Bicycle Exceptional

Late Tuesday afternoon I headed to Northampton, taking advantage of my need to arrive there early Wednesday morning and combining the trip with a visit and floor surf with Adele after our schedules didn't quite align the day prior. It was also a chance to check out their new bike, a purchase that resulted from my sending a Craigslist ad earlier that day! It's good to have friends of various sizes and likes, so when nifty bike deals won't work for me, I can point others their way. I'm a pedal peddler.

As I've mentioned before, a lot, I'm reliably riding more and more rigorously, but Tuesday, a slightly longer but less rigorous departure appealed to me, so I opted to ride the extra mile around the Holyoke Range instead of over it. But oh yes, on my return trip Sunday I'd seen road paving equipment delivered to the boundary with Belchertown, and Tuesday the machinery was in full effect, but the roadless so.Repeated experience has taught me to not always assume that Road Closed signs, as well as Dead End signs, always apply to bikes, but with active paving, I was guessing I'd be told to use an alternate route. In that case, I would've turned onto the power line access road to reach trails that would cut me over to Bay Road. Nope! I was told paving was mostly done for the day and my wee wheels and I could head right on my way. Yes, I take great glee in any place a bike can travel but a car can't. Whee!

It was a good trip of mostly rail trail after the car free roll up Stebbins on fresh pavement, a good visit, and I even had the chance to ride a half mile test, including a steep uphill, on Adele's new e-bike, which happens to be the exact bike that caught my eye should I ever be selected in some future round off the state's voucher program. Ok, it's probably not a complete coincidence that was the super good Craigslist deal I'd sent their way. Interestingly, in the reviews Adele read, people commented that it was somewhat anemic, but after riding it, I'd say these evaluations were the result of the designers actually doing a good job of smoothly integrating the assist. 

When taking my first ride on an e-bike aboard another friend's selection a few years ago, I'd disliked how abruptly the motor engaged when I'd apply pedal power to help stabilize and straighten the bike half way through a corner. It wasn't absolutely awful, but it was unsettling at exactly the point in handling that I wanted the opposite, so I'd have to learn to ride differently around that characteristic. Adele's bike is smooth, which of course translated to anemic in the view of people expecting an e-bike punch to the gut. Apparently gut punches sell, that "anemic" bike is now deeply discounted by the manufacturer and available from our friends at Hampshire Bicycle Exchange!  

Then Wednesday morning, I had good visit with the doctor who administered last week's epidural injection, who'd also offered to apply his orthopedic experience to reviewing my ankle MRI images and evaluation. We started with talking about how the cortisone shot was working, but thus far, the steroid was serving primarily to cut my sleep down to four hours, a potential side effect he'd failed to mention when first I'd asked. He had expected some positive impact as well by now, so he started asking more questions that had also been omitted from our previous late afternoon office evaluation. He has now amended his assessment to more likely a structural, not nerve, issue.

He also had me try a pelvic girdle of sorts that provides inward pressure on the top of the femur.  Ahh, yes, it immediately relieved much of the painful ache I've been feeling in my right hip, so he placed an order for a brace of my own, and with a few rambling stops along the way, I was able to delay enough for it to be ready for pick up by the time I made to the supplier on the opposite side of town. I'll call that another win for dawdling travel by bike.

It constricts nicely!

The opposite side of town was north, and just a half mile from the FRTA bus stop that could take me further north to a wander around Greenfield, so with the bus stop sign as a back rest, I sat on the grass and ate the lunch that came as part of my wandering delay to let the brace be ready. I love it when a complete lack of plan comes together, although I did later miss the return bus from Greenfield by a half hour, so rather than wait three times that for the next one, I enjoyed the backroad pedal south under a few fleeting drops of rain.

Yes, I am enjoying riding more, but yes again, I am trying to learn to not overdo it, so I waited less than five minutes at a stop in Sunderland to catch a bus, on the same service that saw my bike as the primary impact with a deer last fall. That shaved another six miles off my pedaling distance, but then another long delay until the next transfer had me pedal the final leg, this time over the Holyoke Range, to home. And oh yes, those sprinkles I'd felt up north in Montague, it seems they'd hit a bit harder in Amherst, fortunately before I was there. See, dawdling is good!

The exceptionally wet Norwattuck Trail

yesterday in Amherst