Spill

On the way to work this morning, I took a nice tumble.  I've been trying to avoid the ice, but found myself trapped on the trail with the choice of either braving the ice or walking off the curb.  I should have walked off the curb, but instead I slowly (e.g. just an mph or two) traversed the ice until I noticed it had a chasm in the middle.  I went to put my foot down and the whole bicycle shot sideways and I flipped up and landed solidly on my back, hard enough to knock all the wind out of me, and mashed my left hand.  After a moment, I struggled into an upright position, only to watch a bicyclist roll by without asking so much as whether I was ok.  My back wasn't too bad, but my left wrist hurt quite a bit.  So I crawled on my bike and figured I'd worry about the details at work.

Ahead of me, the unfriendly guy pedaled on in all his super cool winter bicycling garb.  Then took a left turn into the work lot.  By the time he made it to the office racks, I was pulling up next to him.  He looked at the sky.  Looked at his feet.  Stared for a very long time at his lock.  Slowly pulled off his gloves.  Looked anywhere but at me.  I wasn't impressed, but he was correct that he was to be shamed for not at least pretending to check.

My back ached: still aches.  Mostly it feels like I've been lifting weights.  But my wrist is the bigger issue.  Swelling below the thumb, and at the bottom of the swelling is a knot about the size of a bb. If I touch my pinky and thumb together, which I can do, but it hurts, the little bump pops up.  My wife thinks it's a ganglion cyst that showed up because of the strain on the wrist.  Might be, although the bump itself doesn't hurt significantly.  Primarily, the wrist is just stiff and hard to use.  Although tonight I can use it to do things (that sounds wrong, so let me point out I'm right handed), and right after the spill I couldn't even hold my phone or empty coffee cup without pain.

Once I was at work, I took a few Advil and Tylenol, like I have in the past for pain.  And launched into an almost three hour allergic reaction.  My eyes turned very red and swelled, until I almost couldn't see, I started sniffling, a headache erupted, and everything itched.  Everything.  Both my wife and my team lead told me I looked awful.  So when the allergic reaction wore off, I went and found some Aleve, which doesn't seem to cause problems.  That reaction might explain a lot of my allergic reactions in the past.  But I don't know if it's Advil or Tylenol, and I'm not particularly interested in experiments to determine the specific culprit.

I biked home later despite the wrist.  As long as I kept it straight, it wasn't a problem.  Although I'd hate to rely on it in a second tumble.  Bicycling made my back feel better, but didn't do anything for my wrist.  It's probably a little stiffer just because I'm not typing with it anymore (well, I wasn't).  On the way home it snowed.  Then rained.  Reminded me of Ironman weather.  And right before the house, I happened upon another cyclist in our neighborhood.  I said to her, "The weather this morning was much nicer."  She rolled her eyes at me - not a nice "I know" roll, but a "You're an ass, leave me alone, roll" - and went her way without a word.  I'm going to call April 5th Rude Bicyclist Day.