My first night with the pedicle flap was a rough one. I got about 3 hours sleep. I kept waking up because my head and nose hurt so much. I took a melatonin and a Unisom and managed to sleep from 2 to 4 am, then tossed for 30 minutes before getting up to start Flap: Day 2.

I had an 8:15 appointment with the dermatologist, and after yesterday’s double dip flap fix I was worried that there would be more needles and sutures and such. So I was relieved that all they did was remove the dressing, examine the fix, then re-bandage.

I learned a little more about what is supposed to happen now. Tomorrow I remove the bandage myself and apply Vaseline. I’m supposed to cover the repair with non adhering dressing and tape when I’m outside, and keep the Vaseline on it all the time. That means I’m going to have to look at it, and I get squeamish at the sight of blood and wounds pretty easily. I’m gonna have to get past that…

The initial healing is supposed to take 3 weeks. Then there is another pretty major procedure to detach the flap’s supply line, leaving the healed flap in place covering the nose divot. Two more weeks of healing, then the stitches are removed and hopefully I will be my handsome scar free self once again. Or at least scar free…

I have been given orders: no vigorous exercise for one week. Since I didn’t ride Tuesday (rain) or yesterday (surgery) that means a minimum of 9 days without elevating my heart rate. That never happens except for occasionally during walnut season.

Even after the week passes I doubt I will be on the road soon. I haven’t had any injuries from a bike crash, but the possibility is there and the results could be catastrophic during the flap fixing stages. And I can’t see how I can wear a helmet and cycling eye protecting glasses with the state of my face and forehead.

I can put the Sampson with its Stages power meter on my primitive fluid trainer. And I will use it as soon as I get clearance from the doctor to sweat. I hate indoor cycling and it is no substitute for the real thing, but I’ll have to make do. I am certain to lose fitness and getting strong enough to take on club rides again is going to be a trial.

One last disappointment: Stoker and I are about to celebrate our 40th year of wedded bliss. There might be an upcoming blog about that. We were planning a luxurious and lavish trip, location TBD. Now we don’t have to TBD anything; we ain’t going anywhere soon. Neither are my bikes.

I might not be on the bike for a while…

Today I had the first step of the ‘repair’ for the hole in my nose from the Mohs to remove the basal carcinoma there. There were several options, including just leaving everything alone. Based on what a wonderful day today was, I kind of wish I’d opted for that.

However the dermatologist recommended something called a pedicle flap. He assured me it was what he would choose for himself. One reputable web site called it “The Gold Standard” for nose repairs. I was reluctant but ultimately decided that the dermatologist knew way more than I did, so I decided to follow his advice.

I’m not going to describe the procedure in great detail. Basically they cut skin from the forehead, leave it attached so that there is a blood supply to aid in healing, then attach the ‘flap’ to the Mohs hole in the nose. Here’s what it looks like when finished:

There is lots of sticking with needles and cutting and cauterizing and stitching. It takes almost 1 1/2 hours. They gave me a squeeze ball to try to deal with the worst pain (from the needles for the anesthetic; those things sting). I squeezed so much I might get carpal tunnel.

Finally I got to go home. They said to call if there were any complications, like bleeding. They even gave me the doctor’s cell phone number, which should have been a tip off that I might need it.

Sure enough, an hour after I got home I thought my nose was running. But it was blood flowing down onto my upper lip. and soaking through the gauze. I called the office, then went back at 1:30 this afternoon, both afraid and highly irritated. More needles, remove stitches, peal back the flap, do more repair work, more cauterization, replace flap. Another hour of squeezing…

I guess I didn’t study this thing enough. I think I probably made the right decision, but all this flapping and un-flapping means my face is going to be a mess for a month or more. I didn’t expect such a long and invasive recovery.

My timetable for getting back on the bike is uncertain. I don’t see how I can wear a helmet or cycling glasses, so when I do have the okay to exercise it might have to be indoors. I am certain to lose some of the limited fitness I have, and maybe gain a few pounds too.

So on this cheery outlook, 2022 draws to a close. A year featuring health problems for two people I care a lot about. And for me: First dental surgery for an extraction/bone graft/implant, then Mohs surgery, and now this double dip into the flap trap. Happy New Year everyone!

