I’ve managed to go a whole month without a post. Shame on me. I won’t pretend that I can get a months worth of stuff in here but here’s the highlights.
I slacked and didn’t ride the bike in today.
Summer has officially descended upon the greater DC area. Since the holiday weekend, temps have been steady in the high 80’s/low 90’s and the humidity has been hovering right around a hundred billion percent. Welcome the 3 months of the year when nothing ever really dries.
Technically, today is my ‘rest day’. I’ve decided to try and race in a local mountain bike race series, the Wednesdays at Wakefield (WAW) a four race series the end of June and July. Team buKit training and equipment consultant Nature has constructed a specific training regimen tailored to my needs. Today is my rest day. Of course that’s with the assumption that yesterday was the race. It wasn’t. I did ride the bike yesterday though 16 miles and got in 21 miles on Tuesday.
I managed to hit the trails at Wakefield on my fixie for the 1st time on Memorial day. Fun and scary as shit at the same time. I went with platform pedals and sneakers at first for the bail-out option, but I feel like I’d be better off clipless. I’m so used to it now that when my feet move around on the pedals it actually freaks me out even more and I feel I have less control.
The good thing is with the arrival of summer the pool has now opened and the kids dig that. We got a little Red Flyer plastic wagon so Lyn can just walk with them to the pool and I met them there on the way home from work. They really like it and I so does Lyn. It wears ’em out and they enjoy it too. Lyn’s talking about hanging out every day of the summer. If it stays this hot, I can’t say I blame her…we’ll go broke in sunscreen though.
I’d want to get out of our townhouse too. It has the unique characteristic of being able to maintain 3 different climates within the same structure. Our AC works so that the basement (of course) is like a meat locker. The middle level is about 5 degrees warmer. Tolerable, comfortable in the kitchen and living room. Unfortunately up on the top level where the bedrooms are it’s rain-forest-time. Makes for interesting sleeping.
Most of Memorial Day Weekend, I was fighting some sort of weird chest cold thing – maybe allergies, I dunno – but was up most the nights coughing and hacking. I’m still feeling the residual effects of that and the subsequent sleep deprivation. Fun. The kids seemed to have it as well, although it only lasted in them for like 24 hours. Weird.
Lyn had it too, then seemed to get better. A day later she wound up in bed with a migraine that was so bad she thought we’d have to go to the hospital. Completely unexplained. It doesn’t help matters that she went recently for a routine ultrasound of her neck (follow up to the thyroid cancer) and they found some ‘lumps’. Of course she was at the ultra sound and it ended up running like 3 times as long as it should. The doctors were all conferring and consulting and she knew something was up. They wouldn’t tell her anything ’cause she had the kids there with her and that made her freak even more. She got home and called her Doc – he was out of town for 4 days and it didn’t look like we’d know anything too soon. She told them that she was freaking out and they managed to have another doctor check the results.
Turns out that her lymph nodes are enlarged. I guess this could be any of a number of things, from the signs of fighting an infection (like a cold/virus) all the way to the Big C. The doctor said it was up to her, she could let it go and they could check it again in a few weeks or she could go ahead and get a biopsy and they’d check it out. She went biopsy without hesitation as she wants to know what’s going down.
I guess they have to wait a week or two to schedule the thing – since she has a history in that region of the body already our doctor is going to make sure that like 4 specialists are on hand at the time of the biopsy and getting all these guys there in the same place at the same time is a major feat. It’s both reassuring and freaky. Reassuring that he’s making sure to get good people there, freaky because in some ways it may/may not speak to the gravity of the situation. We’ll keep you posted.
The ironic thing is that Lyn says she’s been feeling the best she has in a long time. I say that’s a good sign, that maybe it’s something minor. I dunno, we’ll see.
It’s weird to try and relate to anyone that hasn’t been there what this is like. You’re just sort of supposed to go through your daily life/routine until that ‘day you have an appointment to see if you have cancer again.’ To say it’s nerve wracking would be an understatement.
That being said, we soldier on. I gotta get a guy to come check my (apparently) dilapidated AC system. We continue in our half hearted search for a house to buy. We go to a few open houses each weekend, partly serious, partly as entertainment. Although the market here is ‘correcting itself’ as the realtors like to say, it’s still way to pricey for us and we consider a move somewhere else all the time. It really depends on what day you ask and what mood we’re in whether or not we’ll be around next year. I don’t really care where I’m at, as long as it’s near trails and I can ride my bike to work.
So I guess that’s about it. There’s more, but I gotta work. This is one of those ‘State of Things’ posts. Not witticisms, no bitter diatribes, and with the exception of the beginning, not to much bike geek talk. No pictures. Wah.
Hope it’s not as hot and humid wherever you are as it is here.
I will try to update more with info/observations/WAW training foibles as well.
Owt.