SteveO's Most Awesome Baseball Ride

Two weekends ago I did a walk/jog workout Saturday morning and then played a music gig Saturday night, including schlepping all my gear (upwards of 75 pounds worth). I was so achy and worn out by the end of the evening that I had trouble sleeping. On Sunday I was a mess.So, this weekend, knowing that my Saturday was going to be about the same as the one previous (workout then music gig), I cancelled my Sunday plans and decided in advance I would take it easy.

And then SteveO tempted me with his Nats bike ride. I've been eager to get out and do some club rides. This one sounded extra fun - baseball themed, ending up at Nationals Stadium for a game (using a block of tickets secured by SteveO, who is a season ticket holder). The ride wound up being more miles than I anticipated, but it was loads of fun!

We met up for pre-ride breakfast at Best Buns in Shirlington, where the group was joined by "wheels&Wings", who had just flown into National Airport and was biking home, as well as LeprosyStudyGroup (I'm using forum names here), who would be joining us for the ride but not the game. Wheels&Wings left us when we headed out after breakfast, and along the way we were joined by kwarkentian.

The ride wound up being about 20 miles through DC. SteveO had done an excellent job in planning out a route that took us to a number of spots with baseball-related significance. We visited the site of Griffith Stadium (the old Washington Senators stadium), as well as the original stadium which predated Griffith. We rode past the house where Walter Johnson (probably the most famous Senators player) lived at the time he got married, and past the spot where the ball was found when Mickey Mantle (go Yankees!) hit an amazingly long home run out of Griffith Park - one of several 500+ ft homers he hit in his career. Along the way I got a chance to see some of the revitalized neighborhoods around the U St. corridor. Those neighborhoods are a far cry from the hellholes they were when we moved here in the 80's , though they're not 100% gentrified - we did get yelled at by a smelly drunk (and probably homeless) guy for blocking the sidewalk at one of our stops.

The group at the bike valet

Finally, we headed for our destination, where I discovered that Nationals Stadium has awesome bike valet parking. Let me tell you, bike is the way to go to get to the park! Upon entering the stadium we headed straight for the Devil's Backbone beer stand. Having just ridden 24 miles, I probably shouldn't have had a beer, but I did. Along with lots of water for hydration!

What's baseball without beer in the hot sun?

Valerie and her friend Laura joined us at the game, bringing our total to 16 people. I set out in search of (at least somewhat) heart-healthy food. I finally found what I was looking for at the kosher stand wayyy on the other side of the stadium - falafel with lots of veggies.

Unfortunately, the game wasn't a great one for our team. The Reds pulled ahead by five in the first inning and then scored again in the second. After that it was a strong defensive game, but the Nats were never able to overcome the initial deficit.

Valerie, Laura and I headed out after the seventh inning. All the riding, sun and beer had taken its toll on me and I decided I'd take the Metro home. Unfortunately, the flow of people out of the stadium made me realize that there was no way I was going to make it onto the Green line with my bike. So, Valerie and Laura headed for the Metro stop and I rode a couple of miles to L'Enfant Plaza where, away from the baseball crowds, I was easily able to get on an Orange line train which took me home.

A super-fun ride and a happy return to group rides.

Strava is here: https://www.strava.com/activities/1053885054

More Returning to Normal

We always meet at the same place. As usual, I arrived to find Stephanie already there waiting for me. She was young, much younger than I am, a petite triathlete, her corn silk hair tied back in a braid. She approached me and without saying a word lifted up my shirt, ...

... attached the EKG electrodes and said, "OK, after I take your blood pressure you can go warm up on the treadmill."

Ha! Fooled you, didn't I?

Yes, I'm still in cardiac rehab with the other old fogies, being supervised by a staff of Millenials: nurses and exercise physiologists. It's like getting a little taste of the nursing home experience while I'm still only in my 50's!

The good news is that I'm also getting back into more of my regular activities.

To HDCC on two wheels!

Last Wednesday I made it to the Wednesday "Hump Day Coffee Club" on two wheels. I had started making it there a few weeks earlier using Valerie's trike; this was the first time I was cleared to do it on a big boy bike. In the picture above you can even see a little bit of my bike peeking in behind Steve Claeys (red handlebars on the right).

First time in a kayak

 The following day I made it to the Thursday night Pirates of Georgetown paddle for the first time since my surgery. I had gotten Teddy and David to help load my boat, and I was very nervous about my ability to paddle, since it's such a core and upper body activity. I took it really slowly - and fortunately, a new paddler joined us. He was really slow, slower than my slow paddling, so I wasn't slowing the group down. Kayaking felt great. I didn't feel bad afterwards, but apparently I was pretty tired. So tired that I must not have been thinking straight: when I unloaded my gear I apparently forgot to close the rear hatch of my car - I found it still open the next morning when I went out to get the newspaper. Fortunately, the car was backed into the driveway and still had the kayak on top, so the half-way open hatch (as far as it would go with the kayak still on top of the car) wasn't too evident from the street.

