Patent Baristas

Well, as many of you know, we’ve been posting lightly this summer. Karlyn has been busy dealing with moving (twice!) and I’ve been caught up in lots of other projects. One of those projects started about five weeks ago — I decided to take up bicycling. Again. I used to bicycle regularly but that was over 18 years ago. Since then, I’ve spent most of my time sitting at a desk — or taking care of kids.

I’m sure you know how easy it is to do this. Everything seems to be more important. I have to take care of work all day. I take care of kids all evening and weekends. Then there’s the house, the car, the everything else… Somewhere along the line, I could never get to taking care of myself. I’ve always been last and last never comes.

The bottom line is that I bought a bicycle at my wife’s urging and started riding. I decided to try my hand at a 62-mile (metric century) charity ride for the Davis Phinney Foundation. It was described as suitable for the beginning rider so I figured I was all set. Unfortunately, the course was not quite as flat and easy as I thought. You can see the course elevation profile below.

View Elevation Profile

To make a long story short, I rocketed down one of the larger hills and was surprised by a sharp left turn. In the turn, I hit loose gravel and my bike shot out from underneath me. I smacked into the pavement pretty hard resulting in a broken and dislocated shoulder and collarbone — along with severe bruising of my ribs and pelvis. The shoulder was broken into four pieces and I had to have emergency surgery to put everything back together. It will now be 4-6 weeks before I can drive and I’ll need about 6 months of rehab. It looks like I’ll have to try taking up bicycling next year.

For now, it seems that I will be posting a little less for a few weeks. I hope to be back stronger than even very soon. To give you something to look forward to, look for a new “Barista” being added to the Patent Baristas in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.