What a Wonderful World

Church signs are the haikus of the western world. They boil down the essence of the message to as many words as will fit on the sign and the letters that you have in the box ("Who the hell took all the L's -- you can't make HELL without L's!").

My two favorite church signs this year? Last week, I saw this one:

Come inside to talk to Jesus. Text message him now if you can't wait.

But my favorite, and one that actually struck a chord with me, is this one:

Grumbly hateful, or humbly grateful.

Sometimes I am grumbly hateful. I don't know many people that aren't from time to time, but now is when we are supposed to think of how really good we have it, and how much worse things could potentially suck, and be humbly grateful. This is not easy, however, for those of us for whom being humble -- due to our obvious superiority -- is difficult.

Nonetheless, one of the benefits of being a superhero with a far-above-average intelligence is that I can imagine what it would be like to not be so superior. Thanks to those ruminations, I was able to put together a list of what I'm grateful for:

1. RandoGirl and the RandoDaughter. They are still the two people with whom I most usually like to hang out. They keep me sane ... or close enough to it.
2. My other cycling friends. They make it much more fun -- and sometimes harder -- to be on a bike. But when they make it difficult, it's for my own good.
3. The rest of my family, who have managed to maintain reasonably good health this year.
4. Being lucky enough to ride (more or less) away from all of my crashes this year without permanent debilitating injury.
5. Being lucky enough to have won both of the races I entered this year, mostly thanks to being on teams with great riders.
6. Being lucky enough to be born into a good family in what I still consider the greatest country in the world, so that I have had a chance to make the most of my abilities and the freedom to present my ridiculous opinions in this blog.
7. My loyal flock (is three or more a flock?) of readers. I would probably write this blog regardless of whether anyone read it or not, but I get a huge kick out of people commenting on it and telling me later how much they enjoyed it. Or hated it, as the case may be.
8. Finally, roads like Spanntown Road, which I headed down to for a quick 40+ miles Thanksgiving morning.

It was chilly and windy, and this time of year I don't need to worry about burning off the mashed potatoes like this.

But I had the wind at my back all down this little five-mile lane, and there were absolutely no cars. Who could be grumbly hateful with that?

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.