"The Bike Room"

A view from outside the door


Right side


Center view


Left side


Center floor


Clutter I don't see any clutter? I see organized chaos! But not clutter! This is the small, roughly 6' by 6', closet known in my house as The Bike Room. Granted not all bike and bike related things are stored in here, just not enough room, but there are other things in here not bike related that take up space. Like the water heater, the file cabinet for the apartment manager, and our cleaning supplies. It is always in varying states of cleanliness and organization. This is in response to The Old Bag's "clutter" post http://oldbag.blogspot.com/2006/08/clutter.html you have a long way to go before you get here! The best part is Christie dosen't mind as long as it stays in the room and the light is turned off when I' m done!

Time to blow off some steam...

We're off to the Oregon coast. Lincoln City to be exact. We are going to spend the next 4 1/2 day with our good friends from Spokane Eric and Nickie Ewing and their three boys. We have been looking forward to this for quite some time. Christie REALLY needs to blow off some steam and DE-STRESS. I have a Dr.'s appointment this morning and I will be getting some x-rays as well as a how I am doing in my recovery from the doc.

It's almost here the one year anniversary...

Less than an hour till the one year anniversary of what I have come to call, "It's what happens when you bring a Bicycle to a Car fight." in reference to my still healing broken leg. I thought about going to the scene of the accident but I decided, "Naaaww, I'm good" no need to mourn. What's done is done....

These pictures are from last year after the accident:
Coming up to the intersection

Looking left up hill, the direction which the car that hit me came from.

I got a packet from Seattle Fire Dept today which included the fire department employment application and a scheduled time for the written Psychological Exam. I have to have the application filled out and turned in by August 21st and my psych exam is 1pm on the 19th of August. They also state there will be a timed PRACTICE CPAT (Candidate Physical Aptitude Test) exam mid September. So what does this all mean? Not really sure I thought they might sit on the list till 2007 but sounds like they might want to push a class through this fall?!?! Probably won't have the real CPAT till Oct? Either way I am out once I get to the Medical. When it rains it pours....

Dead Baby Downhill and Messenger Challenge tonight

So the race that changed my life forever is tonight. I will be attending just so I can hopefully show some people that the race is not worth what I have had to deal with for the past year! This is one of the last photos of me with leg intact, CLUELESS!

Photo courtesy of Morrispost.com

I wish everyone racing tonight a safe and fun time. http://www.deadbabybikes.org/raceshit/racenow.htm

PS Crutches SUCK!!

Tomorrow I will go out to 40th Ave SW and SW Morgan St and have a moment of silence to mark the ONE YEAR anniversary of get demolished by a car!!

Comments...

It has recently been brought to my attention that only blogspot bloggers could leave comments here on Track Daddy. Well I have rectified that situation. Despite all the spammers in the world I have changed my settings (my wife just showed me how to do so) to allow all readers to leave comments !!!! So let them come I anticipate getting all kinds of comments Good, Bad, and the Ugly, just no spam please. Thanks the management.

This is an email I received from a guy named Tom alerting me to my non-inclusion status on the blog. Thanks Tom I am glad that you have found Nirvana AKA bicycles again re-welcome to a glorious world where you too can be a kid again!

With out further adue...

Hi there,

I stumbled upon your site and thought I would email a quick hello (seeing as you aren't allowing non-"bloggers" to post comments). Firstly, congrats on your fire exams, they're notoriously difficult - I hope they don't drop you during the medical. If they do maybe you can
re-apply once you're fully healed.

Secondly, I hope your leg isn't aching too much. I broke my left tib-fib falling 25 meters down a waterfall in January. Like you I was ridiculously lucky not to receive more serious injuries (especially spinal, head, ribs and so on...). Your story of infection, nail swapping and bone grafting made me feel sick.

