Tuesday, September 4, 2018

Got Any ID?

I feel like an imposter on both blogs now.

A) Though still struggling with the havoc it & its treatments wrought, I'm no longer a cancer patient.  So I should be here!
B) no matter how many times I insist that I am, I'm nobody's idea of an athlete.  SO I should go back there to whine and cry.
C) Sigh.

Though I'd like to be done with caringbridge, I still feel the need for vehicle for venting ... and also, it feels wrong to leave it before I'm done with surgeries and stable under meds.  (She said "stable," LOL.) 

I've read many other cancer blogs, and one thing has been almost universal: they stop suddenly.  Either the author passes away or the writer gets better.  Either way, there's never that dĂ©nouement, and there's very rarely continued writing about cancer's aftermath...the quotidian struggles of a drastically changed life.  As an avid fiction reader (and shitty fiction writer), I'm spoiled by getting to know "the rest of the story."  I love movies like "Animal House" where we learn what happens to each of the main characters years in the future.  Senator and Mrs. Blutarski, etc.  So I'm un-quitting caringbridge.

But I'm going to keep this one going too, because I do want a place where cancer & its trappings are NOT the main subject, and where I can geek out to my heart's content over a discussion of 1x gearing.  (TL;DR: Yesterday I got excited reading a blog entry & Twitter chat about 1x gearing for gravel racing!)  ((TTL;DR: It was my birthday and I squee'd over whatever I damn well pleased.))

Mainly I was excited because I knew what the hell they were talking about -- a rarity for Ann In Raceland (or Ann In Gearland, or Ann In Mechanicland).  I knew because when I bought the Niner RLT from Jason @Method Cycles last January, we discussed the pros & cons, I chose that very setup for the build, and have never regretted it.

It could be that someday in the distant future, this blog becomes more a place for race and gear reviews, and I'd love to kick that off with a detailed entry about 1x gearing and what that means to my riding, but at this point the review would be full of words like "doohickey" and "the thing that does the thing" because seriously, I don't know what the hell I'm doing most of the time. 

I pedal.  I make circles, with one foot anyway, so it's not the "perfect circles" I advocate.  I'm uneven.  Until the left knee's ligaments heal or the muscles take over, I have been riding clipped in on the right but not on the left.  I can't risk twisting that knee on a need to quickly unclip & get my foot down. 

After riding the Haddam Hounds Hundy & Gravel Worlds with one Keen SPD sandal and one Nike trainer I finally pulled a pair of never-worn Pi tennies from my bike shelf and added a cleat to one and left the other with the cleat placeholder intact. YAY, my shoes match AND are both flush to the ground AND I can clip in with the right and not worry about twisting my knee on the left.  It's not perfect but I'm doing the best I can, sort of limping up hills and straddling both worlds.  Kind of like with the blogs.  Kind of like with my life.   


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