MrBalky Heavy Industries

…from here:

…to here:

Mom just sent me a big folder full of accident photos of me and my brother from ‘74. All I can say is “damn”. The beginning of the 30 year road to distal femoral and proximal tibial osteotomies. I wonder how many more years this road goes.

Now that I’m a parent, I don’t know how Mom and Dad could have stood it.

Also in there was the front page of the local paper from the next day, with an article (”Car Hits Brothers on Picacho Street”) and a photo of my brother lying on the ground. Also on that front page? “Nixon, Aides Check Possible Legal Option”, “Sealed Evidence Worries Lawyers”, and “55 MPH Limit Mandatory Now”.

Way back when; seems like the dawn of time now; I was told by a famous and skilled surgeon that it would be 6 months after the surgery before I could start to work on getting back to my previous fitness level. He was about right. 6 months, and my first bike trip out to Moab with the team. I took my place at the back of the peloton.

A couple bad crashes, and cleaned a couple things I’ve never managed before. I’ve had better trips, but I’ve also had worse. My knee held up pretty well; I joined the body armor crew, though just knee pads. I was mighty grateful at least once.

We checked out the shiny new Free Lunch trail in GJ on the way out. I didn’t hit the big stuff, but had a little fun anyway:

I won’t lie; I’m gonna miss you and the good times we had. Like parking directly in front of Target on Christmas Eve.

And I’ll never forget the Saturday night we freaked out Kate and Joseph by driving past open spaces downtown. Ah, the look in their eyes when we picked up the best spot in the garage.

Sniff…

My knee has been feeling pretty good in the last week, aligning this weekend with warm temps and very little wind, so I put flats on it and took the hardtail out for a spin. I gotta say that after years with clipless, the flats just killed me. Or maybe that was the surgery.

Eventually I got to a section of trail still in meltdown; PPDM (postponed due to mud).

When I returned from surgery in Vail, my friends Bob & Becky came by to help set up my living room bed command center, and brought me a fine selection of special brews. Well, call me chicken if you want, but I didn’t want to mix the Oxycontin and alcohol.

Last night I finally got around to one of them. Stone Ruination IPA. Man was it good.

And we made it to midnight! (eastern time)