Eric D. Schabell: August 2006

Sunday, August 20, 2006

More one my hand…

Last week Tuesday I headed back to the hospital for what I was told would be a new fiberglass light weight cast. I get there, am sent straight to the cast room without seeing the doctor and the lady there wants to cut off my old cast without even looking at my file. I asked her what the hell she was doing because I was pretty sure that my broken hand was not set in 8 days and I was not planning on going thru the 4-doctor procedure of resetting my hand because she cuts my cast off without thinking…

After stopping to look at my file and calling up a few x-rays on the computer she thought it would be a better idea to leave the cast as it was. Doh! I guess to make it look like my trip to the hospital was not for nothing, which basically it was, they removed the top layer (pink) and gave me a new purple one. I was then told it would all be removed at the end of the month (only in cast for 3 1/2 weeks by then).

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Crash and burn…

Last Sunday I was out riding with my buddy Marcel, a nice sunny day to cycle to his parents and back. We left around 0830 and as it was quite cool out I had decided to wear long legged tights until it warmed up later. We arrived without incident at Marcel’s parents house 45 km later, enjoyed a few coffees and I removed the long trousers to continue in my shorts which I had on under them. I balled up the long trousers and stuffed them under the back of my shirt, something I have done often.

Departing at around 1100 hrs we headed back for home, stopping at 1145 hrs to call home to let the ladies know we would be a bit later than we had planned. We were at 71km’s distance for the day, just about to leave Drunen when the long trousers decided to drop out of my shirt, into my back wheel… I was standing up and the bike just stopped under me… needless to say, I went head over heals onto the rather rough pavement and slid onto the grass next to the bike path we were on. Marcel was in front of me and was rather shocked at the noise I made hitting the ground and of my bike flying around. He rushes back to me while I am spitting out grass and taking assessment of the damage. I have various bruises, scraped a good deal of skin off my arms, legs, elbows and knees. The worst was my left hand, broken for sure as I can’t see my last knuckle anymore or feel my last two fingers.

Marcel’s girlfriend Diana was nice enough to pick me up and take me to the emergency room. 3,5 hours later I have the cast and sore body that is the grand total at the 1700 km mark of my cycling summer. I am out of biking and off the road for 5-6 weeks I am told.

The knuckle is broken off the top end of the bone in my hand just under the pinkie. It took four doctors two tries to set it and a grand total of 7 x-rays before I was allowed to go home. Man did this hurt, more than my other injuries in the past (broken collar-bone, both wrists, right hand and blown out knee). The pictures are of me heading to the hospital the day after the accident as they though it might need an operation to set it right. Luckily not!







Wednesday, August 2, 2006

First flat tire yesterday

I rode to work yesterday with Robert along for the ride. Was nice to chat on the way to Nijmegen and he dropped in for coffee before heading home again.

I left work a bit early as the weather was not too nice with severe rain showers expected later in the afternoon. Keeping an eye on buienradar.nl I picked the best time I could to head for home. On the way there I had to stop twice, once under an overpass and once under a tree for about 15 minutes to let the rain showers pass.

Just outside of s-Hertogenbosch I got a flat back tire, checked the km count and I was at 1700 km in total without a puncture. Luckily, I had a spare tube with me. I proceeded to removed the old one, find the piece of glass (actually two pieces) that caused the puncture, removed these and inserted the new tube. Took me about 20 minutes in all as I have never done it before, but luckily I was in a patch of sun so not working in the rain! ;-)

Total ride was 111 km’s and took about 5 hours (due to bad weather and wind on the way back home). My legs were pretty toasted yesterday evening! :-)