Spirit of Cycling

The tempeerature is showing about 11 degrees and there is about 10/12 inches of snow on the ground - at the same time the sun is shining and the sky is a beautiful blue. What a day for a bike ride, right? Well, the good news is that my poor body has recovered to the point where I am now doing 12/13 miles per session on the stationary bike in our community gym. I generally hate the non-moving, indoor bike experience but after three major surgeries and a four month layoff I'm thrilled just to have my legs moving. I started out slowly and have not yet programmed in anything but the gentlest of hills but I've got some energy back and am really starting to feel pretty good again. To complete this comeback tale I also joined up with my tennis buddies yesterday and played an hour and a half of tennis. I will not pretend that I bore any resemblance to Rafa or Roger but I managed to move around and I could hit without pain. And, perhaps more importantly, I am still moving around today without any problems. So, now that I have worked my way back to some semblance of normalcy I have one more appointment with the surgeon. I will go back in the hospital the day after Super Bowl Sunday for the thyroid surgery. I had some preliminary testing this past week which indicated that once again the cancer is confined to the thyroid - the lymphy nodes all appear to be clear. I am told that this one should be a little easier - maybe I will have the doctor put that in writing.

Thanksgiving 2013

Thanksgiving morning and we have the New York parade on the television, Susan is preparing a turkey and all the trimmings, and we are anticipating the arrival of Kelli and Katherine and their families. What could be normal than that, right? Well, in our house we are most grateful for the "normal" this year. This blog was never intended to be a series of medical bulletins but life has a way of throwing curves and change-ups even when one is accustomed to a fastball right down the middle.
The last surgery went well...the cancer is gone, the pathology report indicated a stage 1 tumor with no spread to lymph glands nor to surrounding tissue. There will be no need for either chemo or radiation although I will be following up with my doctor forever. Needless to say this news was cause for a huge sense of relief.
In all honesty I am still in recovery mode - three major surgeries in a six-week period is no small thing - but every day is a bit better than the day before and I continue to look forward to the day I can take the bike down from the hooks and venture out on the roads.
To any and all who made read this I hope your Thanksgiving is as meaningful as ours is this year. I am grateful to be alive firstly and thrilled that I can celebrate this day with children and grandkids. And to Susan - what can I say? She has been so strong throughout and I couldn't have made it without her: cheerleader, caretaker, first line of support.

Fall Colors...

In most years this photo would have been taken in the course of a bike ride through the beautiful (and frequently underrated) New Jersey countryside. This, however, is not a normal year. Susan and I went out for a "drive in the country" a few days ago and it was one of the few days I've even been out of the house in the last month or so. The lung surgery was a complete success but the recovery is longer than I expected and there are few alternatives to simple rest and recovery. Fortunately for me I can get a pretty good sampling of our fall colors by simply walking out the door. The photo to the left is actually the scene from our back deck, our back yard so to speak. And a short walk through the neighborhood leads to more of the same. So much as I would like to be out on the bike I don't feel too deprived of the seasonal beauty.
With the lung and leg just about healed it is time for step three in this medical process. Wednesday I will be at the hospital for some further tests and Thursday I check back in for the colon surgery scheduled for that afternoon. I'd be a liar if I said I was looking forward to it; on the other hand I am anxious to get it over with and be able to move on. The surgeon is very optimistic that once the surgery is done the cancer will be gone and the problem resolved. They do not anticipate radiation or chemo - the followup will be annual check ups. There is, of course, one more chapter to be written - the thyroid - but this week is major and I will be most gratefull to have it behind me.

The bike is still hanging

My sister-in-law called the other day and asked whether I had been out for a ride on what was truly a gorgeous fall day. I said the bike was still where I left it and the best I could do was to give it a quick wave as I passed through the garage on the way to a couple of check-up visits with my new BFFs at the Princeton Hospital. The good news is that since the last post I have successfully passed through two surgeries and can say that I'm happy (and a little relieved as well) with both. The first was to excise the tumor on my leg. The good news here is that the tumor turned out to be benign and the skin graft , while leaving a bit of ugliness on the leg, was a complete success. And a week following the leg procedure I went back for the lung surgery. This time the piece they pulled turned out to be cancerous but they classified it as a "stage 1" and are confident they got it all. The follow-up biopsies show no signs of cancer in either the surrounding tissue or the lymph nodes. Needless to say I was greatly relieved and there is no question I dodged a bullet. The recovery from lung surgery is a bit tedious (translation: don't run out of percocet) but every time I have to reach for a pain pill I remind myself that the cancer is gone and I have a very healthy set of lungs.
The next step will be to get physically ready for the colon surgery. The doctors are telling me that this is also very curable. The cancer is also in an early stage and the expectation is for a complete recovery. We are tentatively looking at three to four weeks for a date for the surgery. I cannot honestly say I'm looking forward to it - I would much rather be planning for the Covered Bridges ride in late October - but I do want it done and over with.
I still have moments where I think is this really happening? Is it real or some sort of bizarre dream? The discovery of three cancers all within a ten day period sounds more like a possible script for a B movie than a reality in my life story. However, the bike will be waiting for me, my tennis partners are holding my place in our Thursday tennis group. At worst this is a bit of an ordeal for the moment and at best it is something I think we will look back on as an ugly episode that passed and life goes on.
A final note: throughout these last few weeks Susan has been at the hospital, at the doctor's visits and with me every step of the way. She has changed dressings, helped me in and out of bed when the pain was severe, dispensed the meds when I needed them and generally been a pillar of strength and support. I cannot imagine doing this without her.

