Bikes are Beautiful

To continue my apparent theme of post titles, my next entry will be called "bikes are bicycles" and my next will be "bikes are cookies". I seem to be just stating things that are true and creating an image, so consider me as a painter.

I shared my excitement with you all in my last post, and I just want to reiterate how great bike riding is: it's pretty great.

I've now had a couple weeks of outdoor adventuring, and I've really been soaking in just how much bikes mean to me. This year has provided me with a lot of time to... reflect... and it's rejuvenating to bask in the bliss of bikes. Don't get me wrong, I have loved bike riding the last couple of years, and there is no profession that I would rather have ended up in. Bike racing is a different type of fun for me. I enjoy the process of training, the satisfaction of completing painful intervals, and the fun of working towards a goal. On a very rare occasion, usually when it was terrible weather, I would come back from training and tell Marissa that "bike riding was a job today". 99.9% of the time though, bikes never felt like work, and that's wonderful. The fun with bike riding as a means to improve at bike racing is still great fun, it is just a more calculated and focused glee.

The past couple of weeks, I have rediscovered the pure, child-like freedom of bike riding. It is soul healing to catch myself smiling just at the act of riding bikes. Speaking of smiling, this happened:

We're stuck in traffic. And I just got new teeth. I'm incredibly embarrassed that I did this! #newgrill

A video posted by @ianmcrane on Mar 24, 2015 at 5:35pm PDT

I could endlessly rant about the perfection of going out on bike rides, but I hope all you reading this find that. If it's tough training or a casual ride, make sure and remember that bike riding is loads of fun. Pure joy! Sure, we may also do it for other reasons, be it: for racing, weight loss, transportation, or many others; but we all started bike riding because it's fun and freeing. If you catch yourself gleefully giggling on your next ride, go ahead and blame me! That's fine.

I dropped that tooth video in there just because it fit so well with where my sentence was going, so let's hit on that world really quickly.

After ~8.5 hours in the dentist's chair, I am about 75% to done with teeth work. So that's exciting! While it may look as if I have a full mouth of teeth again, this is not the end of the dental work adventures. My ...real... fake teeth are still being manufactured, but this week I had the broken teeth prepped and this round of fake teeth put in. They're basically a mouth guard that's cemented in. With this, most of my upper teeth are now one piece. That means no flossing and no spinach getting caught up in there. That's pretty convenient! Now I can go to bed SO much faster without the flossing step in the routine!

Downside to this part of the fake teeth world is that although I have objects there in my mouth, I still need to eat as if I didn't have anything there. So no sandwiches, apples or burritos YET, but soon! When I get the real ones in here at some point in April, I'll definitely be celebrating that step with a big ol' bite into something exciting. Now that I don't have most of four teeth missing, I bite my lip a lot more, and can also whistle again. AND I ate a banana like a normal person, so feeling pretty smug about that.

That's all for now. Have a great weekend!

Tweet

Bikes are so good!!

Everyone! I rode bikes outside! When I pedaled, my bike moved forward! Times are good.

The above picture is what I felt like. At 14mph.

That's the exciting news as of lately, that I'm safe to be a productive member of society, by pedaling bikes, again! 

It's been really great to get out this week and ride with my friends and family. I also wanted to make sure I rode with someone every day as I ironed out the kinks. Plus #selfies!

Marissa!

Riding with dad!

Got David out on a ROAD ride. Just like the ol' days!

2012 HB Reunion! Fun times were had

The Condor soars! Awesome to ride with Alan again

Andy has taken lots of photos of me riding in the neck brace. So good to get out on a real ride with him!

Biking is amazing and I'm every minute reminded of how much I love it. As with anything you stop doing for 6+ months, riding bikes felt incredibly foreign the first several rides. My tires, I'm certain, were pumped up to 210 PSI the first several rides. My computer was no doubt displaying in the wrong metric, because the act of moving while pedaling felt incredibly fast.

Gradually, I've upped the distance and loosened my grip on the brakes. Times are good.

Speaking of good times, Marissa and I did this:

That is not a bridge in Seattle. Plus, what'd I say earlier about selfies! This is, I think, my first selfie that I've ever put on the internet. Maybe. Soak it in! We had a great trip down the coast with the only goal being to explore. We did lots of touristy things, as proven above, and had a nice visit to San Fran, Santa Cruz, and especially Petaluma. Here's something awesome: we drove down in Marissa's maglev vehicle and got radical gas mileage so we saved some major dollars. 

