Saturday, March 26, 2011

First bike ride since my elbow fracture

Today was planned to be a busy day. Mostly cleaning up our rental house in Rockyford in preparation for new tenants moving in this coming week. Seeing as most of the day would be spent cleaning, fixing and doing tasks that generally are not that exciting, I figured I'd better get out for a nice early morning ride. Have something like this to go on can make the day much better.

This was the first time I'd tried riding since my little incident on the snowmobile. Oddly, I ended up having quite a bit of wrist pain after the ride, while my elbow was fine. Not enough to worry about though. With a mild(er) temp of -4C (25F) I'm really looking forward to spring coming on. Fought a strong headwind on the way back, but that just adds to workout. A great hour and a bit of snow-gravel goodness.

Right before taking this last shot, the large sheet of ice I was standing on broke free. Mad scramble, but just managed to get off without dipping my feet. That would have made for a miserable ride back home. I guess I need to be more mindful of these things this time of year.

Monday, March 07, 2011

Snowmobiling


I suppose I'll keep the odd post coming. I've resolved that it might not be very frequent, and I've removed the pressure I'd put on myself to "make sure this makes it to the blog" that was keeping me from enjoying activities I was doing, and blogging about them. But, if I happen to have a camera around, and happen to snap a few frames, I'll probably get to posting it here. More low key, and enjoyable. That's the whole point of sharing via a blog isn't it? It's supposed to be fun? And it is.

This past Friday, 3 of my good friends and I were lucky enough to all schedule a day off, and head out on our snowmobiles. Our sweet wives thought it would be good for us to have a day off, absolved of our fatherly duties and just hang out and be guys for a while. We've got amazing wives! And, when guys are being guys, it often leads to a bit of craziness and in my case, stupidity.

Case in point: When I get behind the throttle of anything fast, I like to let caution flee from my mind. I love the feeling of being scared. It's a rush that has gotten me in trouble more than a time or two. I'd written off my sport bike 3 times, and was hospitalized once. But after I got to the point where I could wheelie for over 2 miles, shift through all 6 gears and top out at 140 miles per hour (not kph, MPH) all without letting the front tire touch the ground, that is a true reward.

Back to the snowmobiling. We're planning a weekend trip to the mountains to sled, and we viewed this day as a "test" ride. Kind of a chance to ride together and familiarize ourselves with each others riding style. We were just cruising the priairies, riding in the irrigation canals and blazing across the frozen lakes. We'd stop whenever we found a piece of terrain that offered a chance to play around. Once such piece was a nice snowdrift on a frozen lake.

My friend Brad said, "hey, I'm gonna try a superman!" I thought it was a great idea. Only problem: you need some serious airtime to pull of a full extension superman and land it. I tried a few times, couldn't quite get the full extension I wanted and then decided I'd just let it all hang out. Full extension, try and pull the landing, but mostly worry about full extension. I got the full extension I wanted, and the landing, well, there just wasn't time. The good news: we had video rolling. The bad news, I fractured my elbow. But, in the end, the pain was worth the split second of glory.

Check out the video:


Cheers,

Jeremy