Foot/toe update.

So. Saw Mr. Foot doctor today. Rather, first another doctor (not PA or RN, a Doctor) came in and mistook me for someone else who had just had leg surgery. Then he told me about my toe after he looked at my “film”. Fragmented bone. Too small to screw in like they would normally do. Should heal Okay. But if not, they’d cut out the bone fragment. That if that didn’t work, they’d “fuse” my joint. Forever. Best they could do. What?

Then I went to X-ray and had time to think about what he said. I have to admit that I was freaking out a little over the prospect of a permanent procedure on my foot, when I get around the world almost entirely with my feet — and double angry that it’s all because of one single person.

Then my real foot doctor came in, looked at the new X-rays. Turns out that I don’t have one broken bone, but two. And there are, apparently, several fragments of bone from them. He examined my foot, too, and he said I could get off the crutches now. Don’t really have to go back unless I have problems. That it’s too small to do anything, and we just have to let it heal the best it can. Okay.

That would feel like good news, I guess, after the scary shit the other guy was talking about. I was told I should expect my foot to be swollen for a year. Could be worse, right? But still. I’m probably going to get arthritis in this toe. And I already have a trick toe. My baby toe on my other foot has a split bone in it (funny story), and it hurts fairly often. On a rainy night like tonight or in the cold, I can literally feel that shit in my bones. The best I can hope for with my big toe now is chronic pain and/or surgery because some lady couldn’t watch where she was driving her fucking car? And she paid so little attention that she was on my foot for a while?

On top of it, her insurance company won’t return our calls. So we’re hiring a lawyer, something I really hoped to avoid. This is turning into a very unpleasant situation.

But tonight we got to see our new apartment, and it’s lovely. And baby-trying time is coming fast. My heart is light after spending my entire day being furious, frustrated and forlorn over my inability to deal with things I can’t control (like that, despite the shitty way it happened, my toe’s already smashed). It has a cute little bathroom that you enter from either bedroom, and a little kitchen window like downstairs used to have.

May 28, 2009 | Johnny | Tags: , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Things might be looking up.

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The Mrs. landed the job she wanted, which is very near to where I work. And we might move again — into the larger apartment nextdoor to where we live now. Last time we moved, we moved upstairs and down the hall, and we did it quickly. This time should be even more do-able. The door is literally a foot or two from ours. Moving is always stressful, but it’s always exciting.

I’m still on crutches and sore and angry. I see the foot specialist tomorrow morning, and I’m hoping for good news. Saw several good films this weekend. Drank a lot of good coffee.

My bike and related gear will get returned tonight. I can thank the lady who thinks “I didn’t see you” excuses running over a part of someone’s body and breaking it for the fact that it’s been in my bedroom for me to stare at and not ride for two weeks. I could have been trying to ride a little this week if not for her negligence. While that idea makes me sick, the fact that I won’t wake up tomorrow and see it there makes me feel a fraction of a fraction better. If I still want it when I ride again, I’ll buy it again. I think I’d rather hit the LBS and have a nice relationship like when I first started cycling in Carbondale and had a bike shop we went to for, literally, everything. I miss that. I did get a sweet deal at the other place, though. But, I don’t know. I didn’t like my buying experience, and it wasn’t all because I couldn’t ride that bike home.

The best bike ride I have ever taken in my entire life was when we rode our bikes home from Phoenix Cycles in Carbondale, when we bought them and decided to sell the car (even though it took another two months to actually sell it). I was speeding along the back roads of SIU, and the big goofy grin on my face made some people look at me strangely and others smile back, as they rode their bikes to where they were going also.

I’d like to experience that again.

May 27, 2009 | Johnny | 3 Comments »

Happy Memorial Day.

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I got a ride to a campfire Saturday night in a pickup truck. We were tearing down a unpaved road in the woods. My Dad drove, and I was in the passenger side. Two guys were hanging onto the side of the truck on the runner, one on each side. It was pretty exciting after not leaving my apartment at all for like a week (really).  I had to skip the trip because I can’t walk still, but it was very nice to at least get outside for an evening and to get to see Mr. Zack’s cute new baby.

I helped to give a new Eagle Scout the Pledge. Enjoyed kids performing skits and songs. It was awesome.

Afterward, what happens every Memorial Day happened: old flags were retired by fire. Last year, an older guy told the boys never to “stand” anyone to burn the flag, no matter how anyone feels about our country or about freedom of expression, etc. I don’t feel particularly motivated to do any flag burning of my own, but I found that little bit particularly distasteful. Being a “college boy”, I’m not exactly going to tell someone who was actually in a war how to feel about flag burning.  This year, a gent who is a veteran of the Air Force (Hi, Mr. Y!) gave a nice speech before the flags were retired.  He talked to the boys about what the flag stands for, including the right to burn it.  I thought that was the perfect way to sum up the meaning of the stars and stripes, seriously.  We’re free enough to reject it all, and I’ve known plenty of people who have felt that way.

