This is the day I dread each year, the day I have to go downstairs to rescue my rain bike and make it feel loved again. As if anything would feel loved by subjecting it the elements, something you wouldn’t do (or shouldn’t do) for your “nice” bike. Think about the history of most of our “rain” bikes. At one time, they were the favored bike in the stable. The bike that felt special… fast & confident & fun to ride. For me, that bike’s reign typically lasts 3-4 years as top dog. And then, assuming it’s suitable for slightly-wider tires & some sort of fender, it moves to the category of utility/rain bike, maybe utility/rain/travel bike if it’s really worthy.

Not every bike becomes a rain bike though. My Madone 5.9SSL, which preceded my Madone 6-series super-bike, won’t likely ever achieve rain-bike status, or even utility bike, because there are no eyelets (for fenders) and it didn’t really like wider tires. Plus there’s some reason to question whether the later versions of superlight frames are really durable enough for the kind of abuse that a rain/utility bike would get. My 5900 could represent the last generation of top-of-the-line frames that could handle whatever you threw at them… sometimes literally! So my 5.9SSL sits on a hook at the shop, often surrounded, sadly, by old frames hanging on hooks that have been crashed & thrashed and are awaiting disposal. I wonder if it sees the steady parade of product that’s at the end of its life and ponders when it will be its turn? That won’t happen, at least not for some time, as the 5.9SSL only had 30,000 miles or so before “retirement” so it’s nowhere near worn out and has never had a hard crash. In a perfect world, it would get recycled for my son, but at 5’9, maybe heading to 5’10, he’s not going to fit a 60cm bike.

So in all likelihood my 5900, a bike that goes back to, what, 2003 or so?, is going to remain my rain/utility/travel bike for some time to come. It just keeps on going, no matter how much rain, snow & road grim is thrown at it. You just pour on more oil, wipe it down once in a while, and replace brake pads frequently (brake pads get eaten alive on descents in the rain). Tonight, looking quickly over it, the main thing it needs are… brake pads. Hopefully I’ve got some here at home. The rest of it looks sorta OK, certainly good enough for a ride in “real” rain, where the least of your concerns are perfectly-running shifters. Spinning the front wheel, the bearings feel pretty much shot, but as long as they don’t seize up, it doesn’t really matter that I might be losing .1 mph (likely a lot less) to them. I do need to figure out how to attach the video camera, assuming an opportunity to get “epic” rain footage.

I’m realistic about tomorrow’s ride; it’s likely that it will just be “wet” out there and not seriously dumping, and you don’t get much credit for “wet.” No bragging rights for light drizzle, no matter how much crud is on the roads. I don’t have any firm plans for the ride, just some ideas, maybe out to LaHonda and back via West Alpine. It won’t be cold, so this should be a good practice run for the more-serious weather coming in the months ahead.

There are so many ways to experience that “deja vu all over again” feeling. Last night through this afternoon was one of those experiences. Kevin had checked into Kaiser Santa Clara for surgery on Monday, where his internals got sliced & diced by a surgeon using a robot… really. You can see a machine like this here. Who could dream up such a monstrosity? It reminds me of a scene in a science fiction movie from the early 50s, “Invaders from Mars,” in which people were strapped to a table (not by choice!) while this machine drilled into them. Well this machine drilled into Kevin in three separate places, removed a section of a tube that runs from the kidney to the bladder, reconnected the ends, and placed a plastic bypass tube that will keep things safe for the next six weeks while the body finishes repairing what the surgeon started.

So part of the deja vu came from visions of this nightmarish machine (and if you follow the link I provided in the paragraph above, you can see it really does look nightmarish!). The second part came from my shift watching over him at the hospital, starting at 8pm yesterday, spending the night in his room in a chair that sorta becomes a flat bed, not sleeping much as every two hours they’re coming into the room to check up on him, and then waiting for the various doctors and nurses to certify that he could leave later that day and set things up to make that happen. We finally leave the hospital a bit after 3pm and drive home, and it very much reminded me of flying to France or Australia, not sleeping much en route, and having to keep going once there. One of those days that never seems to end.

Kevin leaving Kaiser after surgery

But the good news is that he is home, he is feeling better, and he should be heading back to school and work soon. It’s going to be a while before he’s back on a bike; it’s two weeks before his external stitches get removed, and we’ll find out then how much longer it will be before he can finally ride again.

But really, check out this link for info on the sort of machine that worked on him and tell me that it doesn’t look like some sci-fi torture machine!

Thanks to all for the kind words and encouragement. I promise you it will come back to bite you in the end, as Kevin recovers and gets stronger than ever and becomes that guy riding off into the distance. Hate that!

The day starts with a 9:30am appointment for Kevin (my son, the one with the kidney issue) to see Kaiser’s super-duper urologist in Hayward, for a second (or 3rd?) opinion. Or that was the plan.

In reality, the day started with a phone call from Kevin’s new urologist in Santa Clara, checking up on him after the relatively-minor operation he had on Friday to figure out if, in fact, his issue was caused by a slight blockage of the body’s plumbing exiting the kidney, or something else, something so mysterious that it can only be figured out by eliminating every single other possibility.

It appeared that his pain was diminished via the new (and painful) stent placed Friday, so we decided it was time to get things behind us as quickly as possible and implement plan b- a robotic surgery procedure that removes the narrowed tube and stitches it back together. The Dr. checks the schedule and discovers that someone’s cancelled a procedure today so let’s get moving. Great, we’re off to see the Dr. in Hayward, meanwhile having three phone conversations with the surgical staff at Santa Clara setting things up. Er, how fast can we get down there? And that’s while we’re in the Hayward Drs office. Continue reading →