Back in August 2000, something appeared on my left arm. Since Stoker had a carcinoma removed from her forearm a few years ago, I showed it to my regular physician. It looked like a hematoma but he didn’t know for certain, so he referred me to a dermatologist.

The soonest appointment I could get was late November, and by that time the blemish was completely gone. But I had a photo on my phone and decided to see him anyway.

I looked up the dermatologist on line, and found out he was very experienced. In fact, you might say he was old, but his skin looked quite young, which indicates he knows his business.

The nurse had me strip down to my shorts and then the doctor came in. He looked at my photo and then gave a quick glance at my front and back sides, and pronounced there was nothing worrying. He also saw my cycling tan lines and asked if I spent a lot of time outdoors. I said I did but always used sunscreen.

The receptionist suggested a follow up one year later, and since dermatologist appointments are so hard to come by, I set one up for November 2021. Same thing: strip down, get a quick once over with no worrisome findings. The exam was so cursory I wondered if he actually would notice any problems.

Last month I had another annual appointment and I expected another negative result. But he saw something on the tip of my nose. I knew there was a very tiny red spot there which had appeared recently, but I couldn’t imagine it was a big deal. He thought otherwise. He took tissue for a biopsy. The numbing needle stung a bit but otherwise it was painless. He put in some stitches and told me I’d get results in a week or less.

It turned out to be a basal cell carcinoma. I had the Mohs surgery to remove it this past Wednesday. Two numbing needles, the second much more painful than the first. Then some scraping and pressure, although the numbing injections did their job and I didn’t have any pain until later, and not much even then. I smelled something burning, and when I asked the nurse what it was she said “It’s you” Apparently the bleeding was significant enough that cauterization was necessary.

The nose is not a good place for this kind of thing because there isn’t much extra skin there, so the wound can be difficult to repair. He recommended something called a pedicle flap. There are other options, including just letting the area heal as it is, but the scar tissue might shrink and cause some nasal blockage.

I looked up pedicle flap on the internet, and while is is described as the ‘gold standard’ for repairing the nose it also seems a little invasive and uncomfortable. The procedure is scheduled for December 28 and I think he said another 3 weeks of healing, followed by what I assume is ‘unflapping’, with more healing in store. I hope I’m done with the whole thing by the end of January.

For now I need to keep putting Vaseline on the area and keep it bandaged out of doors. This makes cycling and wearing cycling glasses a little difficult and uncomfortable. Cycling in cold weather makes my nose run, but I have to be careful about blowing and wiping. And getting a cold or Covid now would be quite inconvenient.

The whole thing is irritating and unpleasant, but I try to remind myself that it is necessary and for the best. And also that the discomfort pales in comparison to oral surgery for dental implants, which I have a lot of experience with. So bring on the schnoz jokes and ask if I was in a bar fight. Put me at the head of the peloton and let my nose show the way in the fog, which is so dense this morning that the club ride was cancelled.

Remember Fearless Frank’s Flat Fiasco last July? Here’s the link: https://freehtt.org/2022/07/04/fearless-frank-fioris-four-front-flats-fiasco/. Something similar happened yesterday.

Thursday’s club ride was blessed with nearly perfect winter weather and amiable company. Someone described the Stockton Bicycle Club members as a bunch of “Geriatric, white privileged roadies”. I don’t know about the privileged part, but the other two counts were correct: the six riders ranged in age from 66 to 74. And we all ride 5,000 to 10,000+ miles on the road every year.

We rode briskly but at a sociable pace from Wallace to our favorite foothill coffee stop, Common Grounds in Valley Springs. We sat outside sipping java and eating various goodies (breakfast burrito for me) and enjoying the sunshine during one of the shortest days of the year. The weather and conversation were so enjoyable, we delayed our restart a little longer than usual.

As Jeri got ready to remount, she realized she had a flat front tire. So we are going to have an even longer delay. Normally fixing a front flat shouldn’t take much over 5 minutes. Normally….

Jeri is a ‘she’, and identifies as a woman, so I’m not ‘mis-pronouning’ her. Chivalry is not dead even if it might not be politically correct; I volunteered to do the change. It was my first time wrestling with Specialized Armadillo tires. The tires were incredibly hard to pry off of the rim. I was worried I would break the flimsy lever she had, so Ken brought me a more robust Pedro’s lever and I was finally able to dismount it.