I thought of my Uncle Harry, who’s no longer with us on Saturday night.  I looked up to toast him in my mind and saw a solitary star in the clearing of trees.  Felt a little odd.  He would have enjoyed that fire and the company.  His wife passed three months after he did, which just seemed to complete the situation to me.  It seemed right.  I’d still like to share some grilled corn with them again at a cook-out.

When we think of who has died in a war in this country — whether you think it was pointless, for freedom, for the rich, etc. — I remember that my father was in a war.  Vietnam.  Actually, as they say, “in the shit.”  I’ve always found it bizzare to imagine such a gentle pussycat in such a situation.  It’s hard to reconcile.  I can’t imagine my father actually hurting anyone, and I’d bet he can’t either.  When there’s the temptation to spread the blame for our clusterfuck “conflicts” that take lives, including Americans, to the men and women who actually have to do the taking and get their lives taken, I always remember my Dad.  Getting spit on and called a Baby Killer when he came home to meet his cousin and best friend with only one of his legs.  When nothing about my Dad or probably most of the other people he served with could be less true.

(Photo by Mrs. P, of my brothers and I on Mothers’ Day.)

May 25, 2009 | Johnny | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

How I wound up in crutches.

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A neighbor of the university where I work needed a favor, which I was happy to do. They even invited me to a little “refreshment” before hand, but I had to decline and get some work done. I did said favor and left, walking South on Charles Street. I made it ten feet before having to stop because a driver had pulled her car out of the parking garage and across the sidewalk. She was engrossed in watching the traffic coming from her left and did not notice the pedestrian on her right. When the traffic was too dense to merge into, she turned sharply to the right to, I suppose, get into the lane freed up the parked cars which were gone by that time of day. She did this, hit my leg with her car and kept moving. I tapper her fender and yelled and tried to back away. But my foot was stuck.

Okay, I totally screamed like a child — both because it freakin hurt and because I was trying to get her attention to get the hell off of my foot. It didn’t work, so I resorted to banging on her hood. This all happened in like five or ten seconds. She looked at me, said, “Oh!” and took long enough to put her car in reverse and back up for me to think (perhaps outloud), “What the fuck is taking you so fucking long to get your fucking car the fuck off of my fucking foot?!”
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She got out, said, “I didn’t see you!” I yelled something like, “You should be looking where the fuck you’re going!”

After the last time I got hurt by someone else’s fault and couldn’t do anything to get them ticketed or at least forced by police to move that pipe, I told her I was calling the cops. She got UPSET. I hung up on 911 and explained to her that I didn’t do it right that time and was going to do it right this time. 911 called me back. I refused an ambulance because downtown Baltimore at 4pm on a Friday is a place where you let the ambulances that can make it through traffic carry people with actually life-threatening injuries.  They sent the police.  The Fire Department came, too.  They were very nice, offered me a lift to the hospital and checked out my foot.  When I told them what happened, they had a, “How stupid can a person be?” look which made me smile.

She had a police sticker on her car, was the only one that talked to the police and told her insurance company (to whom she still hadn’t given a statement Monday afternoon) that she would get the police report.  The paranoid person in me smells something fishy, but I happen to know the boss of that district through work, and I know people who know him better than I do.  With her repeating, “I didn’t see you!” over and over, I suspect she thought I was going to say she hit me on purpose.  That sounds strange, but I can see why she might think that.  But, like I told her insurance company, I don’t dispute that she didn’t see me.  She wasn’t looking at all, and that’s how it happened!

Everyone left, and my family took me to the emergency room.  Had to ride in a wheelchair, and my foot was ballooning.  Turns out that my foot was “trauma-ed” and my big toe broken (fragged, I believe).  I have to see a foot specialist and make sure nothing is forever wrong.  With how I depend on my feet, I would go nuts if this person’s negligence hurt me permanently.  I think she also thought I might be more interested in getting her arrested than making her insurance company pay my medical bills instead of making my health insurance do it.  When I called her insurance company over an hour later, she hadn’t reported a thing.

In Maryland, for what she did, she could go to jail, be fined and get points taken off of her license.  I’m going to suggest that Maryland suspend your license if you injure a pedestrian.
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For now, I’m in a boot and on crutches and can’t put any weight on my foot at all.  As you can imagine, crutches are a lot of fun when your wrist is broken.  On the other hand, they gave me very strong pain killers, so I can get to sleep.  I always wake up with sore hips from being knocked out by drugs hard enough to not move, though.  I’m working from home and haven’t left my apartment since Saturday.  This blows and hard.

