And for the ten of you who occasionally glance at this blog, thank you for your patience.

It’s been thirteen weeks since my run-in with the log from hell and three weeks since surgery to fix the resulting damage from that lapse of judgement.  I finally feel good enough to venture out of the house under my own recognizance.  This week was my first attempt at riding a bicycle, a moving bicycle, since the accident.

My plan didn’t involve anything too strenuous, just a slow roll around town followed by a short, mellow gravel ride to see how the knee feels in a real-world application.  I’ve been doing physical therapy twice a week since surgery and it’s been great for regaining strength and for getting me to trust my knee again but PT exercises are somewhat artificial.  How often in life do you need to stretch a giant blue rubber band with your leg?  

I rode through town in the early morning just as Salida was beginning to stir.  The cool morning air was fresh with the smell of spring.  I ran into some local ladies at the park.  They were quiet but I could tell they were happy to see me.  I was sure glad to see them.

Down at the river, the river people were doing their thing.

I crossed the river and headed up the Arkansas hills out of town.

The Sawatch range is showing the last of winter’s snow.

Climbing I could feel the weakness in my legs from weeks of doing nothing but lying around the house but happily, my knee felt mostly fine.  I did notice that even riding slowly on smooth pavement I tend to move side-to-side more than I realized.  My still-healing MCL would let me know whenever I drifted too far from a straight up and down movement.  As long as I maintained a smooth circular motion with the pedals, I was fine.

After a little over an hour, I reached the national forest boundary and decided to turn around.  No sense over doing it on my first ride in months.  It felt great to be outside in the fresh air, moving under my own power again.