Larry, Tom and me at the end of the first outing

This past Tuesday I went out again, this time just with Tall Tom. I paddled faster and felt fine - though we did do a slightly shorter outing. We went up Roosevelt Island channel to the tip of the Island then back down and through the Boundary Channel back to the marina. That's about 1/2 mile shorter than the five miles I had done on Thursday. As always, the Boundary Channel was intriguing with its combination of urban blight and natural beauty. There were ospreys fishing back there that night. Meanwhile, Tom was plucking floating trash, including plastic containers, out of the water.

This thing bothers my scar

I've even picked up the accordion. Believe it or not, I think I found that more challenging than kayaking or cycling. The darn thing is heavy, takes a lot of arm power, and the bellows rubs against my scar. But I will persevere on all fronts, because doing these things sure feels good!

Back to Coffee Club!

The local cycling community has early morning "coffee clubs" every day of the week - opportunities for bike commuters to meet up and socialize before work. I like to join the Wednesday Hump Day Coffee Club down at Best Buns in Shirlington. It's a good group of people, the location works, and the baked goods are awesome.

As you might expect, I haven't been able to attend coffee club since my surgery. I did drive down once in April, after I got the OK to drive, but that didn't feel quite right. This week I was finally well enough to make it there by bike! Since I'm still under sternal precautions I'm still riding Valerie's recumbent trike rather than my regular bike, but that doesn't matter - I made it there and back by pedal power!

Hooray!

Check out how far I had my shirt unzipped - showing off my "zipper" scar. I look like a refugee from the disco era.

Riding back home. "Zipper" still evident.

They tried to make me go to rehab, I said, "Yes! Yes! Yes!"

So, I've been going to rehab for about four weeks. Since I'm a musician, I like to say I'm "in rehab", since it has that rock-and-roll substance abuse ring to it (heck, Amy Winehouse got a whole song out of the topic). The truth is much less cool - I'm in cardiac rehab. S

Actually, maybe the rock-and-roller analogy is appropriate: cardiac rehab is where the Woodstock generation is hanging out these days. Most of my fellow rehabbers are in the 70+ age group. Do the math - these are the twenty-somethings of the Summer of Love, now in their last (or perhaps penultimate) chapter. About half of the folks tote around oxygen bottles from machine to machine. Many are a little hard of hearing, and a few are a little mentally fahrblunget.

And then there's the "youngster" of the bunch. The active fifty-something guy who rides his bike to rehab. Who smiles politely every time they give him literature encouraging him to take up exercising, then throws the stuff away - because OF COURSE he's going to take up exercising. RESUME exercising, that is. Who is already walking and experimenting with a little running, biking, doing some gentle yoga, and even doing a modicum of strength training (abs and squats).

Starting rehab was something I really looked forward to in the days following my surgery - a milestone which meant I was ready to start on the path back to normalcy. However, it's been a little bit of a disappointment, since it's clear that rehab is designed for the elderly and sedentary. I grit my teeth and put up with the rehab protocol, which mandates a very gentle progression of exercise. In the fourth week they finally ratcheted things up to the point where some of the exercises raise my heart rate. I mean, it's not like they can't see that the exercises have been too low intensity for me - they watch the readout from the heart rate monitor I wear the whole time I'm there. Well, I guess protocols is protocols. I keep plugging away, and the fact that I'm exercising and my heart activity looks normal is giving me confidence to gently ramp things up in my own exercising.

Plus they have free coffee (though it's decaf).

Wildlife!

I have been doing a lot of walking on the local trails as part of my recovery from surgery and have been seeing a surprising amount of wildlife for urban parkland! 

Two pictures of what I'm pretty sure was the same deer. I took the first photo one on my way out and the second one at about the same place 45 minutes later on my way back - that deer was in no hurry. 

Two different foxes on two different days (one was healthy-looking with fluffy fur, the other was favoring a paw and didn't look too healthy). All along the W&OD Trail in Dominion Hills and Bluemont Park.

An Ill-Advised Bike Ride

I probably shouldn't write this post, because as soon as V reads it she will come downstairs and whack me in the head with a 2x4, and right now I'm not able to outrun her.

I will not bore readers with the details of my recent health issues. The short summary is that since last August I had been having symptoms while exercising, which turned out to be caused by blockages in my coronary arteries. By the time the cause was identified my arteries were really, really blocked - it was serious enough that they scheduled my surgery for the next morning, bumping someone else off the surgical calendar because of the urgency of my surgery. The conditions were there for me to have a fatal heart attack and I'm lucky that it didn't end that way. So are you, because you would have been deprived of my deeply entertaining blog posts forever.

