Birthday, Stitches, Vegas, Blood...Not in that order

I think that I have told many of you, but for the few that still don't know, on the first group ride on jan 27, I was the victim of an incident of panic in the "peloton". I was riding on the front of the group, i took one of my gloves off to eat a package of pina colada shot blocks, yum... After finishing the shot blocks i noticed that my hand was not cold, so i removed my other glove. At this point I decided to go the back to talk to one of the new riders on the team. Then people started hitting their brakes. My proper drafting position at the back of the pack resulted in me coming in contact with the rider in front of me who had his brakes completely locked up. Elapsed time from when I had removed my gloves before my front tire was so elegantly removed from underneath me was approximately 3-4 minutes.

Having had my fair share of experience with the ground while cycling, i knew it was in my best interest to just get back on the bike and ride back before it really started to hurt. Above is a picture that I tried to take a few minutes after it happened whilst riding back with the group. I decided that riding with no hands and my new camera out was not the greatest idea.
Here is my hand after cleaning at the urgent care center. Please note going to urgent care on sunday is not highly encouraged. The wait time I was quoted upon entering the clinic was 2 hours, i said thats fine, do you have any paper towels?

Here is the sterile field where my mini hand operation took place. It took 7 stitches to close this little adventure in human hand anatomy

Above is my hand about 30 hours after I was stitched back together.

Here is my hand today 11 days after.

Here is the proof that of my bicycle carnage. Don't worry the Orbea is fine.

Next post will be about my birthday trip to

Vegas!

Elivs and More...

I had the pleasure to accompany my fabulous girl friend to the gala of wine tasting to benefit Connections, which helps disabled people in Weld County. To my surprise the king was there, rhine stones and all. Apparently he has good taste, because he plucked Lova out of the crowd to dance with him. I'm sure you are asking yourself if I was jealous, maybe a little. We tasted some wines, although I didn't taste any that are worth reporting here. All in all, it was a fun evening, and for a good cause.

In true Brian fashion, here is my first self portrait taken whilst riding my bike earlier today with my new digital camera that I got from Lova-clause for Christmas. It was finally warm enough not only to ride my bike with some level of comfort, but I didn't even have to cover my ears.

Here is another tribute to the blogging skills of our white house staffer, the handle bar/ leg shot. If you maximise the picture you will notice that I am riding within the correct heart rate range at 143 beats per minute. Today was my first official day of "base" and I was constantly battling to keep my heart rate at an acceptable rate.

This is a picture of a very popular sport in the country, mail box baseball. In case you are wondering tampering with mailboxes is a federal offense and a felony to boot.

Since the majority of my faithful readers are no longer in the Greeley area, I thought that I would update you on the status of an intersection I'm sure you are familiar with. It is the intersection of CR 53 and HW 34 in Kersey. A 16 year old was killed at this intersection earlier this summer by a semi truck. I think it was the 3rd fatality and CDOT decided that they would put in a light even though the death toll is usually 4 to get a light at an intersection. Upon zooming you will also notice that the truck in the intersection is carrying sugar beets, big business in Northern Colorado.

The first meeting of the Biking team went well, we had 8 people show up. It seems like it will be a good group of guys that are excited to race this season. I have been playing the waiting game with the President of CU's team, trying to get the details figured out for the weekend of racing that we are sharing over Easter weekend. After waiting 4 days I was able to use the power of the World Wide Web to find his telephone number. I called and had a good talk, he even said that he was willing to give us Saturday, because the turn may be better than on Easter. The first team ride is tomorrow, check back for pictures. Until my next moment of genius...

First Ride of the NEW YEAR

Today was my first ride of the new year and probably would not have happened without the encouragement of the long lost Alex Lewis. It was a balmy 25 degrees above Fahrenheit. We slowly made our way to Eaton. This gave us the opportunity to have the first official officer meeting of the semi defunct UNC cycling team.


Since the first of the Year, I have been trying to make up for my 6 month hiatus from the working world by working myself to death with the overnight shifts. I thought that you my fellow readers would enjoy sharing in some of numerous sunrises that I have seen on my return home from work.

Here I am working very hard, notice a required tool of the night shift, the coffee cup.

As all of you know G-reality is know for it ability to fly a kite aka the wind blows always. Because of this constant wind, I have had a hell of a time keeping my pilot light lite, resulting in the temperature plummeting all the way below the range of the thermostat to display an accurate reading. I hope everyone is well and life is good.