I just proof read this post and was reminded, by that last photo, of my darn teeth. Hey, guess what! I spent four hours in the dentist's chair last week getting oodles of root canals. As fun as that sounds, there are no visible changes but it's a good step towards eventual stumps being Elmer's glued on in the next bit. So, with that being said, here's my last selfie for the day:

Tweet

New Experience

Friends! This past weekend I had the opportunity to do some speaking when I was asked to present at the Olympic Orthopaedic Association Cycling Team's year-end function. They didn't have anything particular that they wanted to hear about, other than that they "love bike stories!".

I've wanted to get a message out there, and this was a perfect opportunity for me to try speaking with a purpose. Over the hour that I spent with the team, I was able to tell lots of fun (to me!) stories about the highlights of my first year as a professional. I also needed to mention the lowlight as well, and that's obvious what that has been.

I wanted to be able to share a sample of what goes through my head, so I put together this video with little tastes of some of the topics that I touched on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpQ8BhevONY

Thanks to the OOA crew for giving me this opportunity!

Tweet

Just doing things

I'm going to get my teeth fixed soon! This is exciting to me. Since, ya know, sandwiches and burritos and stuff.

First, I'm really proud to announce a partnership with Klean Athlete for 2015. Klean is a supplement company targeted towards athletes. Every product is NSF certified for sport, which means that everything that they offer is guaranteed to be free of banned substances. This is incredibly valuable for any athlete facing potential testing through USADA or WADA, as you can just look on the label and know what's in it- there is no risk of the supplement being potentially tainted. A tainted vitamin ruins a career, and that is something that I do not want to have to worry about.

Based on my needs in recovery, I am proud to be working with a company who is able to help me keep my health where it needs to be. I'll have a post highlighting what I'm taking and its purpose within recovering from a TBI at some point in the future. I'm glad that Klean Athlete can provide me such sanity while I'm doing everything in my power to recover naturally and safely to 100%.

Think about it. 

Check out Klean Athlete! The multivitamin tastes like caramel if you're not into the stereotypical vitamin taste....

Since I can't ride outdoors yet and Seattle has had an uncharacteristically dry and beautiful Winter, I have been meandering around outdoors much more often. Turns out that being outdoors is a fun thing to do, who knew?! Rollers on the patio is a good option, but I have been (embarrassing, I know) really enjoying going on walks around my neighborhood and other surrounding areas. The other day it was a balmy 50 degrees so I sunbathed shirtless. OK, not me, but I DID see someone doing that. Aren't you cold, man?!?!

On that sunny day, Marissa and I went on a small neighborhood exploration adventure. Recently there have been several luxury townhouses being built that I regularly drooled at while driving past. Ok, fine, I drool a lot because of the whole mouth surgery perma-numbness thing but drooling at fancy townhouses seems like a plausible event? These townhouses, on the sunny day of walking fun, were open for touring for prospective buyers. So we went down, scoffed at the lack of closet space, and continued on with our day. I now know what million dollar townhomes look like! We decided to not place a bid for one of them. Since, well, the... closet space.

Continuing on with our adventure, we ended up at a park where there was a basketball hoop and several basketballs. In the unlikely event that 10 year-old me were to challenge current me to a game, I would definitely foul out to avoid losing. I am TERRIBLE at basketball.

I've been doing things other than walking, luckily. The next step for me is another MRI to continue to track how my brain is healing, and I see the dentist soon since my last surgery helped get some mobility back in my mouth. Lots of good things! I've been doing what I can to take care of my body in the best ways possible, so shout out to Peter S. (Acupuncture), Jim C. (Chiropractic) and Trevor G. (Massage) for their roles in helping get my body, especially my neck, back into working order. Thanks guys!

Also, I want to give my buddy Brooks a big GOOOO, he's starting his race season off this weekend. Have fun, man!

Tweet

Real talk

I missed out on a pretty big writing opportunity at the end of my last post. Let's just pretend this is some crazy time warp thing and somehow the tattoo post has been connected and finished here. Deal. The tattoo was a well thought out commitment inspired by a dream, and the better ending to that post is that I am just trying to make my dreams come true. See ya, soapbox.

So there hasn't been too much writing happening for me because there hasn't been too much excitement worthy of sharing. Scratch that, Marissa and I finally, after one year in our place, sorted out bike storage. With some help from my dad and his wizardry we were able to get a space-saving solution figured out that isn't incredibly damaging to our rental walls. Celebrate!

I have this blog for a reason, and I want to take advantage of that. One of my goals this Fall and Winter was to not be overcome by my accident. I wanted to just move on. I didn't want my devastating injuries to be the only thing that I ever was able to talk about. The crash doesn't need to consume me nor the people who follow me, but I have come to grips with the fact that it is indeed life-changing and I need this blog as an outlet. I really value being open and this blog has always stood as a memory bank for my experiences. Regardless of my goal to not be consumed by this new world, this is an experience that I will have as part of my lifetime forever and I want to record it. This is now a part of who I am, and I can accept that.

