Where Chester Lives

And you smell like one, too!

Yesterday I turned 36. Some days I feel older, other days younger. Like last week, for example. I really screwed up my back...so bad that I broke down and went to a chiropractor. Here's the bullet list version:

• Sunday, May 20th: Wake up, get out of bed, lower back pain, get back in bed.
• Monday, May 21st: Still some pain, but taking it easy.
• Tuesday, May 22nd: Pain in lower back mostly gone. Decide to ride bike, changing clothes, MASSIVE muscle spasm in middle back. flat out for rest of day.
• Wednesday, May 23rd: No sleep last night. Try to sit in office chair, can't do it. Call chiro. Go see him.
• Thursday, May 24th: Pain in low back is unnoticeable. Middle back pain is not lessened, but feels more isolated to left side.
• Friday, May 25th: Went back to chiro, more adjustments. Feel some better, got stretching exercises.
• Saturday, May 26th: First ride since I hurt my back. 28 miles with about 2000' of climbing. Stopped twice to work out tightness. Not too bad.
• Sunday, May 27th: Mostly normal. Went to worship as usual. No ill effects from previous day's ride.
• Monday, May 28th: Did Foresthill Divide Trail with my buddies Adam and Dave. A little soreness and tightness, but nothing that I had to stop for.

So there ya go. The ongoing saga of my back. I have to continue to see the chiro for the next 3 weeks, hopefully getting into better back shape. My posture is horrid, which resulted in me fixing my workstation setup at home. I moved my main monitor (I have a two-monitor setup) to the center and raised it to be more eye level. Hopefully this will help me break my really bad habits at my desk. I am striving to sit up and back some and to keep my head up instead of bending forward, which is what I have always done. I know many of you will say that I'm not old, and I agree. But the process of getting older? That stinks.

So, about the ride: We were going to go with another guy, Jason Harris, but he had to go very early (6 a.m.) and Dave's schedule just didn't work for a super-early start. I can't say that I was excited about an early start either, but I really want to go mountain biking with Jason and was willing to gut it out. I guess Jason had called Adam as well, but Adam wasn't that excited about an early start, either. We ended up calling Jason Sunday night to tell him we couldn't go that early, that we would probably be on the road at ~8:30 a.m. That was too late for him. Oh well: another time. Anyway, Dave, Adam, and I rode at Foresthill. It's an 11 mile loop, all singletrack. Gorgeous riding, mostly in the trees with some meadows. Some fairly good climbs, but nothing that really was soul-crushing. Besides, the payoff on the downhill side was just spectacular. Nothing very technical, but just a few short challenging sections. I was riding one section at speed, and as I railed through a right-hand turn, it went further downhill with A LOT of braking bumps. I was carrying quite a bit of speed, so it was difficult to scrub that off in this section and maintain control because the bike was just bucking like crazy. Another right turn, except this one was blind. Luckily, I've been getting much better at keeping my focus down the trail, so I saw the pole in time to react to it, but just barely. The adrenaline rush after pulling through something like that is just massive. Later in the ride, Adam blew out his rear derailleur hanger and we had to make a single-speed out of his bike. Again, we were pretty lucky here that there wasn't alot of climbing left and that we were almost done. Plus, it was the first time I had ever done this trail-side hack, which was very cool. I was just glad that I wasn't the one riding the single-speed . I know there are plenty of punk-rock single-speeders out there. I am not one of those guys. I really like gears. We all got back to the truck safe and sound and headed home. We stopped in Cool and got a pizza (thanks again, Dave). We were all starving, but even if we had been just regular, I think we all would agree that it was above-average pizza, bordering on excellent. Fresh toppings and a thin, crisp crust. Not Italian-thin (my preferred style), but very thin for an American pizza.

Later, we all went to the Adam and Alanda's house for dinner, fellowship, and games. We love hanging out with them. Adam and I have grown really close since we moved up here: we are in similar places in our lives (married with children, serious about God, etc.) and we both have a love for the outdoors. Plus, he's a funny guy and I'm a funny guy! It helps that our respective wives have forged a friendship as well. They are truly wonderful people and you really couldn't ask for better friends.

So, as birthdays go, yesterday was pretty good. I didn't take very many in-ride pictures, but I will post what I have later today (the camera is downstairs, and I am lazy).

One side-effect of being gone for any length of time is the dogs act like freaks when we get home. We put them in the garage while we are gone, and they just lay in there and wait for us to come home. So when we get home, they have all this stored up energy, plus the excitement of seeing us again. "They came back! They came back! YAY!!!" This isn't that bad, except when we are out into the late evening. They have stored up all this play-energy and we just want to go to bed. So, what happened this morning is that they woke me up at 4:30 wanting to go outside and play and pee on stuff (that's what dogs do. they are dogs). I got up and let them out, but couldn't get back to sleep. Whenever I get woken up after a significant period of sleep like that, I have a hard time going back to sleep. So I laid in bed until 5:20 or so and then got up. Hence the early a.m. blog entry. After all, what else am I going to do?

Well, that's enough for this morning. I need to get some coffee, read the paper, and get busy on those diagrams and docs I have been putting off. More later. Maybe even today, but I am making no promises.