Return of the Lame Princess

Some people may remember the original "Lame Princess" story. I took a number of fairy tale classes in college (one of the benefits of being a Creative Writing major) and in one such course we had to write a fairy tale of our own using some of the common tropes and such. At the time I was the victim of a sprained ankle and I used an evening's adventures - made more difficult by the sprained ankle - to inspire my fairy tale "the Lame Princess."

I have been rendered lame again. I was out riding and my bicycle wasn't working properly so I pulled over to the side of the road to assess the situation. I'm not sure why I was trying to assess the situation, I know very little about the functioning of bicycles and much much much less about repairs of bicycles and then even less about how to actually carry out such repairs. To top it off I also had no tools whatsoever with me. So my examination was really just going to be vague investigating. The real idiot bit though was that I flipped my bike over - a move that has vast possibilities for back strain - and was focusing on my lame bike, not my soon-to-be-lame-back. Well, stupid story made short - I whacked out my back. And then continued to ride. I sorta thought that riding a bit would loosen things up, but no. I ended up turning around and going home and my the time I reached my home was thoroughly lame. Made the last week of school a bit of a challenge as I couldn't sit, stand, lay down or really do much of anything (hence the absence of mindless prattle on Wayward Princess the Blog) except sit in one particular chair at home. I was going to sleep at 8:30 all week because I was so exhausted and in pain.

So here we are, 20 days out from Cycle Oregon and I've not riden in almost 10 days. Lucy (my bicycle) spent some quality time in the shop with Kurt who took some very good care of her. Its actually rather good that she got beat up because in the process of correcting the thingy making the gears work funny we discovered that my tires were about to disintegrate, the inner tubes were about to pop in any one of a couple dozen spotes, that the front brake was out of alignment and about a half a dozen other mild things.

Just remember, 'tis better to undertrain than overtrain.

'Tis also better to peel out than stall. I learned that in learning to drive a manual transmission car that I may purchase. But that's another story.

I think I'll be better tomorrow and able to ride.... I'm gonna give it a go at least.