I carefully felt the casing looking for the cause of the flat. I found it, a very sharp piece of wire most likely from a car or truck tire that lost some tread. It is a good thing I was easing my thumb along the tire slowly, otherwise I would have sliced my finger open.

There was no easy way to get the wire out of the tire. We needed tweezers or pliers, and we didn’t have any. But since we were at Common Grounds, our favorite coffee provider provided the necessary needle nose, and the offending wire was removed and disposed of.

I used a pump to put a small amount of air into the new tube, then managed, with help, to wrestle the tire back onto the rim. At this point I withdrew and left the inflation using a CO2 inflator to more experienced hands. I never feel comfortable with CO2 inflators ever since that day on Ebbets Pass when Steve was using one and somehow it turned into a bottle rocket.

Three cartridges later, we decided the tube wasn’t holding air. Someone speculated that I may have pinched it. I hadn’t; when we removed the tube we noticed a small hole near the valve that looked like a manufacturing defect.

We got another tube, and another cartridge. This tube needed a valve extender because the stem was too short for Jeri’s rims. Ken had one, but we couldn’t make it work with the CO2 inflator. So we finally resorted to a hand pump, and about 400 strokes later Jeri had enough air to ride home.

This could be a Stockton Bicycle Club record for longest tire change. Strava told me that I rode 3 hours and 11 minutes, but the total elapsed time was 4 hours and 58 minutes. About an hour of that was due to the flat fiasco. Good thing we are geriatric and retired. But white privilege is no protection against the Flat Fates.

Alert readers may note that I made a grammatical error in the title of this post. I have not suddenly gone senile, although things are moving in that direction. No, I did it on purpose to get you’re attention. And they’re is another one (and another!), two deliberate mistakes to introduce my latest topic: high school English teachers who hate English.

A self-identified “cringey” California English teacher claimed she combats “white supremacy” “B.S.” in her classroom by teaching students about the overemphasized importance of grammar usage and writing rules.

Marta Shaffer, a tenured English teacher at Oroville High School, began the 2022-2023 academic year by teaching parts of linguistics as a way of “fighting white supremacy in my classes,” according to her posts on TikTok. The goal was to be “inclusive of all kinds of ways we use the language.”

According to Shaffer, expectations for students to use proper grammar and syntax is part of White supremacy culture that “runs deep.”

I had to look up the word ‘cringey’. It isn’t in our Random House Unabridged Dictionary, which is over 1,900 pages But apparently the word has been created. Here is the definition from Google:

crin·gey /ˈkrinjē/
adjective
INFORMAL

1. 1.
   causing feelings of acute embarrassment or awkwardness.
   “one of his cringey attempts at camaraderie”

‘Cringey’ is an example of changing a perfectly good word to give it more of a ‘feel good’ sound. A more common instance is found in fast food advertisements telling you a sandwich is topped with ‘melty’ cheese. Or maybe it is spelled ‘meltie’: I couldn’t find this in our dictionary either. I assume they mean ‘melted’, and that melty is not some rare type of artisanal formage from the south of France.

While I’m on the grammar pulpit, will people please quit mixing up ‘less’ and ‘fewer’? My favorite example of this is a radio commercial for a prostate supplement, which assures men who take it that they will have “less urges to go“. Every time I hear it I cringe. Or maybe I get ‘cringey’.

According to this English teacher who hates English, proper use of grammar and syntax is yet another example of ‘White Supremacy Culture’. Thus Usage joins Mathematics, Sheet Music, and Punctuality as a tool of oppression used against people of color. If you read my blog regularly you will already know that. And if not, why don’t you? I promise to complete my sentences, which is something the California Department of Corrections does not insist on.

Anybody remember Barbara Jordan? I’m not going to explain who she is; Google can help you. But what I do remember about her is her incredible eloquence in the House Judiciary Committee investigating Watergate in 1975, defending The Constitution. I was only a teenager and I can still hear her. I don’t think her high school English teachers thought proper usage was part of white supremacy culture.

But sometimes I wish it wasn’t.

Some of my readers know that Stoker has health issues that have made travel difficult for us. I am happy to report that over the last several weeks she has been feeling much better. So much better, that last week she suggested we take a two night trip to Cambria to walk along the ocean and eat some seafood.