If it's any consolation, which I think it will be, I know EXACTLY how you feel - cold aching and tenderness, sore feet, stiffness, frustration at not being able to run etc... etc...

http://tomandzoe.com/log/?p=341
http://tomandzoe.com/gallery/browse/Broken%20Leg
http://tomandzoe.com/gallery/detail/Broken%20Leg/leg_steel.JPG

The one great thing to come out of the whole deal is that I've rediscovered bikes - I've built up a fixed gear (http://tomandzoe.com/gallery/browse/Bike) from an old beater and have been riding it as much as possible (which is about 20-25km at a time). My left leg is small and stick like, while my right is more muscular than it ever was :) My friends and I call August the International Month of Domination - everyone sets some somewhat unachievable goals (like
riding 500km in the month, writing two thesis chapters, catching a trout on fly in Tasmania, organizing a postdoc and seeing 50 new bird species), and then 'dominates' in order to achieve it.

All the best,
Tom.

--
Thomas Rayner
School of Tropical Biology &
Rainforest CRC
James Cook University
Townsville
Australia 4811

More anti-climactic news...

So I got my letter today from Seattle Fire Department. Most anti-climactic news I have received in awhile. Due to my injury, I will most likely get dropped from selection in the medical phase.... Ya know this just SUCKS! Oh well....

AVA Real Estate and Counterbalance Bicycles present: Sprints to Nowhere... An Indoor 500m Time Trial

Our cycling team is in the process of organizing a USCF permitted cycling event.

Sunday August 20th
from 2pm till 8ish
AVA Real Estate and Counterbalance Bicycles present:
Sprints to Nowhere... An Indoor 500m Time Trial
Magnusson park,
"workshop 30"
6310 NE 74th
Suite 109E
Seattle, Wa. 98115-8164

Racer $15
Spectators $5
All unlicensed racers will have to fill out a one-day license form. All racers will have to fill out USCF liability waivers.


For info, please go to WWW.AVACBBRACING.COM

The racing will consist of four single speed freewheel bicycles fixed to rollers with a fork mount. Racers will go head to head for 500 meters ,fastest times advance to a final bracket for prizes. We have invited Amara Boursaw to show her photos from this past season. There will be music and we are working on beer and food! So come out for an evening of fun and bring the entire family!

I have had to remove myself from the event planning as I heal and take care of Abigael. The team has stepped up and they are throwing themselves into planning, making me very proud! After learning we had lost our first venue in Redmond last week, I was ready to cancel the entire event, but with the persistence of a few key team members, we are moving forward! Thank guys!!

Back to School... Again

So I have made the decision to go back to school to complete my prerequisites for Nursing school. Yes I can hear it now, Brandon there aren't many guys in your line of work are there? Or you could just call me Gaylord Focker, MALE NURSE. I know that it will be hard, very hard. I am focused now and I am ready to go back to school. I HAVE to get good grades in my prerequisite courses. Acceptance into nursing schools and nursing programs has become VERY competitive. I made this decision based on the fact that my broken leg will most likely keep me out of contention for getting hired as a paid full-time Firefighter, with any department. I will continue to apply and go through the hoops of the testing process, but I am investing in my family's future with the nursing thing now. I will be attending Seattle Central Community College starting Sep. 25th. The school has an awesome and affordable childcare program for Abigael while I am in class. I have already registered for three classes in the up coming Fall quarter (15 credit hours!) MAT 085 - ALGEBRA II M thru F 11 to 11:50, NTR 150 - HUMAN NUTRITION W & F 12 to 2:20, and ANP 213 - HUMAN ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY I T & Th 5:30 to 9pm. I have five months 19 days left on my Veteran's education benefits that I have to use before Feb 15th 2007 or I lose it. As long as I am enrolled full-time for those five months 19 days I will receive my full amount of benefit $$$!!!! Winter quarter 07 ends March 21st just in time to use up all my Gov't money!!! And as an added benefit veteran's receive 50% off on tuition at SCCC! I will also take three classes in the Winter 07 quarter. I will be signing up for tutoring in math also. I have it planned out to have all of my Nursing program prerequisites done in time to submit my application for the start in Fall 07. The nursing program is six quarters long and starts every fall first come first get in. Although as demand increases they might institute a points qualification system like Shoreline Community College has for their Nursing program.

