Broke the collar bone tonight

[swampa]

I think I found Yogoboy’s bike earlier today:

(just kidding :P)

[Yugoboy]

Heh…
Years ago when we made the mistake of hosting a foreign exchange student, he got hit by a car while on one of my spare bikes and the wheel ended up looking like that. Ultimately, the guy’s insurance paid for the kid’s hospital bill and a new cheap-o Schwinn from Wal-Mart. The bottom bracket’s already gone in the thing…
I have GOT to learn how to change those, as I’ve got at least 2 bikes with that problem.

[Barracuda]

re: rear wheel out of true – there’s only so far that you can fix an out of true wheel depending on how bad it is. If you’re already stripping spokes, it sounds like either a really old wheel, a really bad wheel, or both. Adding a lot of extra tension to some spokes to pull it back into true also takes tension off others, and can quickly become a no-win situation where you end up weakening the wheel to a point where it’ll very quickly go out of true again. I suggest taking it to a local bike shop and see what they have to say about it.

re: Bottom Brackets – depending on the type, they can either be quite easy or extremely difficult to work on or replace. Most (~95%) of bottom brackets made these days have non-servicable bearings. Once the bearings are trashed, it’s time to replace. I’d need photos of the bottom bracket & cranks attached (if still attached) to be more help on how to proceed. Most bottom brackets and cranks need specialized tools to remove and service. While most aren’t super expensive, sometimes they can be more than having a shop do the swap.

[Barracuda]

In other news, went and found the spot that sent me flying. Looked worse than I recalled actually. Took a few pics, but haven’t gotten them off the camera yet. Probably get them pulled off tonight. Basically they had a drainage problem due to a ridge of ground preventing runoff from the field to make it to the pond. So they installed 3 plastic pipes (3-4″ diameter or so) to get water from one side to the other. Instead of finishing off the dirt on either side nice and gradual like the rest of the ridge, it’s a hard edge cut. The wheel fell into this spot, wheel stopped, and as we all know, I didn’t.

[fluffybunny]

In other news, went and found the spot that sent me flying. Looked worse than I recalled actually. Took a few pics, but haven’t gotten them off the camera yet. Probably get them pulled off tonight. Basically they had a drainage problem due to a ridge of ground preventing runoff from the field to make it to the pond. So they installed 3 plastic pipes (3-4″ diameter or so) to get water from one side to the other. Instead of finishing off the dirt on either side nice and gradual like the rest of the ridge, it’s a hard edge cut. The wheel fell into this spot, wheel stopped, and as we all know, I didn’t.

I’ve done similar things, fortunately going pretty slowly. More of a “Hey look what I can do!” moment than a painful one. Were you moving pretty good?

[Barracuda]

was going fairly slow (considering I was on grass), which was part of the problem I suspect. Not enough to get the big 700c wheel out of the hole, just enough momentum to send me up and over the bars and then straight down on the shoulder. Been feeling like ass all evening after having to mess with the main computer due to more blue-screen-of-deaths. Finally got around to running MemTest, bad stick of RAM was apparent pretty damned fast. So working from the laptop now.

[Barracuda]

Took some Google-foo, but found a picture of an xray that matches exactly with the type of hardware they put in my collarbone. A little different than some of the other pin type of fixations I’ve seen: http://eorif.com/sites/default/files/clavicle-sonoma2wk2.jpg

[fluffybunny]

Arg, that’s ugly. I guess it’s going to be pat downs for you from now on at the metal detector.

/Bonus, you might be famous in 10,000 years at an archealogical site for being the beneficiary of “barbaric medicine men”

[chupathingie]

yikes… how did they get it in there (not entirely sure I really wanna know…). My first thought about the TSA was that your doctors are gonna remove that after it sets, right? then I saw the pic…

[Barracuda]

It will not be removed unless I have problems with it in the future. I believe it’s made of Ti, so hopefully the TSA won’t have too much fun with me. We’ll have to see. As far as how they got it in there, I’m guessing a big ass hammer. 😮 Actually, I have purposely not watched any videos on clavicle fixation that are out there, but from what I’ve been told the ‘nail’ is inserted from the shoulder end, through the break. An internal screw is tightened in the nail that makes the tip anchors pop out and makes the flexible part of the nail where it bends rigid. Then the shoulder end screw is put through it to anchor that end. I have one main incision that is above where the break was so that the doc could align the bone. Then two small (3/4″ size or so) incisions, one for where they inserted the nail, the other for that fixation screw.

[bender16v]

Nail insertion is remarkably brutal from what I have heard from people who have observed the surgery. Most of my job is selling/fixing tube bending machines for automotive, furniture, etc. but one of my customers machines and bends these nails. It is surprising how twisted bones really are, especially in the legs. The nail is probably made from a custom titanium alloy for medial devices. They say the recovery time is very fast with these devices so I hope yours is too.

[Barracuda]

Rick from TodaysPhoto.org asked if he could feature one of my pre-fall photos on his website. So, today’s photo is my photo:

http://www.todaysphoto.org/picture-of-the-day/texas-sunset/

[fluffybunny]

Excellent!

[chupathingie]

Nice! I remember you posting that one here before… I liked it then, too!

[ravnostic]

PRetty!

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