View From the Bushes

Since my eyes had started to feel better, I went bike riding on Saturday. It was quite the comedy of errors. I realized shortly after I arrived at the park where we planned to start that I had forgotten my helmet and gloves. Fortunately, my friend, who had brought his mountain bike to make things fairer for me, had over-inflated one of the tires and it had popped on the drive over. So we both had to jump into our cars turn around and go home. 20 minutes later we returned and I asked him when the last time he had put air in his tires, he said it had been awhile so I offered him the floor pump I had brought along. Unfortunately, his stem was a little too big for the hole, which wasn't a problem when we were getting it on, but when we tried to get it off we ripped his stem right off of the tube.

So while he put in his replacement tube, I took a short loop to warm up. After meeting up with him I figured our problems were over and indeed for a while that seemed to be the case, but about 20 minutes into the ride something landed on my leg just left and down from my knee and I guess as my knee bent on the upstroke it freaked out and stung or bit me. It actually hurt quite a bit, but them's the breaks, so I continued riding, ensuring that the venom got maximum distribution through my entire system. On Sunday the spot around the sting was red and hotter than the surrounding skin. So I put some ice on it and drew a circle around the extent of the redness. This morning it's still hot, but the redness has contracted, so I'm probably okay, right?

I left to go biking before the end of Saturday's time trial, so I had to wait until I got back to discover what had happened, including the horribly unlucky ride of Michael Rasmussen, which guaranteed Ullrich a podium spot, which finally discharged my debt, so that was good, but it was pretty sad to see him fall apart that badly. I can hardly wait to see what happens next year. Without Armstrong as the presumptive winner I'm hoping it will be a lot more competitive.

I can't feel my leg
Ross