Enough of my school babble,, but I am so excited to start! I have been healing very well over the past two weeks. I am still sore and the pain is still there, but it has definitely gotten better over the past week. Most of the pain is still in my upper left leg and is strangely muscular. My side (donor site) stitches came out on Wed. and the Infectious Disease doc say I am clean as a brand new whistle!! All of my cultures from surgery came back negative!! I am tolerating the antibiotic well and I should, as soon as it stops weeping, get all of my stitches out next Wed. My mom has been a HUGE help over the past two weeks helping to take care of Abigael and myself, THANK YOU mom!

One of all my bikes

I have SO been wanting to do this for quite some time. I will start out with a picture of my current bicycles and then picture posting permitting I will add pictures of past bikes, different configurations of current and past bikes, dead frames of bikes, and pictures of bikes I have only with me in the picture... So with out futher adue here it goes with a small description of each...

Currently owned ridable bicycles

2004 Kona Explosif can be geared or run singlespeed!

2004 Kona "A" Singlespeed full suspention

2005 Kona Sutra touring bike first "bought off the floor" new bike since 1989

1988 Specialized Sirrus mostly current Dura-Ace now. This is the bike I bought new off the floor in 1989 at Draper's Raleigh Cycles in Ukiah, CA only original parts left are the frame and front derailluer.

2005 Desalvo Custom Cycles custom team track racer full Dura-Ace with custon DWI stem

Old Bicycles I either no longer own or have been retired

2004 Kona Unit Sold the frame to replace with the Explosif above so I could run gears also to rehab my broken leg!

This is my beloved 2002 Surly Steamroller I was riding this bike on Aug 5 2005 when I got hit by a car and broke my tib/fib.
It had seen MANY different colors and configurations you will see in the pics to come.

2002 Desalvo Track FULL Dura-Ace track grouppo. This was Mike Desalvo's 2002 Inter-Bike show bike. I upgraded from Cat 5 to Cat 3 on this bike in 1 1/2 seasons. I sold it to Kris Lepine.

Same Surly Steamroller as above before the powder coat green. It is stripped and clearcoated raw steel. This is the bike I messengered on when I did not work at ABC Messengers.

Cyclocross version of the Steamroller on which I placed 3rd overall in the singlespeed catergory I raced every race FIXED!

First brand new "track" frame 2002 Surly Steamroller which became all of the above!

First full suspention mt bike 2000 Rocky Mountain Element Race bought used at the 2003 Seattle Bike Swap from Justin Vander Pol. Sold to best friend Eric Ewing in Spokane!

1971 Mercian track bike Reynolds 531 steel nice chrome fork and rear triangle with a pieced together totally complete Suntour Superbe Pro Track Grouppo.
I sold the frame/fork and grouppo sperately to two different people in NYC via Craigs List.

2003 Kona Kula Primo 100% cross-country race machine. Frame weight 2.9lbs! Took me to 5th place in the WIM series Sport men 30-39 race Cat. Sold it when I got hooked on singlespeeding!


First "FIXIE" Nishiki road bike conversion found at a co-op for $20 rode her till the frame cracked!

2001 Kona Major Jake that I bought from "Jarhead" Adam and I built as a flatbar city bike. I raced two cyclocross races in 2003 on this bike before the frame cracked around the seat tube at the BB. One of only a few aluminum frames I have owned.

This a 1992 Trek 930 the mtb that started it all. I bought this from Magic Cycles in Boone, NC in 1997. I rode and raced it until I bought the Kula.

New Tool Case better organization

So I know I posted I wanted a new tool case and I found one, a good one! Chicago Case Indestructo Attache tool case. I already slapped stickers I have been saving for quite some time on it with more to come!!! So her she is!!