This post was inspired by some action and direction, which now, almost 5 months in, is something to treasure. Initially healing was a rapid and steep progression, but not long into the process it became a plateau. Gone are the massive daily changes and those are replaced by things less noticeable to the human eye. Until recently that was my world. Then, after 13 weeks, I got to take the neck brace off. That was quite freeing and I've been working diligently to regain strength and range of motion. As range of motion slowly returned to a closer-to-normal zone, I was able to get back in the driver's seat of a car a bit after the four-month window had passed. These two improvements felt like massive leaps, and with the return of some more normalcy came a large morale boost as well.

This Thursday I have another big step, and that is my first surgery as part of recovery. I haven't been able to open my mouth more than ~50%, and because of that haven't been able to get my teeth fixed. This first surgery will start the correction process to help get me back to full ability with my mouth. As soon as the sutures heal, I can head to the dentist. Once I have teeth again, I will be able to eat a burrito! Has any other cyclist ever gone 5 months without a burrito? That's the number one food item on my post-surgery/teeth list. Then maybe an apple without cutting it first.

Those are what show up when you search happy burrito or something along those lines on the Google machine. I'm weird for searching that. But SUPER happy to find the "7 stages of eating a burrito" blog post.

Let's talk about bikes now, because bikes are rad and I like them. I'm still awaiting clearance from the Doctor's to determine how my TBI has progressed and when I will be able to ride outdoors again, but for now I still am turning things over every day indoors. Is there a record for consecutive indoor rides? In an entirely unrelated thing, is there a record for pure volume of sweat-loss while riding a bike indoors? Just curious, asking for a friend.

The trainer, although a pretty rude training buddy, has helped me a lot throughout this recovery process. With the aforementioned plateau in healing, seeing even the most minuscule of improvements on my Garmin screen gave me a consistent way to track how my body has been recovering. With the reintroduction of driving into my world, I was able to get myself and my bike to Herriott Sports Performance to try riding on the rollers. After 3 months of stationary riding, it was such bliss to have to balance a bike again. Since that first time, I have ridden the trainer once in the past month- instead always choosing to ride the rollers. It's been a pretty big boost to my mental game to have the rollers as an option now because besides having to balance: time goes by faster ; it just feels like bike riding ; and my power is, an at times shocking to me, 70-120 watts higher.

I'm going to rent a flat bed truck, put the rollers in the back of that, and have someone drive me around so I can "ride outdoors". Or just do this:

As I'm sure you all know, it's 2015. If you missed out on that I'm glad I could help. Marissa and I went to a friend's house to welcome in the New Year and both stayed up way past our bed times. There was a toast made that really rang true to how I was feeling about saying goodbye to 2014. I don't remember it word for word, but the message was that with the changing of the year, it is a good time to be proud and highlight the good that has happened and to not feel anger towards the bad that happened. It is part of you, but it doesn't define you.

I have a lot to be thankful for. I did successful 20 minute intervals today and now I'm laying on the couch unable to move much further. I love this feeling.

Tweet

The story of the tattoo

I had some questions about the tattoo. I got it because I wanted to be like Doug Sumi. End of blog post.

In a more serious way, I thought I'd share with you my tattoo and my full reasons behind it. First:

Photo credit: Graham Watson

Alright, so there's my new tattoo. It healed pretty quickly and I'm getting used to seeing it on myself.

As a little back story, I've always been a very vivid dreamer. My whole life I'm used to having lots of dreams and great recollection of those dreams in the morning. If not a dream, I'll be able to recall what I was thinking about before falling asleep quite regularly. I dream often - occasionally three times a week.

Since the my accident and TBI, I've had zero dreams.

That's a small exaggeration. I had one dream about five weeks post-crash and nothing before and nothing since. That dream was very vivid and very clear- and as I woke up and recalled it- it was quite powerful. Having had a blank slate for such a long time made this dream feel extraordinary.

In this dream I got a tattoo of a plus sign on my left wrist. I drew it out in a very specific Sharpie and was able to get a feel on if I liked it enough to get it.

I thought about it for several days, then decided to find that Sharpie. Thinking about it more, I started to see the reasonings behind the plus sign. To me, I think of the plus symbol as a visible form of positivity. Math nerd. Throughout my whole recovery in the hospital, I'd always try to find the good in whatever was happening. I'd look to unlimited extents to find the positive in things, and it truly helped me deeply while suffering in the hospital. I knew that this recovery will be a long road and being positive through it will be something that I always need to rely on.

I drew lots of options in a notepad, and tried out several variations on my wrist in Sharpie.

I decided on the outline with open ends because it also represents a crossroads to me. This accident has been life-changing and will always be a part of me. This tattoo represents how I have and will carry myself through this recovery and the rest of my life.

