Tonight I went on a bike ride for the first time in ten weeks.  Only on level ground, only for half an hour, and only for a short distance that I do not know because GPS conked out on me.  In my short ride, I was stopped by the police, but not for speeding – they wanted to know if I had seen a missing boy they were searching for.  I also rode past an elementary school that burned down yesterday.  I saw the cloud of smoke on my way to church, but did not know what it was until I rode past tonight.  The smell was something like the burn pile back home, only more sickening.  I last smelled this particular smell when Dad took me to see the home of some friends from church after it had burned when I was a youngster.  That time I was in my barn boots, and was shown a plastic clock that was still recognizeable, but was droopy and mishapen, something like in the famous Salvador Dali painting.  Tonight there were news trucks from all the big local stations, and their lights were on. I was able to see that pretty much the whole building had burned down to the ground.

I haven’t ridden since the week before Thanksgiving.   After ten days away with family at the end of November, I came home with a horrible nasty cold, and my ability to breathe was no good for cycling, or much of anything else for that matter.  Once over that problem, there were a series of Dr. appointments to diagnose a knee problem, and the bike didn’t work out schedule-wise.  That got me to Christmas, when I spent a little more than a week at Mom & Dad’s.  On January 15, my knee was operated on for a torn medial meniscus.  This is a part of the knee that had been repaired before, but the repair did not hold.  The solution this time was simply to cut the torn portion away as is usually done, and clean that area up.

Knees are funny things.  It doesn’t take much of a problem to cause swelling, and in my experience, once the kneecap is out of place, it hurts.  There must have been advancements in surgery techniques, because instead of three incisions, there were only two this time.  Before being discharged from surgery, they gave me a hydrocodone pill for pain, and a prescription for the same which was filled, but which I never took.  The swelling was also much less, so much less that my knees looked almost symmetrical after only five days.

I had stayed with some good friends the night after surgery, since I wasn’t supposed to be alone for 24 hours after general anesthesia, and was lovingly scolded for bringing my overnight bag down the stairs the next morning.  I was scheduled for six physical therapy sessions over three weeks, but was discharged after only three.  At the first session, the day after surgery, the therapist said the crutch I was using was really only a prop, and I wasn’t required to use it.  The therapist laughed at that third session when I leapt out of the chair in the waiting area, only a week after surgery.  That day the joint was only six degrees away from full range of motion.

The overwhelming success of the surgery may be directly attributed to the skill of the surgeon (if anyone in the area needs a good one, let me know), the care of the nurses, the cleanliness of the facilities, and all the benefits that good medical practice can provide.  But as Grandpa says, many prayers were answered.  The truth is that all of this is a gift from the Father, providing for his child.

So perhaps after a couple weeks on level ground, I’ll be taking the ol’ bike over the bridge to work again.

My ’71 Schwinn Suburban