So my new bike is getting returned.  I bought it quickly because it was a good sale.  I thought I’d be riding, at least a little, by the end of next week, if not sooner.  But now, when I can ride again is undetermined.  I’m flirting with being depressed, and I can’t look at that thing knowing that the carelessness of one person might keep me off of it for more weeks or months.  I can always buy it again later.  There’s something fun about getting to actually ride your new bike that I keep missing and would like to get to do.  So I get a do-over here.  Screw the sale.

The other fun thing is dealing with an insurance company who is acting that this could in any way by MY fault!  They even asked about my shoes (Tevas) and commented that it was the only protection I had — like we should all walk around in warm weather in armored boots so the negligent drivers of the world can run us over with impunity.

I think I might have to get a lawyer.

May 20, 2009 | Johnny | Tags: , , , , | 6 Comments »

Slider the killer turtle.

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My mom has a little pond her in yard, right off of the deck.  It’s like her little peace place.  There are cute statues, including a little gnome I gave her.  A few years ago, my brothers and I joined forces to put in a larger and deeper pond.  There was mud everywhere, and it was a fun effort.  We work well together, we three brothers.

Lurking in the darkness of this deeper pond is Slider, the hungry turtle.

He’s snapped at dogs, and he’s got a thing for those baby shrimp you buy in a can.  There used to be large goldfish in there.  But he ate them all.  The whole reason that the pond had to be re-dug was because eating fish that rivaled him in mass made him get huge.

Now he occupies an amount of space half the size of a college dorm room, including a large portion of garden and the entire pond.  Attempts to introduce more fish to the pond result in a bigger and fatter turtle.  If my mother approaches, he comes to her, expecting food.  I’ve fed him enough that he comes over to me like a puppy for treats.  Goldfish crackers, pieces of cheese, Ritz crackers — he’ll eat anything I give him.  He looks at me with eagerness, circles his big sunning rock and thrusts his head out for morsels.
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He’s growing all the time, it seems to me.  I imagine that the neighborhood children near my parents’ house are going to start circulating rumors about that crazy turtle, which resembles some sort of scary croc sometimes.

“Did you know that the Elm Avenue Killer Turtle ate Timmy’s little brother?  He went in after his Wiffle ball, and no one ever saw him again.”

“That scary Polish lady was out riding that turtle one day, and it had little Bobby’s half-eaten shoe coming out of its mouth!”

I can see it now.

May 17, 2009 | Johnny | Tags: , , , , | 2 Comments »

A Pro-Life protestor speaks.

I love all life.
I love it enough to define it.
I love it enough to portray grisly images of aborted fetuses and bloody baby dolls.
I love it enough to force it on people who might not be ready or capable of making it not just A life, but a GOOD life.
I love life enough to know what’s best for everyone.
A book told me so.
(Wait, no it didn’t.)

I also love life enough to spend my energy helping the poor and disadvantaged.
I spend my time and energy working on educational efforts to help eradicate unwanted pregnancies.
I help with adoption efforts.
I want all kids to live in loving environments, even with same-sex couples.
I do everything I can to prevent the situations in which abortion is a desirable option.
I think sexual education and birth-control can help.
Wait, no I don’t.
(I don’t do any of that.)

And if I did, I would certainly be the exception to the usual old biddy standing outside the hospital with a picture of death when I want you to love life.

I’d rather protest things which are legally sanctioned and none of my business and make people who share my point of view all look crazy, cold-hearted and backward than actually help anyone.

As someone who doesn’t go to, teach at, work at or give money to a Catholic university, I know what’s best for it.  God forbid people in the faith whose name means UNIVERSAL be tolerant of anything.

| Johnny | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

I got run over by a car.

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Well, my left foot did.  I can’t catch a freakin break this spring. This website is turning into a document of self-loathing and frustration over not being able to ride my bike.

I was coming back from doing a community partner a solid favor yesterday afternoon.  A lady coming out of one of those parking garages where cars have to cross the sidewalk and yield to pedestrians was watching traffic and not people, and she ran over my damned foot.  I’ll write more later, but her ridiculous “excuse” that it wasn’t her fault was, “I didn’t see you.”  The only yelling I did was after the first time she said that, when I yelled, “Well you should be looking where the fuck we’re going!”  Other than that, I stayed pretty calm because getting her all freaked out wasn’t going to help anything.

How did I know she was the type to get upset?  I can usually read people pretty well (this is documented, damn it!), and she fucking got huffy when I said I was calling the police.  Seriously?  My foot is purple and bleeding because you, technically, struck a pedestian, and you don’t think I’m calling the cops?

