Gut Check

Before: My bike was oh-so-sleek.

It seems my heavy hoisting ways have caught up with me, in the form of a pair of inguinal hernias. This has been far more disconcerting than painful, as I find the notion of torn muscle and rogue bits of intestine conceptually bothersome. Fortunately, said breaches are small as these things go, and I have managed to go about my business and ride my bike as usual for the most part without making things worse. In the wearier/achier moments, I've taken to sitting as bolt upright as possible, maintaining tenuous contact with the aft end of my handgrips with my fingertips. This is not the best arrangement, control-wise, so I purchased a stem raiser.

With a few minutes' labor, the part was installed and the bars had reached new heights of both altitude and dorkiness. The “Delta” brand name on the extension has a cool factor more in line with the eponymous bathroom faucets than jetliners or the home of Mississippi blues. The silver linings are: 1) the looping cable routing I had previously done to accommodate the Yuba's front rack meant the cables were plenty long as-is, and 2) said rack's vertical capacity just increased by a few more inches.

Tomorrow, I go under the knife, or laparoscope, more accurately. It's fairly routine, as surgeries go, and I should be just fine, if a bit sore for the first few days. I will be able to wrench on bikes sooner than I can resume riding them (reportedly in the 2-3 week range), so I hope to get caught up on a few project bikes, including something substantially lighter than the Yuba for my first days back in the saddle. I'm waiting on a few more parts for the oddest of these, which will combine elements of obsolete English utility with recumbent part oddity, old school BMX toughness and a dash of modern road bike. I'll fill you in on that soon enough.