Steve Tilford

I seem to be living at the hospital this season. I fell yesterday and jacked up my already bad thumb. Jacked it up enough that I am up at the crack of dawn getting a MRI done on it. The 6 am slot is the only thing they had available. Normally, that is not within my waking hours, but I have to get up to Wisconsin today, so it actually isn’t such a bad time.

I was ridng my MTB and decided to stop at a Walgreens to get something cold to drink. It was hot. Anyway, I rode up by the doors and a little kid came running out. I braked and sort of balanced there for a second, then did a tommy tipover. I’m not sure why I couldn’t/didn’t unclip, but I didn’t. I landed right hand down, thumb first. It was pretty excruciating pain for the better part of a minute. After that it was just painful.

The kid did ask if I was okay. I said yep. He said good because he thought I’d had a heart attack. I thought that was super funny.

I tried to ride, but can really put my hands on the bars. I did 25 miles and my hand fell asleep after 5 minutes every time I tried to hold on tight. I’m sure it will be better by Thursday, when I hope to pre-ride the Chequamegon course.

I am pretty short of sleep the last couple nights, so I’m hoping I can talk Bill into driving some early so I can try to catch up. It is close to 10 hours from Topeka to Cable, so there should be enough time to get in a few hours. Catherine is driving up on Thursday on her own.

I needed to get a MRI done anyway. When I saw Dr. Karen Heiden (Eric’s wife) a couple weeks ago, she said she couldn’t tell anything without one. I’m going to send her the results too. She is a hand surgeon.

I’m not even contemplating not riding the race on Saturday. I’ve hurt this thumb a lot, but not the same as it has been hurt recently. You don’t realize how much you use your thumb on a daily basis until it really doesn’t work at all. You can’t open a jug of milk or orange juice. Forget trying to mount tubeless tires on rims. I spent close to 10 minutes trying to change a flat left handed. Man, did I feel uncoordinated doing that.

Okay, I need to get over there. I hope it doesn’t take all morning.

It is pretty huge.

My shoulder PT sessions are turning more into gym sessions instead of shoulder massages. I think I am going to have to start wearing something other than jeans.

Burt, my physical therapist, taped up my thumb some for support. The tape made it through the ride, but then came off. It was a valiant effort though. Kind of looks like I’m trying to grab Hein and Pat here.

Yesterday was a long day. I spent most of the morning getting a MRI done on my hand and then trying to get a disc of it to send off. I quickly packed, picked up Bill and started driving. For some reason the drive seemed to take way too long. We stopped in Minneapolis for some burritos, got some latex, coffee, muffins, and other than that didn’t wast much time.

We didn’t get up here until 11:30. Dennis’ dog Hawkeye wouldn’t let Dennis sleep through the arrival. Bromont and Meena, Bill’s dog love it up here. So there romped around until well after midnight.

Dennis gave me a little tour of the projects he’s done the last month. He’s been a busy beaver. A new roof over the entrance to his house, replaced the beams to a deck on the primitive living lodge, plus re-roofed the building. I’m usually the instigator of these type of things so I feel a little left out.

And he has been ordained as minister. Go figure that one out. The one requirement is that your age has to be over 13. He qualifies. He’s actually going to be doing the marriage of Jeff Bradley/Deb Wood in a month or so. I didn’t know you could just become clergy by mail. He’s thinking about the ways to take his property off the tax rolls. It is a little piece of heaven, so it wouldn’t be that much of a stretch.

Bill won’t roll out of bed for another hour. He’s a sleeper. Katie Eriksen is coming here at noon. We’re going to ride the whole course today. Catherine is driving up tonight. She never gets here very early before the race anymore. She has been slammed at work, very stressed, so this should be a good release for her. I’m totally up in the air about my hand situation. I’ve been sticking my thumb into an ice bath. I might try to tape it some today. Maybe I just won’t shift much, if any, today. Then I have two more days for it to feel better.

Okay, Bromont is trying to get me to go walk in the woods with him some.