Living with MCL

Don’t drink too much, and if you do, drink lots of water.

Like we use to say when I was in the army,

It’s a good thing I drove, cause I never could walk home.

That’s a pretty much how I felt yesterday, after Edie and I had a few friends over for wine and gumbo.

I did manage to awake my usual time this AM, but I unhappily discovered, after getting my tea ready last night, I didn’t replace the tea pot directly under the spout, and only about half the water made it into the pot. The remainder, as you might be able to guess, ended up all over the kitchen counter.

It was also tough going on my bike ride this morning. Fortunately the club went out relatively sedately (I’m guessing others must have felt the same), giving me plenty of time to sweat all the toxins out of my system.

The last 20+ miles, however, was the antithesis of the start of the ride, reaching speeds of 34 mph at one point. That’s pretty much my top speed, even with the favorable wind and a good draft, I was lucky enough to benefit from. Still, I struggled.

We covered those last 20+ miles, along Pacific Coast Highway, in about 55 minutes, which is pretty fast, considering we obey all traffic laws.

It’s those kind of rides that make me wonder how much stronger I would be, if I had been taking EPO, and had a hemoglobin in the normal range. I’m sure, at the very least, I wouldn’t have had to take an hour nap afterwards.

I just learned yesterday that Bjarne Riis, winner of the 1996 Tour d’France, admitted to using EPO from 1993 to 1998. And this comes after recent confessions by Erik Zabel and teammate Rolf Aldag for also using EPO.

Then there was Ivan Basso, winner of last years Giro d’Italia, and one of the team leaders on the Discovery Channel team, until he opted out of his contract after confessing to attempted doping.

Basso said he made contact with a doctor at the heart of the Spanish investigation, Eufemiano Fuentes, and gave him a blood sample with the intention of doping – but never actually did. …….

“It was a moment of weakness on my part,” Basso said. “I accept responsibility and I am ready to face my punishment.”

He still faces disciplinary action, and a likely suspension, regardless of his intentions.

As a cancer patient, I am keenly aware of the effects of EPO (having considered taking it myself due to a low hemoglobin count), as a performance enhancer, increasing the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood, so it isn’t much of stretch to believe everyone is taking some performance enhancer in professional sports.  Heck there’s even wide spread use among many amateur cyclists.

And what does this say about the allegations against Floyd Landis, and all the speculation surrounding Lance Armstrong?

At least the sport of cycling is trying to be up front with the problem, unlike a number of other sports.

Hopefully this will lead to either a cleaning up of the sport, or as Mark Cuban believes, a legalization of drugs not found to be detrimental to your health.

I’m just not sure who is going to be the arbiter for deciding what is not detrimental to ones health. Even EPO, while helping patients, also has some deleterious effects as well.

Wednesday night, Edie and I both went to bed at 10 PM, confident in the knowledge we were recording the last hour of Lost to watch Thursday evening. So it came as quite a surprise, when we sat down this evening to watch the last hour of Lost, to discover it was not in our recorded programs list.

I was devasted! What could possibly be worse, then not seeing the season finally of Lost? Well, OK, now I can think of a lot of things worse, but at that moment, it was at the top of the list.

Fortunately ABC had the foresight to load the last hour on the internet. We had to download some free software, and it took a minute or two to figure everything out, but in the end it was a relatively painless endeavor.  And there were only limited commercials.

Thank you ABC for turning a potential devastating situation, into a happy ending!

On my bike ride today, I worked a little bit harder, and went a little further than I planned, but ultimately it was worth it!

No matter how much people bad mouth Southern CA, I still can’t imagine living anywhere else. Where else can you be ride a bike along the cliffs of the Pacific Ocean one minute, and an hour later, be climbing hills, and confronting wildlife.

At the start of the second climb of 5 that we managed today, Old Fullerton Road, we encounter 3 deer scurrying across the road in front of us. We obviously scared them, and I didn’t have a chance to get a picture. But then on the 4th climb, when I got to the top of Turnbull Canyon, there was another deer, about half way up the hill, staring at me, as I rode by.

I took 2 pictures with my phone, but one, for some reason didn’t get stored in memory, and on the other I couldn’t make out the deer in the picture. Obviously camera phones aren’t the greatest, for getting spontaneous pictures.

I’ve only encountered a deer one other time, while riding in Oxnard several years ago, so todays ride was of particular note since I encountered 4 of them. I’m sure it is a good omen!

My only regret is I couldn’t share the experience with the rest of the world.

Oh well, such is life!