Two pallets one that snaps into the lid and another tha lays in the bottom half of the case. It measures 18"x 13" x 6" and weights in hefty with tools! Still have some sorting to do but so far I think I am really likeing her!!! She needs a big Coounterbalance Bicycles Sticker though!!

Still in pain

I went to the doctor today due to the fact that I have been in severe pain since last Thursday!! My hip and left upper leg have kept my writhing in pain on the couch or in bed at night. The doc prescribed some stiffer px meds, thank God! She showed me X-rays of my tibia where she placed all of my proximal femur bone graft material. WOW did she pack it in!! The gap in my leg has new bone just stuffed all over inside it.

I found this info in Orthopedic Technology Review
New Frontiers in Bone Grafting

By Evelyn B. Kelly, PhD:
"...Bone grafting has come a long way since the day in 1688 when a Dutch surgeon attempted his first procedure. It has come a long way from the grafting practiced just 20 years ago. According to Joseph Lane, MD, Hospital for Special Surgery, New York, “Very few topics in orthopedic surgery have generated as much interest over the past century as bone grafts and their substitutes.” With over 5.6 million US fractures reported annually, bone is the second most frequently transplanted tissue (second only to transfused blood), and bone transplantation is essential in orthopedics.

The Gold Standard

The autologous bone graft from the patient’s own donor site is still the gold standard. Autologous bone provide the graft with living, bone-producing cells for osteogenesis. The autograft allows for osteoconduction, the process in which bone becomes a scaffold for new bone.Grafting also results in osteoinduction when mesenchymal cells around the graft are signaled to differentiate into osteoblasts, the cells responsible for new bone. The grafting procedure can be nonvascular or vascular, but the gold standard may be unmet if the amount of autologous bone needed is not available. Problems such as donor-site morbidity and graft strength, as well as cost factors, have provoked the search for other answers..."

We are praying like mad that this new graft incorporates into the tibia and starts to form new strong structural bone!! One week down and many to go!!!

These are the two kinds of grafts I have had:
# Autograft = bone from the same individual- Current graft
# Allograft = bone from another individual of the same species- Graft back in Oct 05

It is your Burden to vote it's not just a right

One of my fellow blogging/biker/messenger/nut job friends is in the running for the Race Face Ultimate XC Challenge click here to vote. (You must registar your email and watch all four videos before you can vote, BUT DO IT AWAYWAYS FOR TEAM DICKY!!!!!) Rich Dillen lives in Charlotte, NC and he races singlespeed fully rigid mountain bikes over insanely long distances. He is in an international competition for an all expenses paid trip to compete in the Trans-Rockies Challenge mountain bike race. Rich, or Team Dicky as he goes by, and the Wonderboy have teamed up under the name Bad Idea Racing. Please vote for them as many times as you can!!!

Josh the Wonderboy
Team Dicky in action

Post-Op (now with pictures!!!)

This is my hip and upper left leg. This is where the docs harvested the bone marterial from my femur for my bone graft. Nice bruise huh!! It hurts like I got hit by a car....

I will be going home today! The bone graft surgery went as well as possible on Thursday. Dr. Taitsman said the surgery should put me on the road to some good healing, finally. My graft donor site hurts like the dickens, they took about a fist sized amount of bone from my left femur. The incision on my hip looks real good and I will be having some x-rays to make sure the femur is intact this morning. The docs unwrapped my bandages on my tibia and it looks better than I have ever seen it after surgery. Now I can go home and begin to heal by using my EBI bone stimulator, taking Shaklee Osteomatrix, and even taking some Chinese herbs that claim to help lay down new bone matrix?? I have to stay off of my leg, no weight bearing for 6 weeks! I want this thing to heal so I can get my life back to normal! I want to be able to go back to KCFD 20 and pull shifts at Skyway fire. I want to start a real training program to get me on the road to being a competitive cyclist again. I still have Track Master National Championships as a two year goal. I want to be able to spend time with my daughter where I am NOT laid up on the couch! Thank you to everyone that has well wished, kept me in their thoughts, prayed for me , and help us out directly!

