14 Days Later: The Crash Update

Tuesday afternoon it had been exactly two weeks since I crashed my fixie commuter on Edmondson Pike. Lots of folks ... well, a few folks ... have asked how everything is healing. Generally, I'd say "pretty well."

Here's the leg now:

Not bad, considering what it looked like two weeks ago:

Most of the credit for this leg looking so incredibly good goes to my mom, who also has very shapely calves. As to the skin on the leg, most of the credit there has to go to Lynn Greer at Gran Fondo (a.k.a., "the Greatest Bike Shop in the Universe"). When I went by the shop the day after the wreck, Lynn gave me a Road Rash Repair Kit, which has colloidal bandages. I put two of these on the big scraped area that evening, and kept them on for about 10 days. When I then peeled them off, the skin was kind of flakey and dry, but was otherwise all healed up.

I also put a smaller colloidal bandage on the knee. This was a deeper cut, but it's almost good now. I keep a band-aid on it just because jeans otherwise kind of scrape along it when I walk or sit down.

There was more road rash on my hip, but I have no pictures of that for the obvious reason that a photo of this much of the huge expanse of RandoBoy's fabled Quantum Quadriceps would make my female readers swoon. I put a large Nexcare tegaderm bandage on this area, and a tegaderm on the lighter road rash on my forearm. These did not stick as well as the colloidal bandages, particularly in the shower, so that I had to replace them about every other day; but they nonetheless worked fairly well.

RandoBoy Recommendation: If you crash and have road rash then you should dash ... ah, never mind. Just go to Gran Fondo and get a Road Rash Repair Kit. You can find smaller colloidal bandages at your local pharmacy, but these are not nearly as good. For lighter road rash, or if you can't find the colloidal bandages, get some tegaderms.

I also put a colloidal bandage on my mallelous:

Here's what this foot looked like after the crash:

While neither of these are exactly beautiful, for this I must blame my father. He, too, had ugly feet.

On the upside, the thing is healing, it doesn't hurt, and I learned something important: The little bone that sticks out on the side of your ankle is your mallelous. I hope to avoid future crashes on it, however, as I have a hard time remembering whether to put the double "L" and where.

Finally, the hand:

I show this because I think that the scars on the pinkie and ring finger could present an opportunity. Since they will look like capital Os, I could get tattoos on just the right-most knuckles -- the "bird" finger and the "trigger" finger -- to make the following:

Get your own knuckles at the knuckle tattoo gun.

Of course, I won't get the exclamation points on the right hand, but you get the idea.

Anyway, the hand is probably the thing that still bothers me the most, which you would expect since I had to get a stitch in the bird knuckle. Still it is healing pretty well, as you can see here:

This obviously looks better than it did:

Unfortunately, we were unable to catch the alien as it went scampering across the room. It has already grown to adulthood and has been spotted all over the country during the past weeks, wreaking havoc on an unsuspecting nation.

"I taught Contador how to fingerbang!"

In bookstores now, where no one can hear you scream. Well, they can, but then security comes and makes you go outside.