It has been a very long time, almost a year and a half, since we have spent the night together anywhere but on Brumby Road. Once we got used to the strangeness of it, we had a great time. We stayed in a nice motel on Moonstone Beach Drive, where the sunsets are about as good as they can get.

On Tuesday we went to Montana de Oro State Park to walk the Bluffs Trail. This is an easy path with spectacular views of the California Coast. We looked for whales but didn’t see any. We also looked at the 1,347-foot Valencia Peak. There is a trail from sea level (obviously) to the summit which, when we were younger, we did several times. Looking at the imposing mountain it is hard to believe. We certainly aren’t up to such an ascent now.

After a nice Thai lunch we took an adventure car drive from Cayucos to Cambria via Old Creek Road and Santa Rosa Creek Road. This latter road is very steep and narrow, and of course it started to pour rain making visibility and traction difficult. We arrived back to clearing skies and another hour of sunset watching, then it was time for dinner.

We ate at a really nice place and started with two appetizers: crab cakes and raw oysters on the half shell. There were 6 oysters: Stoker ate two and I had the other four; we split the crab cakes. I really like raw oysters and have eaten them many times over the years without any problems. There is a first time for everything…

During the main courses which followed I began to feel a bit unwell. It certainly wasn’t that I had overindulged on wine: we ordered a bottle but only poured one small glass apiece. The plan was to take the bottle back to our lovely room and sip the remainder watching our fireplace.

When the check came I told Diane I didn’t feel especially well, and she said I looked tired. On the 10 minute walk back the cold night air didn’t revive me; I felt even worse and my stomach really started to hurt. Then things really fell apart. I’ll spare the details, but after the immediate crises I normally would expect to feel much better. But my stomach distress and pain continued through the night. Stoker had to enjoy the fire and wine alone.

The pain was so bad it kept waking me up. I chewed at least 12 antacid tablets, but they didn’t seem to help much. Neither did sips of Pellegrino; I hoped the bubbles would help me burp away the pain but they didn’t. I was clammy and sweating and for some reason my nose was completely stopped up.

Finally around 4 AM I fell into a sound sleep, and when I woke at 6 I felt much better. No fever or stomach pain. My nose was clear, no stuffiness at all. I was hungry enough to eat a bit of breakfast and now, less than 20 hours after I was stricken, I feel fine.

What happened? I can’t prove it of course, but I think one (or more) of the oysters was tainted. Remember Stoker ate two of them and she had no trace of illness. I must say that I am really glad it was me that ate the bad ones instead of her. She is just starting to feel something resembling normal and she shouldn’t have to suffer.

I’m really sorry I missed sipping wine and enjoying the fireplace and Stoker’s company, but there will be other trips to the ocean. Probably not with raw oysters though, at least until the memory fades.

Diane’s mom Doris passed away this week. Just short of 99 years old and in poor health, it was no surprise. Soon after her four daughters and their husbands got together for a kind of cross country Zoom wake. It was cocktail time in the Central Time Zone, and I bent a rule and poured Diane an early afternoon glass of rosé.

The stories and memories were flowing with the wine. I thought about titling this blog “Ode to Doad”. Doad was what Doris’s husband Dave called his wife, kind of like I call Diane “Stoker”. When their youngest daughter Jackie was dating Jeff (they got married and are still together). Jeff misheard and innocently asked Jackie “Why does your dad call your mom Toad?” Poor Jeff; that story has stayed with him for almost 5 decades and provided the family a little fun at his expense.

Stories like this are an important part of families; shared memories and reference points. Stoker’s sister Kris told how she came upon her mom crying at Jackie’s wedding. Kris asked Doris what was the matter; this was supposed to be a joyous day. Doris replied “I can’t believe I raised 4 daughters and all of them got married without getting pregnant!” Proof of excellent parenting, bringing tears of relief.

Diane and I spent quite a bit of time with Doris and her husband Dave. They would come to California every winter. We set up a travel trailer in our front yard so they could have their own apartment. They were visiting here on their 50th anniversary. During the cocktail hour I tried to get them to tell stories of their years together, and Doris obliged. High school basketball player, playing guard in the 6 player women’s game that no longer exists. She was aggressive and fouled out occasionally. Or more than occasionally…

After high school, when WW2 started, her husband went into the army and she went to Wichita to work for Boeing, a real life Rosie the Riveter. When the war ended she and Dave moved to North Carolina. Dave was a good enough baseball player that the Cardinals signed him to a minor league contract. Not a big money free agent, so cash was sparse and they rented an apartment at a discount by doing chores and fix it jobs.