For most of the seven months it took to figure the issue out the doctors were pursuing both pulmonary (breathing) and cardiac (heart-related) causes. A cardiac stress test in 2015 (I actually had brief episodes of symptoms in 2014 and 2015, but they subsided on their own) revealed nothing out of the ordinary, and I'm a pretty healthy guy, so my doctor leaned more towards pulmonary - asthma, or something like it. The problem is, all the asthma and lung function tests kept coming back normal. Finally, I convinced the doctor to send me for a CT scan of my lungs (I was concerned about lung cancer, since that's what killed both my dad and my grandfather). My lungs were normal, but the CT did reveal calcification of the coronary arteries. This was a very significant finding, but was written up in a very ambiguous way by the radiologist who read the CT and consequently went unnoticed by the other doctors. Fortunately, I read the report on my doctor's patient portal and we brought the calcification to the attention of my primary care doctor, who said she'd talk to the radiologist about it.

At this point, two weeks elapsed without my hearing from my doctor until she called me late one afternoon. Just the fact that the doctor called me herself rather than have a minion convey the message got me concerned - it meant something serious was going on. This was confirmed when she advised me to Immediately Cease All Exercise and Go See A Cardiologist. Needless to say, this kind of freaked me out.

The part of the story which hasn't been told until now is that when she called me I had just finished changing into cycling clothes and was about ready to walk out of my office and go bike riding. I have an awful commute, which I mitigate by exercising after work, letting rush hour pass by before I take on the 50 mile drive home. Well, there I was, ready to go cycling - excited, in fact, because this was going to be my first time mountain biking in a long time. And so I was faced with a dilemma: I was all set to go biking, I needed to do something to kill time before heading home, but I was now under orders to not exercise.

In retrospect, I could have found other ways to kill time. I could have watched Netflix at my desk. I could have put in extra time working. I could have gone outlet shopping in Clarksburg. I could have had a long, leisurely dinner. Probably the least advisable course of action was to say to myself, "Hey, if the doctor waited two weeks to call me, then it can't be all that urgent - I can wait two hours to put her advice into effect," and do my ride in Little Bennett Regional Park as planned. Oh, and it was a really pretty evening.

I will give you a chance to guess which option I took. As a hint, here's a link to my Strava track. I will say in my defense that I rode exceptionally slowly - no bombing down the single track, just a short, gentle ride through the woods at a pace no more taxing than a brisk walk. I've got to say, I had forgotten how much I enjoy mountain biking. Riding a bike through the woods is a very cool combination of, well, riding a bike and being in the woods. It's like a faster and more exciting version of hiking. I had a big grin on my face the whole way and thought to myself that if I did keel over, I would die happy.

Biking Little Bennett Regional Park w/ a bad ticker

The happy ending is that I did not die. I returned home and did indeed put the "No Exercise" prohibition into place. Four days later I wound up in the hospital, on a trajectory that shortly took me to surgery. Right now I'm not allowed to pick up anything weighing over ten pounds (and contrary to what you might take away from this blog entry, I actually am a compliant patient - if I know I'm sick) and so I can't even pick up any of my bikes off the rack. But I'm counting the days until I can!

A few days later (that's decaf, BTW)

"... and you biked here"

Regular readers are aware that I recently underwent some rather serious surgery, recovery from which is keeping me sidelined from any exercise more strenuous than walking. Thus, I don't have a lot of material to write about right now. However, to keep my avid readers from going through complete withdrawal, I figured I would document some little tidbits and older stories.

The main symptom which I had been experiencing was that I would get out of breath and feel some tightness in my chest when I exercised. Back in August the shortness of breath was severe enough that I absolutely couldn't run, but I somewhat chalked that up to the awful August weather that we experience in DC. Over the course of the fall and winter, my symptoms improved but never fully went away.

Anyway, my favorite episode in the long sleuthing process towards a diagnosis was when I went for a CT scan of my chest in early February. The weather that day was wintry but not extreme, maybe mid-thirties in temperature. Very comfortable cycling weather if you dress right. Rather than deal with the mess and expense of parking at the hospital, I decided to bike the mile and a half or so there.

I walk into the CT scan room. The technician is looking down at his clipboard. "So," he says, "your diagnosis is dyspnea* on exertion." He looked up at me and took in the fact that I was standing there holding my bike helmet and jacket, paused and said, "... and you biked here." I've got to hand it to him - I biked to most of my medical appointments and he was the only person to notice the dissonance between my symptoms and my behavior. 

I grinned. "Yeah, it's slowing me down but it's not stopping me."

To his credit, he didn't roll his eyes at me or chastise me. Actually, he started talking about how he really should exercise more - I guess being confronted with my perseverance made him feel guilty.

Not only was this the most amusing of my visits to the hospital, it was actually the one that revealed a key clue towards my ultimate diagnosis. 

*Shortness of breath