PS I'm going to Las Vegas for the first time for my Birthday at the end of the month.

Back to Work

Life has been pretty busy since my last update (forever ago). I finished my 15th semester of school, with only one to go! I got the all clear from the orthopedic surgeon to go back to work on the first day of winter break. It feels pretty good to be making money again, after a 6 month hiatus.

I have yet to get back onto the bike since before finals at the beginning of December. Good news from the RMCC- UNC will be sharing the weekend March 22,23 with CU and hopefully hosting a race. I was hoping to share with CSU, but they won the bid to host nationals. I got a verbal agreement from the Mountain bikers from CU to share the weekend, but I have yet to confirm with the president of CU. Maybe the UNC team will survive another year, and hopefully a new and competent president will take the helm.

Well the holidays have come and gone, thank god. This was supposed to be the first Christmas in about 20 years that I was going to spend the day with my Mother and Father. Thanks to the snow, I didn't see either one of my parents. It was the best Christmas in years thanks to my wonderful girl friend, Lova. She got me a new digital camera, that is waterproof, shockproof, and freeze proof, so expect more pictures to come.

For New Years, Lova and I went to Cattleman's in Greeley for dinner, followed by a relatively quiet night off the dangerous roads. I had to work at 3 pm on New Years day, so I was glad to avoid the blackout that has occurred in past years.

As you can see above, my car has surpassed the 180,000 mile mark and is showing its age. I am having some trouble with my windshield whippers and washer spray, but who needs these superfluous extras, especially in the winter.

With tha advice from the boys at Roubaix, I finally made it over to Fat Albert's for a Moscow Mule (vodka and ginger ale in copper cup). The camera on the IPhone is meeker at best, and failed to capture the mule that is stamped on the side of the cup above. I am going to blame the inability to post pictures taken on the Iphone directly to this blog as my main impetus for my lack of updates. This has been the largest problem that I have had with the Iphone, otherwise it is super sweet! I guess thats all for know, I should probably make sure all of my patients are still breathing and not laying on the floor.

i'm officially blogging on the go with my new I-Phone

Yes i know it has been over month since my last post. The cause for this lack of updates was due my lack of a digital camera. Today my contract with Verizon ended and I was finally able to start to have fun with my new I-Phone. Life has not been all that interesting as of late. I recently finished my clinical rotation in public health at the weld county health department. To fill this void in my schedule, I started working at a mental hospital in fort Collins. I had the lucky ability this week to get two decent rides in this week, Eaton and most recently Johnston. I'm loving being able to ride again with 2 cycling shoes. It has been about a week and half since i started wearing two regular shoes. I'm not even having to use the cane anymore. Its a miracle to be regaining some element of normalcy back in my life.

I drove out to my Mom's house to exchange the mini van that I have been driving with my BMW. When I got there I discovered that my mother forgot to take my only key for my car off of her key ring. What does this have to do with anything you my be asking yourself, it means that I' m still stuck with the mini van for another day. I did get a chance to play with the 1 month old greyhound puppies at her house. I guess the trip was not a total loss. I will up load some pictures tomorrow when I get back from my dads house. Thanks for checking in.

Back On the Bike BABY!

Yes your eyes have not deceived you, that is a picture of me on a bike.

I have ridden the bike for the last 2 days in a row. Today I even made it all the way to Kersey. A whole 9.5 miles. It felt exactly as you expect, terrible. My broken leg felt fine, but everything else felt as though I hadn't ridden a bike in about 15 weeks! It has been one week since I got my below the knee cast off. My new air cast can be seen in the picture above. I forgot just how glorious it is to shower without a garbage bag on my leg.

I scored a free ticket to the Bronco game against the Raiders. It was fun, but a challenge in my current role moon lighting as a cripple. By the time we got to the stadium, all of the close handicapped parking was taken. We solved this minor speed bump by finding parking a short 5-6 blocks from the stadium at the honest price of $25. The parking attendant tried to set my mind at ease by assuring me that this fair price for parking was going to benefit some sort of children's center or something. After the warm fussy feeling dissipated, I started my trek to the stadium. As you can see from the picture below our seats were almost up at the very top of the stadium ( 5th level) 31 rows up. I'll have to say that I was climbing the stairs better than the morbidly obese people all around my seats. The cane did a great job. Sorry still no pictures of the cane.

