had a high water content so five minutes and 50 metres of toilet paper later I was ready to wash my hands and leave. Grocery shopping has been an arduous task since the separation, mainly because it was one of the few times I'd use the car. Along with the short pause at Tim Horton's it was a two-hour round trip. As I flipped and flopped across the parking lot towards the Victoria Park Avenue subway station, rucksack straining on my shoulders and the 'green' shopping bag in each hand brushing my legs as I walked, I reflected on the plentyoffish.com date I'd had Friday afternoon.

It was OK I guess, though on meeting her outside of the theatre where we were to catch a comedic play on Friday afternoon I realised why her POF.com photos had all been headshots. Still, she looked cute, wasn't unattractive, and didn't mind that I was a few minutes late. We chatted, sank a beer, caught the play that turned out to be funny because of its inherent and unrelenting un-funniness, and went for nachos. I thought the fact that she was a paramedic was pretty cool. We didn't click though, and before writing this I sent her a short e-mail to say as much. After all, there's nothing worse than ambiguity - the experience with the invisible woman has reinforced that belief, if nothing else. Unfortunately, I'm still subconsciously using the invisible woman as a 'gold standard' by which to judge other women. Those were the things I noticed on the date: "Hmm, I'm nowhere near as sexually attracted to this woman as I am to the invisible woman," happened almost immediately. "There's no innuendo, no ball-busting, no verbal jousting, no 'zip' like there is with her," was the conclusion I came to as we finished the nachos. I walked her back to her bike but we both fumbled our words when the conversation turned to the topic of a next date, so I hope that she's feeling similarly to me.

Still, at least it didn't turn into a POF horror-story that caused me titling my blog entry so. I've heard many horror stories from friends, and will probably either blog about them soon, or even turn them into an article if I can find the right publication to print it.

The other, sadder conclusion though was that - as lonely as I feel from time-to-time - I'm not ready for another relationship right now. I think I'll leave my POF profile up in case a woman comes along who cannot resist contacting me, but being a man that's unlikely even in this pseudo-female liberated time we live in. When it comes to dating, women are the buyers and it's a buyers market.

Me and my technicolour dream skin II

Click here to read the first part of this story. Hmmm...I'm a bit disappointed. The reason I chose this particular title is because I expected to be all colours of the rainbow by now. But I'm not.

Don't get me wrong - my numerous bruises are still pretty impressive, just not worthy of a bunch more self-portrait photos. That said, I am particularly proud of the bruise that came up around the 12cm-long slice into my left leg. It's so distinct that - were I educated in the appropriate branch of "-ology" - I'd be able to tell you the genus, species, and classification of flora/fauna that bitch-slapped my thigh.

When people ask my why I keep mountainbiking the answer is always the same - to put myself in harm's way, and challenge my anxiety head-on. Indeed, as in my time-trialling back in the UK some years ago, some of my best rides are accomplished with the right mix of aggression, assertion, and focus. I used to be pretty good on courses with rolling hills. I'd attack them and, instead of changing down a gear, I'd try to maintain the same pace by sprinting over them. One of the key indicators of my fitness level would be how much I was gasping as I crested the hill, and how quickly I could return to optimum speed and get my breathing back under control afterwards.

That's the key to breaking the other riders' will. It's bad enough to be passed on an uphill section, but if you get to the top and realise that the guy who only just passed you didn't even slow down to recover and is now a tiny speck on the horizon, it's pretty crushing. I expect Lance will similarly mutilate most of his opposition in the Alps and Pyrenees in a few days' time, which reminds me - I really must figure out which cable channel the Tour de France is on.

Point #2 about all this is that bruising and bleeding are side effects of the drug I'm on. Well, that's not quite true. I doubt the FDA or whatever the Canadian equivalent is would allow a drug on the market that directly bruised people who took it! I guess it'd be more accurate to say that the drug induces haemophilia-like symptoms. All it takes is for a shin to brush a table leg and - hey presto - the next day "Billy" or "Aspvik" is stamped backwards in purple on my skin.

Point #3 is that crashing usually isn't as bad as one expects. GAD is probably best described as the fear of fear itself. Sometimes one can be experiencing fear-like symptoms (increased heart rate, sweating, agitation, twitching) without being able to describe what it is that you actually fear. Sometimes there isn't anything, but the whole problem is that you can't just switch it off. This is why CBT is based on the idea of retraining the mind to be able to rationalise one's fearful feelings and say, "Is there actually anything I need to worry about right now? What's the worst that could happen? Honestly, how likely is that to actually happen? Has it ever happened before, was I mistaken?" So, in a way, the crashing is almost as important as the riding itself. It's the only way you can learn that it really wasn't as terrible as you expected.