Strange photo

A strange photo indeed. Yesterday was a gorgeous fall day in New Jersey and the bike and I were out roaming the Sourlands. I did fifty miles and truly had a great ride. So why is the bike now hanging from the hooks in the garage?
One of my fellow riders on the cross country ride in June was an eminent surgeon from Connecticut and he took one look at the little "fatty tumor" I've had on my right leg for years and gave me a very convincing argument for having it checked out when I got back home. So, to make a long story a little shorter, I have now gone from a simple ultrasound to two MRIs and a full body PET scan. The bottom line is that they have found highly suspicious spots on my thyroid, my lung, and my lower colon...I have gone from feeling like I could do the Tour de France to feeling a little like a walking time bomb. The good news in all of this is that everything seems to be in very early stages and very curable. I have a surgery scheduled for tomorrow and the doctors are conferring today (they just confirmed the colon spot this morning) to see who gets first dibs on a body part. So while I am concerned I am not really frightened - and not incidentally Susan has been a huge support through all these disclosures over the last couple of weeks. I don't know how I would get through this without her.
I totalled up my mileage last night - I'm about 50 miles shy of 4,000 for the year. My original goal was 6,000. I do expect I will get to 5,000 - the bike is on the hooks waiting for me.

Payback....

Yesterday and today are probably two of the finest days of the summer. The temperature is maybe 76, 77 degrees, light puffy couds and blue skies, and virtually zero humidity. So am I out riding? No, I am not. Instead of being on the bike I spent yesterday morning at the dermatologist's and today I was at home recuperating. Recuperating from what you might ask (or you might not but I will tell you anyway).
Among other things on my "to-do" list after the ride to Boston was to catch up on some doctor visits. And on the list was a trip to the dematologist. Needless to say I spend a lot of time in the sun - actually I grew up in the era when we sat on the beach and baked because to have a deep tan was to be "cool". Well, I have found out that down the road there is payment exacted for that kind of "cool". My doctor found three little spots she labeled basal cell carcinoma...certainly not as bad as malanoma but that "carcinoma" word sure is an attention getter. And so yesterday morning I submitted to what they call Mohs surgery on the upper portion of one ear - yes, the ear of all places. They basically slice off a layer at the site, test it, let you go if it is OK or bring you back in and slice off some more until they get it all. So I had two iterations with the surgeon and the scalpel and then when home with a huge bandage on my ear. I am told that they very frequently see this kind of thing on the ear because people are very careful to lather up the arms, the face, etc but often don't even consider the ears...So, on the one hand I'm very glad they got it all but then I remember the blisters I had from the sun going through the desert on the XC in 09. Direct connection? Who knows but I'm sure it didn't help. Meanwhile, the weather forecast for tomorrow is more of the same great weather and you can bet I will be covered in the best sunscreen money can buy.

Flattered or insulted???

The local bike club (Princeton Freewheelers) sponsors and organizes what they call the event every first Saturday in August. It is half a dozen planned riding routes from sixteen to one hundred miles through the New Jersey country side, mainly farming and horse ranch terrritory. It attracts a couple of thousand people from all over the tri-state area with every skill level from sneakers and a cross trainer to amateur racing teams with 5 and ten thousand dollar bikes. I started doing the ride almost twenty years ago and remember signing up for my first metric century and afterwards needing about three days to recover (and I think I wore sneakers too - although I did have a decent road bike).
Yesterday morning did not look good at 6:30 as I was packing up the bike - dark clouds in the west and talk of possible (probable?) showers throughout the day. However, I thought I just sailed through three days of real rain on my end-of-cross country trip so what's a little warm mist when a good ride is planned. So at 7:15 I found myself heading out to the country with a few hundred other cycling nut-cases determined to get in 100 miles before the downpours started. We made it to the first SAG at the thirty mile point with no moisture but after a few minutes for fresh water and a couple peanut butter snacks the drops started coming. And they continued to come on and off for the next 70 miles. I guess the good news was that it was better than the heat waves we had a couple weeks ago and the chance to ride the country roads with a few hundred others was still a great way to spend a Saturday.
So somewhere around the 80 mile point I fell in with a young rider also riding solo (both of my prospective riding partners had other plans and I literally went through the entire day of riding without seeing a single person I knew) and we started into a bit of small talk as we pedalled. Coming out of a long flat stretch we hit a series of rollers. I rose out of the saddle for a few strokes to attack the first hill and then continued through the second and third until the road flattened out again. And meanwhile my young friend fell back maybe a dozen or so bike lengths and I was actually a little surprised to see him only in my mirror. Given another three or four minutes and the now flat road he came up alongside of me again..."Wow", he said, "that was some strong pull" and then he added "especially for someone your age". I looked sideways at him for a minute and then could only laugh to myself...If he only knew. I confess I was tempted at that point to try and kick it up a couple of notches and see what would happen but discretion got the better of me and we sailed in to the lunch that is part of the deal with clearing skies and the same pleasant small talk that started our short relationship...All in all a good day and a fun ride - even the lunch at the end was good. I recorded 101 miles at 16.4 mph, not a bad day's work. And the sun did come out on my way home for dinner on the deck.

