Hubris: Definition and Illustration

For those of you with long memories, ie 50 yrs back, you may recall that I was a bicycle rider. Between the ages of 30 and 40 I was pretty serious. Psych grad students and I would ride to 

Wood Camp Hollow in Logan Canyon and back 3 times a week.  Colleagues and I would do lazy 25-30 milers on Saturdays. A former Aggie head coach and I would shuck our hangovers from the parties at his place, after 4 hours of sleep, and meet at 6 am. I did one Century ride and was finished, before LoToJa really got started, by a spinal cord surgery (L5-S1 hemilaminectomy). After recovering from the surgery, I started swimming 3 times a week in the Unversity's pool. and did that for 10 years focusing exclusively on unweighted exercise. Not incidentally, I worked up to a one mile swim in about 3 months and maintained that for the 10 years. It put me in the best physical shape of my life

When we moved to Hyde Park we lived on a steep hillside with a 600 ft driveway. One could get a bike down the hill easily, but coming back up from Hyde Park City was a serious climb. My bike hung there unused for the 20+ years we were in Hyde Park. During that period a colleague and longtime fishing partner and friend died and his family gave me his bike. One of his two sons gave him the bike so that he could get around the little beach town in which they stayed during a couple months each winter in Baja. He didn't have it long before he died. Eventually I sold my racing bike and the remaining bike stayed until we moved out of Hyde Park. Our daughter claimed the bike. She, too, was a flash in the pan. She had it serviced and rode it for a number of months until she lost interest.

With the closing of the economy and the virus around us it has been difficult to get aerobic exercise. The clubs where we rode stationary bikes for aerobic workouts were closed. And my knees will not support daily walking. I need to take the weight off them for at least a day or two before going out again.  But why not try the bicycle again? Much slower of course. On the flat, etc. Surely, I am capable of that little bit. So, I put a few dollars into the bike again to tune it up and got it back yesterday.

Hubris: According to Siri it is overconfidence. 

The proprietor of the bicycle shop said that for people my age, he could show me how to get on and off. While I was cognizant that I might have that problem, I discounted it. Afterall, I had years of experience--accident free! He said not to be embarassed since he did it all the time. I ignored him.

When we arrived home with the bike I found that I could not mount it standing free, so I put it against the house and used the house to maintain my balance. In a few seconds I was speeding down the street in our development. There is maybe a 1-degree downslope the way I was headed and I seemed to gain a lot of speed very quickly, so after a 100 yards or so I neatly turned around and pedalled up-slope. My legs protested but it was only 100 yards. Approaching our garage--door open, one car in, and one car out--I realized that I didn't have a plan for getting off. 

The details at that point are a bit fuzzy but the outcome was not. I braked to a halt behind my car to put my left (dead) foot on the ground to be followed by my right (not so dead) foot and then Jan could steady the bike while I got off. Unfortunately, I failed to include her in the plan.  One or both of my legs failed to support me and I came off the bike over the bar and landed on both knees and abdomen, followed by my spine actually curving with the kinetic energy of the fall, and My nose hitting something in our storage shelves.  

Blood flowed. I took a minute to inventory and felt I had full function but not the initial strength to rise. The rest goes as you might expect. I worked the nosebleed with ice and towels and got it under control after 20 minutes. We cleaned and sprayed my scraped knees.  Tylenol helped the pain. We got dinner going and I took my evening pills, which included an Eliquis (blood thinner). I thought it is timed release and I have never had a sustained bleed using it. All went well until 9:30 or so when a vessel popped in my nose. I fought it for an hour and Jan drove me to the ER. We were there until 1 am. They did a CAT scan for the "headstrike" I had sustained and packed my left nostril.

So last night I couldn't use my CPAP machine and therefore had no O2. I slept sitting up in a chair, not well, because I kept being awakened by apneas. I hope today I can. I see an ENT doc on Friday after 2 days of no Eliquis and we'll see where we go from there.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

But the bike still calls to me.....

Is it still hubristic?