This is the graft site, while it looks gross it is actually in great shape NO INFECTION!!

The Tour is on and it is almost surgery time...

The Tour de France has started after huge shake ups because of the big drug bust "Operation Puerto" in Spain. As a result of "OP" nine riders and one whole team could not start the TdF. This included favorites Basso, Ullrich, and Mancebo and Vinokourov from the Astana-Wurth team that did not have enough people to start the race. All-in-all the race should be pretty exciting Big George Hincape got Yellow finally and the sprints have been nothing but spectacular so far!!! You go god of Thunder, Thor Hushovd even after stitches in his right arm after getting cut in the sprint on Sunday he battled in the sprint, during which his foot unclipped from his pedal, today to take back yellow!!!

Photo courtesy of Cyclingnews.com

As the run up to surgery nears I have been taking full advantage of out awesome Seattle summer weather by going on long bicycle rides. Between Friday, Saturday and Sunday I have rode over 80 miles! I have been riding my old road bike, the 1989 Specialized Sirrus that I bought new off the floor when I was in high school, instead of my 2004 Kona Sutra.

The difference in weight is pretty dramatic almost 10lbs!! I recently scored a cult coveted classic road frame and fork, a 1990 Bridgestone RB-1!!!

It has a 56.5cm c-c top tube and a 56cm c-t seat tube almost the exact same measurements as the Sirrus. I will eventually retire my old Sirrus and swap all of my parts over to the RB-1! It will also give me an excuse to use the 1" Chris King Titanium threaded headset I found at the Bike swap and my old Salsa SUL quill stem!! I will work on that project after I recover from the up coming bone graft surgery!! I have also heard that my team Desalvo cyclocross singlespeed frame is nearing completion!! This is the frame I originally ordered last summer for the 2005 cyclocross season, but I received a team track bike instead. This new Desalvo can be run either singlespeed, fixed, or geared!! I have been slowly over the past year and a half gathering parts for this bike always wondering if and when it will be done!! I can't wait!! Next year I will rock the 2007 cyclocross season as well as the 2007 track season! I have an awesome physical therapist and a VERY experienced coach to help me rehab as I heal up!!!

This is me at the 2003 Dead Baby Bike race the same race I got hit doing in 2005

I am looking for a new tool case...

I have always wanted a better organized bicycle mechanics' tool case. There are plenty of cool cases out there for electricians, HVAC service personnel, and computer geeks. I have found the web site for bicycle mechanics!! ProMechanics Website They went total geek-out and compiled a photo list of Pro-tour mechanics' tool cases here. All I can say is WOW!! I have been slowly adding to and building my own home mechanics tool set ( I wish these were my tools!!).

Photo courtesy of ProMechanics

I have been using a solid tackle/tool box I got at Wal-Mart awhile back.

It works well, it is compact, and fits almost all of the necessary tools, but it is not very well organized.
Finding the smaller tools or getting to the bigger tools usually means taking all of the tools out of the box to get to them. I really would like to have all of my tools neatly organized and easy to find like this picture here. I really like the winged organization pallets in this case!

Photo courtesy of ProMechanics

Pre-op good news!

I went to my pre-op Dr.s appt yesterday and they took a whole slew of X-rays. The good news is they have found some active healing in the rear portion of my tibia. If you imagine the gap of missing bone in my leg as a wedge with the largest gap in front of my tibia with the rear gap only .5 to 1 cm big. This is where the healing is taking place. This is good news because this is the one place the docs can't put bone graft material! I may just get through this after all!

