Long Walk Back

After the Jazz Museum, we went down to the River Market because Em wanted to see and cuss out the Satanic Grate.






They've definitely spruced it up since then.



It seemed a lot of trouble to find a parking spot to yell at an inanimate object, so after driving down Delaware I suggested we scope out the riverfront walkway. We walked down it a few years ago, when it ended at the pumping station by that funky bridge with the weights on it.




I do wonder, what's with the 30 and 40 being, to my way of thinking, reversed. 30 feet of water would not be a higher water mark than a 40, right? Or maybe this isn't an enormous rain gauge.





It goes a lot further now, further than we went on Saturday. Mo was whining a lot, asking to go home, but she'd been in a mood at the Jazz Museum, too, and I chalked it up to her jonesing for YouTube.



20/20 hindsight, she's been out of school for a week and out of schedule. She had one uninterrupted night's sleep in the past week, and I know what that adds up to.





So we get down to the far side of the Heart of America bridge and I'm telling Mo, Whining doesn't get you your way. The longer you whine, the further we're going before we turn around. So you might as well find your happy head.



Her witty response to this was to have a seizure. An intense one, the most involved I've seen her have. Usually her seizures are partials, a lot of drooling, chewing, turning to one side. This was a lot of spasms, gagging, trying to fold herself in half by the look of it. The scarier for being surrounded by concrete with no good place to sit or rest. I had to hold her propped up against me and kind of work an arm around to be between her head and the concrete wall so she couldn't hit that.



This was an even trickier operation with broken fingers, I must say. Her color was not good and I couldn't tell if she was breathing, so even though it was only maybe a minute, maybe 90 seconds in (time is hard to gauge in these situations if you can't see a clock), I gave her the Atavan to stop the seizure.



Atavan crushed up is the little nuclear bomb I have in a key fob, mainly to arrest seizures that go past five minutes, but when Mo's breathing seems that compromised I have no hesitation going, as an irritating former President would put it, 'nukular.'



As beautiful as the river walk was, and as much fun (even with Mo's whining) as we had getting down there, that was one long walk back to the car. I'm not sure the exact distance from the Town of Kansas bridge to the far side of HOA, maybe a mile. Me and Em just kind of propped Mo between us and she sleep-walked her post-ichtal self back.



Fortunately, because the walk is also cycling oriented there are no stairs you can't avoid by taking a ramp and there's an elevator at the access point.

Jazz Museum

I took the girls to see the sculptures of Ed Dwight. Your friendly neighborhood shutterbug had to check his camera, so you'll have to take my word for it and head to 18th & Vine to see this stuff.




Interesting take on negative space. I get Charlie Parker with face, part of tie, sax and hands only. But Ray Charles with two hands and only one arm, I'm not sure I get it.





They do allow photography in the lobby, though. Em asked 'What's that?' of a Linotype machine.





That's an iMac with InDesign back before there was even a transistor.

Autism Walk

Out to the Speedway. We were late, and I never got around to signing up this year. Last week was kind of eventful.




Anyway, I was surprised there weren't more people. I seem to recall more last year and we had cold, pissy weather last year.



I do think it's ironic as a helicopter takes off that an autism fund-raising event is so full of sensory overload.



This year the weather rocked.



I thought Mo would bust a seam when we saw the Camp Encourage people on the way in.



The route around the track was compromised by the construction on the far side, so they had us walk part way around and turn around and come back, which I thought was lame. Maybe it couldn't be helped, but that was never five miles.




Still, kudos to my friend and neighbor Jennifer Smith who organized this whole thing. If she hadn't stepped up, there would have been zero people out at the Speedway.



And kudos to the costumed ones. I walked for a good cause with the Cat in the Hat and the lord of the Dark Side.



The girls had fun making bracelets and wearing fangs.



And Em took a shot of my injuries a week after. Well, you can't see the shoulder contusion, which is quite ugly but generally goes unmentioned because it never hurt as bad as the hands and face. Or the scraped knee, that would only seem an injury if I was otherwise unharmed.

The Scene of the Crime

Okay, I took another look at the Evil Grate of Northbound Baltimore in the River Market. There's one just like it in the southbound lane, but this is the one that made a very credible attempt to paralyze me by sending me ass over teakettle as I casually rode along on Saturday.



I know, I'm lucky I wasn't going faster, it could have been a broken collarbone or even a broken neck if I had. But I learned today that to top all this off, I get to go under the knife next Tuesday. Seems the break on my left ring finger is just the tip busted off and it should heal fine with just the splint. As a guitarist, that one still makes me nervous, but people who went to school an awful lot tell me not to worry.





The right middle, the finger that is splinted into a perma-bird, on the other hand is broken right where the ligaments tie in, right at the joint. For this, the plan is to put me under general anesthetic (a scary thing itself), cut me open and nail or screw shit together.





Going downtown I wondered if I remembered the grate accurately. After all, I got my bell rung pretty soundly and can't remember how I got to the Cafe Al Dente restroom I cleaned up in. I remember riding along, I'm guessing more than 10 mph and less than 20 (I don't recall looking at the speedometer, but given its at the bottom of a shallow hill, I'd believe 10 mph if I started from a stop, closer to 20 if we had the green light I think maybe we did).