Veho Ergo Sum

Today was an almost perfect day for riding...and it is the reason I have titled my little bit of literary nonsense with the Latin phrase above. One of the more obscure facts of my life is that I took 6 years of latin, amazing but true. And secondly, I majored in Philosophy in college (logically, of course, that led to a career in re-insurance...go figure). And so that three-word Latin phrase is the last line on my rider ID band that I wear whenever I go out. So, in an attempt to make a long story short, I was thinking about the meaning of that sentence while I was out riding the roads and hills of the Sourlands and the Delaware River this afternoon. It was indeed a beautiful day - we finally are rid of the heat and humidity and today was a day with sun and clouds and temperatures that I would guess were in the high seventies, eighty at most. I did 70 miles through some of my favorite country...the Sourlands, the Delaware river, the Lower Creek road and the Sergeantsville covered bridge, and lots of corn and soy bean fields: a lovely, lovely day. And, of course, I am still basking in the completion of the cross country ride and the beaty of the last 880 miles that I did a couple weeks ago. I know that so much has been written about cycling by so many people but at the same time...I never feel so much alive, so in touch with everything that makes this life so precious as when I'm on a bike and exerting maximum energy to climb a 20% grade or flying down the other side of the same hill and seeing the mph hit 40 as I go into the last sweeping curve. A young deer jumped out from the bush today and just stood in the road and looked at me as I approached - I actually had to yell out to make sure he moved. How often do you have that kind of moment sitting on a couch watching a baseball game?
I stopped at the deli in Sergeantsville today, a favorite spot for cyclists, and because I was wearing my cross country jersey I got into a conversation with another cyclist, a guy maybe 60 - 65, who said right away "I don't think I could ever do that...". Of course I immediately said sure you can do it: you have a beautiful bike, you are running around these hills - why not? But then I thought later...the beauty of cycling is that you can do whatever you set your mind to. For years the idea of a cross-country was a dream and while I'm not sure I really thought I would do it, I never really doubted that I could do it. If you think you can or think you can't you are right (with all due respect to one of my XC colleagues).

And by the way, I would be happy to provide a translation of the Latin statement but I suspect that you can figure it out...think Descartes.

Hot times in New Jersey

I am not a scientist so I do not have the definitive answer on the global warming issue. However, I do suspect something is going on and we seem to be losing the warm but bearable summer weather that we had in the past. We have had, alternately, either hot-hot-hot or three/four days of drenching rains for the past few weeks. We are currently in the midst of another heat wave with the temperatures in the low/mid nineties (it is mid-afternoon and the temp is 93) with 5 and 6 days of this heat. I got up early today for the second day this week and was out by 7:30 hoping to beat the worst of the heat. And I did, in fact, get in a good ride - although it was warm there was just enough of a breeze and I had enough water to get me through the first forty miles or so. But after the last stop for water and gatorade the sun was high, the heat was up and enough was enough. The last twenty miles was a bit of a stretch...the gatorade quenched my thirst and the water was sprinkled over my steamy head.
Sixty-five miles for the morning but I'm here to say I've had it with these heat waves...no way is it fun to be cycling in 93 degree heat every day...wonder what the temperature is in Alaska?

The Dalton gang rides again....

Well, at least one of them will be riding. Harry Crampton, our Liverpool friend who was integral part of the Daltons on the 2009 cross-country ride, arrived in the US on Wednesday. He signed up for the Anchor House ride (a NJ 500 mile charity ride) and will be heading up to the start point in Burlington, Vermont with Tom Ryan today. In the meantime Susan and I hosted dinner for Tom and his wife Chris and Harry on our back deck last night. Needless to say it was a fun re-union. The last time Harry saw me I was lying on the ground waiting for the helicopter - and the last time I saw Harry was at dinner the night before and he was at the end of the table with a few empty Boood Lites lined up in front of him. He has not lost his taste for the Bood lites and we all had a great time telling and re-telling stories from our shared adventure...Good luck and a safe ride to them both through Vermont, New York and back to New Jersey over the coming week (I only wish I could join them.)