It wasn’t quite 5 hours, but close. I finally went to the dentist and camped out in the reception office. I had an appointment for today at 10am, but since I had hardly slept an hour the night before, they was no better use of my time. I sat in the reception for 20 minutes or so and when they took me back, they were totally prepared to do a root canal.

Actually it was 3 root canals on one tooth. I didn’t understand teeth as well as I thought I did. I didn’t know that teeth can bleed. They can. I’ll spare you the gory details of the whole day, but it took a while.

I’m pretty good at the dentist. I have the best dentist in the world. That is the truth. I’ve been to a lot of different dentists in my life and my guy, Dr. Greg Johnson, is so much better than any of the others, it isn’t even fair to compare. I’m not sure you realize you have such a good dentist unless you experience it. The small things are so important. And obviously the big things too. I’ve been going to him for over 20 years and am so lucky to have him around.

That being said, I find it interesting how draining the experience is. Like I said above, I’m okay with the dentist. But, I still found it interesting that I’d be in the chair and notice that my hands were clenched. I had to make a conscious effort to relax my arms and hands. I don’t think I did such a good job with the rest of my body though. I went out for a 1 1/2 ride late in the afternoon and was waxed. Same thing this morning. I feel like I got hit by a truck.

I’m hoping that the tooth problem was the cause of me feeling badly the last 3 weeks. I’ve been bad since being in California, sore throat, etc. I felt remarkably better yesterday, but am zonked today. I’ll probably need a few days.

Seems like a lot of people are off this afternoon, so were meeting up at 1 to ride. It is supposed to be in the lower 60’s, so that should be nice. But when it is that warm now, it is also super windy, upper 20’s-30. It’s good for training hard, but bad for me. I’d like to ride 3-4 hours easy, sitting on. But, that isn’t going to happen. After daylight savings time ends, the fitness level of our group tends to drop a level, which is very understandable.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. It is my favorite holiday. No glitz or advertising, just getting together with friends and eating good food and talking. It going to be warm again tomorrow, so I’m sure we’ll do an organized ride too. Then Jingle Cross.

Everything was laid out waiting when I got to the back.

This photo is hanging in the bathroom in the office. I found it funny because even though they just did a complete remodel of the office and everything is state of the art, dental offices in general just look archaic and primitive.

Spy photo of Dr. Johnson working on me.