Continuing on, the more I thought about my dream the more it made greater sense to me. The wrist seemed like a good spot for many reasons: It's easy for me to see, but also not flashy. It's visible to me while I'm riding- so even though I'm riding the trainer- I can be positive while I'm doing it. Also, you better believe that when I win again, it will be very visible in the victory salute. See that! That's being positive right there.

So I drew countless plus signs on my wrists, talked to my "tattooed friend" (asked Tre some questions) and finally got it done after lots of thought to make sure that I was not blindly following a dream like some crazy person.

I never thought I'd get a tattoo. I never thought I'd put such weight into a dream. I've been craving normalcy, and a dream is a semblance of that. Also, I was super tough guying this whole process. I thought that I was invincible and nothing could cause me pain through the tattooing. WRONG! 98% of the tattoo didn't bother me, but going over the tendons was definitely a much more noticeable pain. I've got lots of respect for people who get teardrop tattoos on their faces now!

So that's that.

Tweet

Real updates!

Hey all, I wanted to send a little positive bird flying from my direction towards your windowsills. I think metaphors can be hilarious, case in point that one right before this sentence!

Let's see.. halloween happened, and Marissa and I attended a costume party at a friend's house. I tweeted around halloween-time: "When wearing a neck brace you can call anything a Halloween costume. Easiest holiday ever!" I was NOT joking! You see, neck braces make it so pretty much anything you choose to dress up as has a little flair of inaccuracy. Want to be Robin Hood? Maybe the prince of thieves with a sore neck! A banana costume? Sure, if your banana happened to have a sleeve guarding it from bruises! What I've decided is you pretty much can wear anything you want and the neck brace fits into the costume. Seriously, Google search "costume ideas with neck brace" and there aren't very many options. So when Marissa was loaned a 1950's era dress and makeup, I had to fit with that because nothing is more adorable than couple costumes. Except maybe puppies. So I decided that I'd be rocking blue jeans, white shirt and older shoes. Oh right, and a neck brace. That made me... James Dean POST fatal car crash. Boom! Then I consulted this chart from GQ magazine to determine if that could be seen as a "too soon" type costume:

If anyone's offended, I was dressed as James Dean but recently hurt my neck so I have to wear the brace.

Right, so if I'm dressing up in costume (jeans and a tshirt) things have to be going well, right? Things are going great! Here's an update for y'all:

Recovery is a slow process, and gone are the daily incredible changes. That's a great thing because I have been feeling normal for quite awhile and that's been awesome. I had a long stretch of head injury related issues, but I've progressed away from those and am able to thrive back at my own home without a need for supervision. I get excited about doing little things now, like going to the grocery store or cooking dinner! The neck brace is still around, but the great news is that yesterday I got the all clear to start weening off of it. That means when I'm at home I don't need to wear it, but any time I'm out and about I need to have it on. As of now the weening process is about a week, but could be longer depending on how my neck and head respond. Sleeping is WAY easier without a neck brace on! I'm happy to, in a week or so, be able to start working on PT to get some motion back in my neck. It's amazing how much functionality you lose while stagnant for so long, and the athlete in me is very excited to have the ability to improve upon that. My lips, teeth, and cheeks are still about the same but I graduated from drinking out of a syringe to a straw, and now am trying to learn how to drink without a tool. It's way more enjoyable drinking a coffee from a mug compared to a straw, believe me. I'm doing alright and besides an occasional - ok fairly regular- spill, I am way happier to be drinking more normally. I'm hopeful my lip and teeth fixes will be able to happen soon.

I still have quite some time before I will be cleared by the doctors to ride outdoors again, but nothing is stopping me from riding the trainer. This situation has given me the longest amount of time I've been away from riding in... forever maybe.... and with that comes the sensation of being truly out of shape. Luckily trainer riding doesn't accentuate that sensation. Ha! The good news is I'm working on being positive about this riding outlet so.... while all my competition are coasting and going downhill and stuff, I'm pedaling. Also sweating profusely.

I still can't drive and since I can't ride a bike either, I've learned of another form of transportation. Did you all know that by standing on your legs and moving your feet in a forwards direction, you can WALK for transpo?!?!?! That's right- me, who always avoided walking because of well, bikes- walking for the sake of getting places. Turns out that just riding the trainer isn't enough to tire a guy out (at least with my current training) so I've been going on walks in order to get outside and move a bit more. Does it count as walking for exercise if you also happen to stop for lunch or a coffee in the middle of your walk? shhhhhh

Who knows what's next. Maybe I'll pilot a rocketship because those people don't move their head around much either!

Also, sneak peak:

Never thought I'd get a tattoo, but a lot of things happened this year that I never thought would have. There's another!

Tweet