I passed the first interview with SFD and I am scheduled to conduct my second oral board panel interview on Mondy the 26th at 9:30am. This interview consists of seven questions asked by three Seattle Fire Dept. Captains. You have twenty minutes to complete all answers and information does NOT carry over from question to question, so you end up repeating yourself quite abit. Then sometime around September 1st they will have the scores and rankings. One's score is a combined score of both interviews (50% each) and veterans preferance points if one has any. If I don't pass this interview I am out, but if I do pass then I will be ranked on the hiring list and the top 25% move on to the actual employment process. So I am not holding my breath especially because of my leg situation.

I rode Abiigael around in the bicycle sidecar trailer on Monday and she had a BLAST!!! She threw a fit when we got home because she did not want to get out or take her helmet off. I had to ride around the block to calm her down!! She also likes to ride her bike next to me while I am on the trainer in the house!! She is getting the hang of the whole pedaling thing there is alot of coordination involved!! Here is a video of the two of us:

I also picked up my custom track stem from David Wilson Industries last week. I am still trying to decide if I should get it chromed to match theoverall scheme of the bike or have it powdercoated to match the bone white of the frame???? If anyone knows of an inexpensive place that does chrome please drop a comment, the cheapest I have found it was $125 to $175 OUCH!!!!

A weekend away and being full time dad...

Well once again it has been way to long since I have posted. I am slowly coming towards the end of my TWELVE weeks of I.V. antibiotic home therapy, I have 3 weeks left. I have also scheduled my next surgery, a new bone graft, for the 6th of July! Hopefully, with lots of prayer, this will be the last surgery I need to get my leg healing and be done with this crap!! I went to see Erik Moen my physical therapist and he was very impressed at my progress considering I am only two months out from the surgery I had in April!! He insisted I start riding my bike to help generate good blood flow and get back into shape before going down again after surgery. I have been mostly riding on the trainer at home but I have ridden a few road miles, I have logged over a hundered miles in the past week plus. My parents are leaving Friday for a long awaited trip through the UK and Europe for three weeks. Happy 36th Anniversary Mom and Dad!!!

Last weekend started with a Abigael's first slumber party. We hosted Abigael's best friend Maxine Friday night. Erin, Maxine's mom was moving into a new apartment and it would have been way to much to move and entertain Maxine at the same time. Everything went great until about an hour and a half after the kids were asleep and we had transfered Maxine into Abigael's room and into the pack-n-play. Maxine woke up and started calling for Brandon and then for her mommy. So we brought her to bed and everytime we went to move her she woke up and started to cry. So Maxine slept in bed with us. boy has it been awhile since we have had a kid in our bed. Two year old arms and legs flailing about in the night. But it all worked out and the girls had a blast and we got on the road around 9:30. Because Christie, Abigael, Zak the dog, and I went to a place just outside of Port Ludlow called Mats Mats Beach on the Olympic pennisula. Our friend, Sean Wellnitz, has a family cabin right on the bay inlet ("beach") and he invited us and a few other over for a weekend away from the city!! Sean's parents were there as well as his girlfriend Danielle, and Zack Wiles from Skyway Fire Dept. We helped do the opening season clean up of the property and got a huge bon fire started in the firepit. We BBQ'ed hamburgers, hotdogs, steak, brats and shrimp and ate like kings!! The beer flowed and we all sat around the fire and talked into the night. The Lockwood family stayed in the bunk house which was heated by a small pot belly wood stove, nice and toasty!! The next day we made breakfast and we went to the beach. We let Abigael play with baby crabs and starfish and then left about 11:30am. Zack and I rode to the ferry terminal about 20 miles along some of the most beautiful scenery and weather in the state!!

Monday morning Christie flew down to Los Angeles to attend some think tank meeting for work. Which left Abigael and I to fend for ourselves... Just kidding we have had a blast hanging out together she went to work with me on Monday for a couple hours and took a great nap in the afternoon. Abigael is right now sitting in her little pink baby stroller watching "Diego". Christie will be coming back Wed. morning and will be home after work on Wed. We eat together and play playdough. After her bath last night she curled up with me for her evening whined down and I put her to bed with no problems...