This is Walt a fellow nursing school chum

This is picture of two new neighbors, who recently moved into my building. They took a moment out their busy moving day to reflect on the finer nuances of life in front of my house.

I think we all know who this is

Can you believe that Evan can wrassle this beast into submission long enough to get a bike helmet to perch upon it substantial mass.

Other than that life is good, glad to be in unencumbered from the cast. School is a big pain in the butt to keep it PG. I finished the my first paper of the semester a modest 21 pages. It was not worth that much only 40% of my grade. I saw on the news today that we have new dopers coming out of the wood work every day, houston from the broncos (weed), Marion Jones (vitamin Steroids). At least some other sports are taking some heat. I hope every one is enjoying fall. Until next time.

Field Trip

My wonderful Lady and I just returned from a field trip to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, shown above at night. I now feel a little more cultured.

This was the exhibit that we drove down to see.

We decided to take in the IMAX Show before we brought our eyes to rest upon the artifacts. Like any IMAX show it was very well done and had new footage of the inside of the ship. This footage was obtained from little vehicles that were brought down with submarines to explore places the submarines can't go. The new pictures were breath taking.

These are the submarines which were used to get down to the Titanic, which is 2.5 miles below the surface, with a pressure of 6000 psi. These subs seat 3 people, dives usually last 12-15 hours. It takes 2 hours of sinking to reach the bottom.

This is a picture from the IMAX movie. They used lots of new camera technology, which included another ship that suspended a lighting chandelier to light up the reck for better video.

This is a copy of the boarding pass that they gave at the beginning of the exhibit. It has a bio of a passenger on the Titanic on the back, which could be used to see if your passenger survived at the end. Alas my person was not among the living. So sad!

Labor Day Weekend in Eagle County

I hope all of my fellow reader had a good holiday weekend. I made my way up into the mountains for a weekend with Koch and E-Strong. I arrived at Koch's house just in time to go out to the bars. Thanks to Matt's roommate, Jeremy, I had a cane to walk my crippled ass around instead of toating around the single crutch. Apparently some time during the drunkiness I agreed to go the mountain bike race with Evan on Sunday morning. Because of this blunder on my part, I was awoken up at 6 in the morning by Evan's bushy afro head. We made our way from Edwards to Keystone so Evan could pay some money to suffer for a few hours. The picture below sums up how Evan and I felt Sunday morning.

Its ok Evan, I was tired to. Evan finished the 18 miles of cross country in the fast time of 3 hours or so. That a boy!

This man was riding a unicycle down the finish of the race that came down a blue ski run. I'm certain that I would have had difficulty riding down this run on a mountain bike. Later I saw this man riding his unicycle with his daughter (also on a unicycle) who was probably 10-12.

This was taken on labor day at 1:30pm on my way back to Denver in Frisco. The temperature was absolutely perfect. I am ready for summer to be over! I had to stop and get gas because I knew I may hit some bad traffic.

I knew when I went up to the Mountains that I had the potential to get stuck in the holiday weekend traffic on my way back to Denver. Man, did I hit traffic. I got stuck about a third of the way up the hill to the tunnel.

This is me waiting patiently on the I-70 parking lot. It was really boring

I have officially started driving with my right foot again! Back in the game baby.

Another great shot of the I-70 parking lot

Required materials for a drive of this length, too bad my I-pod battery ran out about half way home. It took me 4.5 hours to get home. It only took me 2.5 hours to get to Vail on Saturday. So I spent 2 extra hours in traffic, fun times let me tell you.

I can bend my knee again, sort of.

I'm not even sure where to start. I have been back in Greality for a little over a week. I have spent the last 4 nights sleeping in one place (my apartment). I have not spent 4 consecutive nights in the same place in almost 11 weeks. Last Friday was the "Rec Fest" at the university rec center. Unlike last year I was aware of this engagement before the date. Let me tell you a little something about gettting to the rec center when you are handicapped. It is quite a haul from the main parking lot to the west of the rec center. Fear not, I made it to the door after fighting my way through a very long line of freshmen. When I finally got the small gym where the tables for club sports was set up, I discovered that I had to share a table with another club, any guesses....The fencing club. I thought to myself why the fencing club. Any way I could only take that torture for about 90 minutes or so. I followed up that boring endeavor with another hot event, the fall bizarre . We got better interest that we got last year, but it was almost 100 degrees and I am still a cripple. My 15th semester started on tuesday with a large amount of trepidation about putting up with the bull shit again. I did however pick a good time to hurt myself, I have got the green light from my clinical teachers to work as a cripple.