I didn’t last time (that fucking pipe), and my insurance companies paid for everything.  Fuck that.  Her insurance company is paying for everything, including replacement Tevas!

So the upshot is that I have “foot trama” and swelling and a fractured toe and have to use crutches for a week or two, possibly see a foot specialist.  With the way I walk and cycle, I think I will just to be safe.

Shit, people are going to think I’m doing all this for attention.  :^P

May 16, 2009 | Johnny | Tags: , | 10 Comments »

My new bike is in.

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But I don’t have a photo yet.  This photo is of a pipe-cleaner bike I made at my VISTA training in August.  It stands on the jacket dealy from a cup of  coffee I was drinking at the time.  It resides in my office.

I picked the Novara Buzz V for a number of reasons.  It’s simple and practical.  I like the low-fi looks and anti-theft aspects like locking skewers and no quick-release anything.  It has custom fenders.  It’s STEEL.  It was in the price range of the insurance money I got for the wrecked bike.  I really, therefore, paid for it in September 2005 when I bought my first bike, which was replaced with insurance money when it got stolen in fall 2006.  The insurance folks paid for the lights, fenders, rack, computer, etc.  Everything that got destroyed  but my helmet.  I was buying a new helmet anyway, so I didn’t want to go after them for that.

The biggest “fault” I’ve noticed so far is that the paint is junk.  It’s matte and flakes off.  Mine has several chips already from the trip from the factory to REI, and the one locked near the train station looks like it’s been through a wood chipper.  I suppose this is to make it less steal-able?  Or just a consequence of the matte finish?  I feel like I should be annoyed that my shiny new bike is not perfect (or shiny).  But you can’t get a perfect bike.  I know that for sure now.  And bikes get scratched up when you ride them.  Even if you got a perfect bike, it would eventually get dinged up if you rode it.  I was being stupid, yes.  Thing is, you don’t care when you’re riding regularly.  I’m not.

But screw it.  I refuse to be a prisoner of my own neurotic and compulsive tendencies.  I always need all my shit to be perfect.  Forever.  Like you can buy perfectly-crafted goods.  And like you can use them without wear and tear.  Nah, if I resist the urge to be a stupid jackass, I feel particularly…invited to put some stickers on now.  I still have some that my cycling pal sent me in 2005 when I first got into cycling.  It’s all good.  In a few weeks, I’ll be riding my bike and laughing at the witty stickers on it.

We did have a bit of an adventure to get it, though.

Tuesday, I had an early appointment with my hand doctor and a big meeting all afternoon.  It was already a weird day.  I wanted REI to leave my bike in the box so that I would not be tempted to ride before I’m physically ready and get hurt again.  But they couldn’t, and it came in Tuesday, rather than Friday.  Our glasses were also ready early.  So I walked from near Penn Station to Charles Village after work, met the Mrs., walked to the Rotunda, got our glasses and walked to the light rail.  Took it out to Timonium, walked to Baja Fresh and ate amidst sad yuppies.  Walked to REI.  Picked up my bike, some spare inner tubes and an under-the-seat bag.  Walked to the light rail and took my bike on it.  Walked about a mile home.  So my bike’s first trip was on a train and being walked.  Not as cool as being ridden, but much cooler than coming home in a car or truck.

Memorable night, though.  And I would be a douchebag to let such a fun-ly-gotten bike be less awesome because it wasn’t perfect when perfection wasn’t even possible.

Perhaps by airing these stupid mind-fucks I play on myself, I can kick them?

In other news, after we got home, we went shopping for prenatal vitamins for Mrs. P.  (More on that later, of course).

May 14, 2009 | Johnny | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments »

Best bike accident comment to date.

Friday, I had the good fortune to see a gent that I don’t know very well but like a great deal.  We only got to chat for a minute.  I hadn’t seen him in a few months, but his reaction to the medical doo-hickies on my arms…won, in a sea of jerks:

“What’s wrong with your hands, man?”

“This is sprained; this wrist is broken.”

“Was this from something cycling related?”

“Oh, yes.”

“EXCELLENT!”

I should mention that this gent rides a bike sometimes, and I think he gets it.

May 13, 2009 | Johnny | 5 Comments »

With apologies for absence.

It’s been a nutty few weeks.  (If you’re my “friend” on Facebook, sorry for the  repetitions.)  Work is busy and full of meetings.  Family fun.  Bike research and bike purchase.  New glasses!  Large (VERY) decisions and a lot of fortuitous events.  More later.  I am not gone.  Typing is still slow and hard, but it’s getting better.  More soon.  Very soon.

| Johnny | Tags: , | 3 Comments »