I thought maybe I'd get there and the grate would be smaller or less perfect a trap designed to maim cyclists. Because I saw it coming without time to even grab the brakes. I didn't really believe my eyes, I was looking down and thinking, 'That's wider then my tire' and bam.



This grate is the perfect grate to maim and kill cyclists (and those people who get around on Rascal scooters who are, I suppose, already maimed and probably not going fast enough to get killed).



I thought I had a tape measure in my car and couldn't find it. I borrowed one, a floppy thing that only went to 60 inches. As far as I can tell, the grate is 64 inches wide and 29-1/2 from north to south. Depth, well, my bicycle wheel goes pretty near axle deep in this sucker.



On the south side of the intersection, there's another that has two perpendicular crosses that might almost pass for a safe grate, and for all I know I may have rolled over it successfully.

I tried measuring the spacing of the slats. The skinniest was 1.75". The widest, where something bent the grate over near the edge, is almost big enough for a foot to fall through.



I'm sure this grate predates personal injury law, but I know I'm not the first victim. If Kansas City has the money to make a bike lane on the HOA bridge and bask in the positive PR for that, they have the probably $20 it would cost to replace an iron grate. Maybe if they didn't piss away millions on crooked TIF deals like the P&L and fight over whether the mayor's wife comes to work, that sorry excuse for a city hall could get around to things like basic infrastructure.

Long and short of it, this thing is even more inherently dangerous than I remembered. Maybe a mountain bike with exceptionally fat tires would get over it, but nothing skinnier. And it might even bite a MB tire and throw a guy.



My face seemed to be the worst of my injuries at first. My cheek broke my fall. But it's not as swollen, the road rash is starting to peel, and the doc today didn't think I broke any bones in there or otherwise needed plastic surgery any more than I did before the crash. My hands, though...



Not to mention my bent bicycle frame. Good thing I'm on chrome-moly and not carbon fiber, pretty sure carbon would have shattered like plate glass on this one.

MFing

Rode Mission Farms tonight, but no PRs in store for me. Two busted fingers that light up with pain going over bumps, I don't have a good way to grab the handlebars to sprint.

A friend who rides this ride is a personal injury lawyer, turns out. What a happy coincidence since I've been on the lookout for one ever since falling victim to what can only be described as a cyclist-killer. I know I'm not the first to eat high speed dirt on one of these, the city must know by now.

Because I have a message for whatever public works assheads decided these grates were not a hazard to navigation:

Throwing the Frizz

I had a tip that some urban cyclists would be throwing a Frisbee around Nichols Park. I was early and found myself trying to capture the pink of the fountain.



And then found a tree and sculpture I never knew were in this park. I guess I've been in this park a half dozen times but never really looked past the fountain.





The cyclists did not disappoint, though nobody had a Frisbee, so they threw a sponge. And when that didn't work very well, they wrapped it in duct tape and, as the saying goes, game on!



I don't know if I could catch the thing, one-handed on grass, but I know I couldn't swoop down and pick it up off the ground like this.

Postscript: I originally called this group the '816 Bicycle Collective.' This is because the reason I was there, really, was I hoped this chick I'd met a couple days before would be there. She had 816 Collective spoke cards in here front wheel when I met her. Anyway, the 816 Collective is more like Habitat for Humanity with spokes. Except, I think, less formal and minus the former President volunteering.

The best part is the chick in question, her not showing didn't turn out to be a lack of interest.

Originally posted 10/11/10; edited at long last on 4/1/11.

Getting Back On the Horse

It definitely hurt more this morning than it did yesterday. I wondered if I was laid up from riding. It was such a beautiful morning. I had no kids, and the only responsibilities I did have were things I couldn't really do with busted fingers, so I took a little test ride on my street.



Not too bad, braking was a little awkward at first, and there was no getting the riding gloves on. Well, maybe the left if I un-splinted and then re-splinted my ring finger.



I decided to ride to church, which owing to a late start and a miscalculation about where to where to cross I-35 (should have taken Ridgeview/KC Road down to 127th instead of cutting over on Sheridan to Roger's Road, which left me riding back south and going around some construction), I was late. As in I caught the last song and benediction.

Said hi to my Bro and fam, apparently I was too scary to get a smile from my nephew even when I did Piggy Toes.

And as people inquired about how my face and hands got broken, and then found out it was a cycling accident yesterday. And I'd ridden almost twenty miles to church and was then pedaling to Wal-Mart to fill a Lortab script... I could hear them realizing that they were talking to a crazy person. And maybe not a good kind of crazy. It's not a macho thing, it just seemed like the thing to do at the time.



And remember, last winter we had great weather until mid-November, then there was about one day in the next three months that didn't suck hard. How many days like this are left this fall? Not enough to squander one. Plus, I'm not supposed to drive on the Lortab, but I'm pretty sure I can't fall asleep in the saddle.



I stopped off at Pastor Kurt's on the way home to see what he's building lately. I was not disappointed, he's done a tall tandem and was finishing up a crazy three wheeled bike. It's not a trike, the second wheel drives the third. You pedal backwards to go forward, pedal forward to brake.



He had some new old bikes he'd come across, too, including an old Firestone cruiser.