She remembered one time walking (they had no car) home from the store with a bag of potatoes. It began to pour down rain, and the paper sack broke and potatoes went rolling everywhere. The grocery budget was tight so she had to round them up, getting soaked in the process. The image of ‘Doad’ pursuing potatoes has stayed with Stoker and me ever since.

The years from 1946 to 1956 were termed the “Baby Boom” as soldiers came home from the war and couples made up for lost time. Dave and Doris did their part with four daughters. Diane was born in 1946, followed by Kris, Cindy and Jackie. After four girls I imagine that Doris informed her husband that he was never going to have a male heir.

She also described a cross country car camping trip with all four of the daughters. It sounded hectic and disorganized with occasional raised voices, which was not common among the polite Midwesterners. But they survived and created more memories.

Hearing all these stories, I urged her to write them down, for her daughters and grandchildren. I even showed her how to use the early word processing software I had. She never got around to it. Too busy fishing or cooking or playing cards or visiting daughters and grandchildren.

After her husband Dave died Doris continued to visit us in California. There aren’t any grand kids on Brumby Road, but Luke certainly enjoyed being the grand dog.

I’m borrowing this from John Mortimer: there are two kinds of people in the world, patients and nurses. I think he means that some people give more to others than they take for themselves (nurses), while others don’t (patients). Doris was a nurse.

Sometimes I wonder just how stupid our political leaders think we are. Case in point…

“Seniors are getting the biggest increase in their Social Security checks in 10 years through President Biden’s leadership,” the White House tweeted Monday.

Seniors are not getting an ‘increase’ in anything. The purchasing power of their Social Security checks FELL 8.7% during 2022, based on the CPI. The ‘increase’ simply restores the purchasing power to what it was at the start of the year.

The increases are automatic and required by current law, so President Biden’s ‘leadership’ had nothing to do with it.

An accompanying note from Twitter states “readers added context”. When they finally stopped laughing.

Flash Update! This just happened as I was writing: That tweet disappeared without an explanation from the White House by early Wednesday afternoon.

Even the Administration is embarrassed. I hope they are more careful tweeting about Russia and China.

The great thing about stupid tweets is that once they are released someone is going to copy them and bring them into public view. But there is a chance that Facebook, which is where I share my blog with the world, will ban this one. So if you don’t subscribe to my blog via e mail, why not do so? WordPress doesn’t censor.

Stoker and I receive Social Security payments, which constitute a small portion of our income. The increase is welcome and will help offset increases in Medicare and supplemental medical insurance, PGE and propane costs, food and gasoline prices, and keep the Côtes du Rhône vin rouge supply topped up. My favorite bottle was $6.00 at the start of 2022, and today it is $7.50. That is a 25% jump, so the SSI COLA is going to need some assistance from IRA withdrawals.

Defined benefit pensions have become less common than they once were, but public employees and some large companies and non-profits still have them. And most of the pensions have COLA’s built in. But those COLA’s are virtually always capped at 1.5 to 2% per annum. If you depend on a pension your purchasing power starting 2023 is down over 6% even after the COLA, which means you need to eat 6% less, drive 6% less, travel 6% less, etc. You get the idea.

Actually eating 6% less might be a good thing for me. I could lose a few pounds and ride uphill a little faster. I knew there was a bright side to hyperinflation somewhere.

The full quote is “Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain”. It’s from the play by Friedrich Schiller titled Die Jungfrau von Orleans (The Maid of Orleans, as translated by Anna Swanwick). I remember the quote from reading Isaac Asimov’s novel 1972 novel The Gods Themselves. And no, I don’t carry all this around in my head. I had to look it up. Thank you Google.

If Asimov can appropriate the quote, so can I. When I’m not writing about my teeth or how much I love Stoker, my blog intends to ‘contend against stupidity‘. And certainly ‘in vain’.

My friends Joni and Doug just completed RAGBRAI, a week long bicycle ride across Iowa, on a tandem. Along the way they met an enterprising rancher who was offering a photo op for $5. They couldn’t resist.

