A Typical Ride

A caravan of five Porsches pass by and interrupt my few of hogs grazing on the hilly countryside. I also saw a dead deer, multiple opossums, and a raccoon. I saw Shetland ponies and donkeys. I'm not positive, but I think I saw a baby buffalo too. He was wrenching and squeezing his neck between two strands of barbed wire fencing to reach the grass on the other side. Of course, I saw the usual horses and cows, hawks and crows, goats and sheep, streams and ponds.

I saw the land still devastated by the tornadoes that swept through in April. I saw the work that had been done, the work being done, and the work that needs to be done. The countryside is still a mess even though many homes have been rebuilt already.

I explored new roads and revisited old ones. I climbed mountains and got to overlook valleys for miles and miles. I got chased by three dogs and avoided attacks on all three accounts. The sun warmed by back and the wind chilled my face as it swept through the sparsely placed hairs of my beard. I shot snot rockets and ran stop signs. The wind slowed me down to single digit speeds at times and I cruised down descents at 48 mph.

It was a pretty typical ride. It was an amazing ride. It was why I ride.
The saddle, it is probably my favorite place in the world and where I am most at peace.

Grad School Update

Wow, it's been quite some time. I have neglected my posting for "higher education" and "more important" endeavors. Not sure I agree with all those terms. I really miss racing right now and writing about the great times I had. Since I originally said this blog would be about my racing and my schooling, I guess I need to include some posts about graduate school.

Far too many things have occurred since my last post and the beginning of semester to attempt to summarize the trip it has been, but I can say it has been busy and very informative. Just this afternoon I had my hands in a man's chest and cut out both of his lungs. Yes, we are doing cadaver dissections in my gross anatomy class. That class is where 78% of my attention and studying has been going over the semester. I have done exceptionally well so far. Well, except for the most recent test. Not a great showing for me, but it will do. My dissection group is great. Thankfully, it consists of three amiable girls that let me do all of the fun, nasty parts of dissection. It also means that we have great gossip around the tank and get to discuss who looked super cute that day in class. We started on Bobley and then moved to Betty Sue. Betty Sue is textbook perfect and was a great time. Tina was not as easy to handle, but we ended up with a very easy dissection for her. Now wrapping the semester up I got to use the bone saw last Friday to cut through ribs, sternum, and the clavicle to reflect the thoracic cage. Lab has been an amazing tool to help me understand the body and get a very firm grasp on muscles, nerves, vessels, fiber orientation, fascia, and of course subcutaneous fat. My mental visualization of muscles in people and the workings of their skeletal system is at such a higher level now.

Occasionally, we have to leave lab and learn other subjects. We've learned how to walk with crutches, do wheelies in wheelchairs, and how to do posture assessments. I learned how to do a back tuck for professional communication and I mastered how to make a powerpoint for evidence based practice. In kinesiology, I've learned that TR (a.k.a. Trent Richardson) can squat 600 and bench 450. My teacher still wants to be him when he grows up.

I've taken the things I've learned in the classroom to my everyday life too. Trying to be more like TR to ensure an A in Kinese, I started uping my weights when I do squats. I've been trying to hit the gym every Tuesday and Thursday morning. I've been making some progress now that I'm really trying. Last week I did 20 reps of 315, 15 reps of 405, 14 reps of 455, 20 reps of 315, and then 25 reps of 315. Then I went upstairs and busted out 100 lunges with 25 pound dumbbells. Watch out TR; I'm coming.

I applied the anatomy of the hand in my most recent set of injuries. I've come up with the diagnosis of a torn posterior joint capsule of the first MCP. I finally got into the doctor so I can get a referral to the hand surgeon and see what he says. Radiographs from this visit pretty much confirmed my suspicion and also showed a subluxation of the first CMC joint and a possible dislocation of the capitate bone. Should be a really fun office visit next week.

I did manage to have a little fun the past two weekends. I went fly fishing with the school (we saw a whooping 0 fish the entire trip) and went camping with some classmates. This has been the extent of my outdoor excursions since I have not been biking in such a long time. It's hard to go when I'm so tired once I finally get home from school everyday and the weekends have just been occupied with other things. It's an insult to my bikes to be neglecting them like this. I must do better.

Quite a few of us have also picked up rock climbing. We've spent several afternoons taking study breaks at the bouldering wall in the student rec center. It's a fun sport that is pretty challenging. It's always good to be humbled by a 110 lb girl that scales the wall you've been working on for 20 minutes.

All in all life is passing. The sun rises and the sun sets. I'm trying to make the most of it and include as much as I can in every day. I don't always succeed, but that's what tomorrow is for. Like I said, too much has happened to include it all, but that's what I got so far.