Here is the new below the knee cast that I have about 3 weeks left to wear. I have had to completely regain the range of motion in my knee that I had before the 10 week imprisonment. Note the very classy shoe that I was blessed to probably pay $300 dollars for. I can now bare about 50-70 % of my body weight on this great blue leg. I was planning on going out to purchase a cane today, but I have not made it to the store yet. I have achieved about 80-90 degrees of knee flexion, which still is not enough to complete a whole rotation of the pedals. I think that I will have to wait until i get this cast off to start "riding" again.

Here I am working really hard with two computers surfing and downloading things
(not actually doing any real work)

This is Bentley the most spoiled of all the dogs at my moms house, He is the only one that gets to sleep on her bed.


This was his best attempt to get a nose print on the lens of my camera. He also tries very hard to leave a nose print on recently cleaned sun glasses.

This is me at the Greeley kennel Club dog show a few weeks ago. If you look closely you can see the show rings in my glasses.

This was a competitor at the dog show, note the very large bald spot and the compensating long rat tail. Who has a rat tail when they are at least 50 and bald?

I was trying to show just how dirty the first cast got by the end of 8 weeks. Sorry the lighting was not very good.

I took this picture while I was driving back to Boulder from Sterling, picking my dad up to buy a new car. These sun flowers were wild growing on both sides of the road along I-76, some times as far as the eye could see. My dad who has driven this road for 50 years or so, said the flowers had never been this vibrant.

Here is my dad standing in front of his new 2004 VW passat 4 motion, which I helped him find and buy. He paid cash for the car and it still took us the entire day to take possession of his new car. His last new car was in 1990.

Thats all I have for now. I will be updating with pic of the first cycling meeting of the new semester in about a week.

I can't believe that it is August 13th

Every one loves needle point owls!

Greetings to all my naked legged friends out there. I decided that I have accumulated enough pictures to formulate a post that is worthy of your time. Not much has changed since my last post. Still working in boulder and commuting back to g-reality for second half of the week. I'm not really sure how people maintain their sanity whilst being imprisoned to a desk for 40 hours a week. I'm only working 30'ish hours a week, and what I do here I can't in all honesty call "work". It takes a special person to stand for this torture. My leg is still attached, and healing slowly. I will be going back to the doctor in 10 day to get a new cast that will be a little smaller than the current one, just below the knee. This will be just in time to have the new cast before my 15th semester of school starts. It is going to be interesting to see what my professors say when they discover that I am unable to ambulate during my clinical hours that are required every semester.

Here is a picture of the flatirons coming into boulder

This is me driving after I realized that I left the Rudy Projects in Greeley. Note still in the greatest chick magnet in the entire world - the mini-VAN!

A little democratic propaganda for you ( on the side of some ones car)

When I captured this piece of photographic genius, I was under the impression that there were colors associated with the democratic and republican parties, blue and red retrospectively. When I asked my republican lady friend, she did not feel that this association was legitimate. She instead took it to be a relic of the Cold War and those fascist communists. So the jury is still out on if this is a anti republican or anti communist slogan.

Here I am with 2 of my second cousins, both of which share my fantastic last name. We were in sterling for a 40th wedding anniversary of a family member. The party was at the Knights of Columbus building. The air conditioning worked about as well as the time period for which the building was named after. I was fortunate enough to have my father wanting us to leave this sweaty sauna of a place much earlier than my fellow cousins.

Keeping with Brian's theme, I shot a few pics of dinner yesterday. I made a take off of a basil pesto. I didn't want to stay with tradition and took a Mexican foot path to this delicious dish. A traditional pesto 5 ingredients; basil, pine nuts, olive oil, garlic, and Parmesan cheese. The dish consisted of cilantro, pumpkin seeds, manchego cheese, garlic, and olive oil. The usual piece of kitchen equipment for this production is a food processor, but I didn't have access to one of these, so I was forced to use a blender. This got the job accomplished, but took about 4-5 times long as the correct piece of equipment.

Here is the penne after I added the "pesto"!

The post would not be complete without the a finished product. It was very delicious. Although I failed to document the wine, I did have a great glass of German Riesling to accompany this fantastic new recipe

I guess thats all for today try to stay cool in this hellish heat