The animal’s name is Bufford (not Buford, I asked). Joni referred to Bufford as a ‘cow’ but she grew up in Southern California where they think milk comes from a grocery store. It is pretty clear that Bufford is either a steer or a bull, but I’m guessing an animal tranquil enough to keep relaxed with Joni sitting on his back and talking non-stop has had some equipment removed.

Unlike Lia Thomas. When I first saw Lia Thomas’s photo, the obvious question occurred to me. Thanks to Riley Gaines, I now know the answer. Here is what Ms. Gaines wrote about her locker room experience at the NCAA Women’s Swimming Championships:

“I saw a 6’4″ biological male exposing male parts in our women’s locker room. To be perfectly clear, the anatomy I and many other women were forced to view, confirms Thomas is a male.

I asked the officials where I should change as I had no intention of undressing in front of a man. They informed me that there were no protections in place for me to change in a space that Thomas did not have access to.“

Thanks to Ms. Gaines, we know that Lia Thomas has something that Bufford doesn’t. Which raises the question, what are NCAA Swimming officials thinking? Do they think that all a person has to do to be eligible to compete as a woman is to self identify as one? Do they think taking a few pills to lower testosterone levels and using a few depilatories turns a person bearing male parts into a female for competitive swimming purposes?

I could write that the swimming officials are either being woke or fearful of woke backlash. But I’d rather call their decision what it is: stupid. Contend in vain…

Yesterday I had an appointment with my Family Care Physician. I like him well enough, but he spends more time looking at the computer screen with my medical data than he does looking at me. Everything was fine, except that the take home report said I was ‘overweight’. That kind of irritates me, since at 5’11” and 170 lbs. (I’m usually a little lower but I ate some ravioli the night before. OK, more than just ‘some’) I didn’t think that would qualify. Time for Weight Watchers?

He (I’m assuming the doctor uses he/his pronouns, others were not suggested) asked if I wanted a flu shot, and to preserve domestic harmony I agreed. Stoker thinks it is a good idea. I like to remind her that one year I got a flu shot a couple of months before we went on a cruise, specifically because she wanted me to. I got the worst case of flu I’ve ever had on that cruise. Despite sharing close cruise cabin quarters she remained perfectly healthy while I had a miserable fever and chills and body-wide pain.

I intended to do the club ride today, but I woke up with a headache, some general body aches, and I felt listless and tired. I took the dog for a walk instead of driving to Wallace to ride and while Luke was marking his territory I remembered the flu shot. So that’s why I had a headache! The side effects were mild, unless one plans to ride a bike uphill.

I told Diane about my headache, and she said I should take a home Covid test. She got us a whole bunch of them, probably for ‘free’ paid for by some of that massive increase in M2 used to finance the Inflation Reduction Act. Orwell’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ had nothing on the Biden Administration.

Since I don’t have a fever, or any respiratory symptoms at all, the test seemed unnecessary. But there are reasons right now why I need to be like Caesar’s wife, and when it comes to being Covid negative, I must ‘make assurance double sure’. I can’t write about the reason, but take it from me I don’t want to be passing anything to anyone.

So it’s time for my first self performed (self inflicted?) Covid exam. I opened up the test kit, and look what I found:

For some reason, all the Chinese characters and the red star on the ‘Qualification Certificate’ tickled my sense of irony. Maybe Covid came from a bat cave via a wet market. Maybe Covid escaped from a virology lab that just happened to be located where the outbreak occurred and which happened to be working with Covid type viruses to make them stronger so they could be studied. But one thing is pretty much universally accepted: Covid came from China. Only fitting that the test kits should too.

Performing the test is not exactly simple, but the directions were actually clear. Sometimes products come from overseas with instructions that claim to be in English, but might as well be in Mandarin. I could actually follow these pretty easily. Open a couple of vials, swab for 15 seconds in each nostril, soak the swab, put EXACTLY 4 DROPS onto the sample hole and wait 15 minutes. The directions were adamant about the EXACTLY 4 DROPS part. Fewer drops or more drops might cause a hurricane or endanger world peace, as well as make the test unreliable.

One line next to the C means your are Covid free and the test is valid, a second line (next to the T) means get thee to a nunnery or otherwise isolate, STAT! As you can see, I passed. So if anyone that I’m trying to keep from getting Covid gets it, remember I’m like Caesar’s wife.