That said, it's not like there's no terror. In the 'crashing' example on the first part of this story, there was muchos dreados as I headed towards the dog-leg right turn I was never going to make. Still, I can't specify what I was actually dreading - I wasn't imagining myself being impaled on a tree stump or similar - just a horrible, sickly, panic-inducing, "Oh no - I'm out of control" feeling that rose up inside me. It's kind of a shame because it makes me wonder, were I able to suppress those feelings, would I have actually been able to make the turn...? I guess it's the same as training soldiers to be calm when under fire. If you only have a split-second to get a shot off before somebody shoots you, then it's sorta important to remain calm and make sure your solitary shot finds its target.

This is why (point #4) me making a grab for the overhead branch in order to ensure the bike took the fall instead of me is such a worthy achievement. It means I was thinking rationally. I feared disaster, yes, and was caught in the grip of mind-bending anxiety admittedly. But, it means that in the split-second beforehand my thought process must have gone along the lines of:

1. "Gosh, it's lovely and sunny up here. Is that a chipmunk over there? Oh...hang on a moment...this suddenly doesn't seem to be going too well. I've lost control of the back end of the bike, and I'm now losing control of the front as well. That's not so good;"
2. "Yep, I thought so. I'm not actually riding this bike anymore. It's just going wherever it wants to go, and it just happens to be my feet locked into the pedals and my hands on the bars;"
3. "Oh dear. I can't imagine this is going to turn out very well. There's a massive, steep drop ahead of me and to my left, and that seems to be where I'm heading and there doesn't seem to be much I can do about it;"
4. "I suppose I could try really throwing the front wheel into the right-hand turn?"
5. "No, I don't think I'm going to be able to do that. I'm just going way too fast for a turn like that, plus I don't know what's around the corner;"
6. "Yeah, this feels like I'm about to take a flying lesson - do I really want to do that?"
7. "Hmm...bikes weren't really designed to fly, and there's lots of trees and branches around here so it's more likely I'd get caught up in those than actually get airborne. Besides, you just don't hear about people or bikes being able to maintain flight for any significant quantity of time, so perhaps I should think of an alternative arrangement..."
8. "Oh - talking of branches, there's one right there coming up in front of me. I wonder if it would take my weight?"
9. "Well, it looks pretty thick, and I don't see any other branches I could reach that'd be stronger. Besides, it's probably better to try to slow my body down a bit even if I can't slow the bike down;"
10. "Yeah, I reckon that's my best bet. The front wheel will probably turn at right-angles as soon as I let go of the handlebars, so I'll have to get my hands onto that branch pretty fuckin' quickly. Sorry Al Gore, but I think I'm about to vandalise a tree;"
11. "Got it! Yeah, it's bending under my momentum, but it feels pretty sturdy. That's cool, I should be OK now;"
12. "OK, here it comes...here we go...";
    
13. "SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!!"

Cue opening my eyes, bloodied and cleaved, with a tree branch in my hands and a damp, soggy feeling in the back of my shorts (the wet mud I landed on - I didn't actually go as far as shitting myself).

Not that time anyway.

And afterwards:

"Wow! What happened there? I still have the branch in my hands but I seem to be a long way from where I was when I closed my eyes. OK, where does it hurt? Left thigh, left calf, left ankle, back of my right knee, left hip, left shoulder blade, and my ribs at the back. Oh, and the knuckles on my left hand. Yuk - my socks are full of mud. I still have my crash hat on though so I can't be that badly hurt. Where the fuck is my bike though?"

It's a running joke amongst cyclists in the UK that you can tell how badly injured a rider is after a crash by what he/she says first. If their first comment, assuming they're not winded, is something along the lines of, "Is my bike OK?" then you know they're pretty much OK no matter how much blood and gore there might be.

If they don't say anything, then call an ambulance.

Point #5 is that, once I'd got both me and my bike back onto the trail, I carried on riding. This is crucial because after a bad crash, whether because it was notably terrifying or notably painful, it is possible to be out-psyched by the crash itself. Kinda like a mini-version of post traumatic stress disorder. If you don't start riding again immediately, then it can take a long time to do so because you allow the fear to take control of you. Conversely, if you get back on the bike then you're using your body to combat your mind. Keep riding, and your mind has no choice but to conclude that the crash - whilst inconvenient - wasn't enough to stop you in your tracks. It makes it 'just routine'. Were I more generous, I'd conclude that there must be some semblance of courage or valour in there.

This is also why I made sure that I was out on my bike again two days later. I didn't do the exact-same trail again, but I might ride that today to see if I can do it better this time.

I think I need to change out of my pyjamas first though.