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Nearly back on the bike

Two weeks ago today I fell off my bike, hurt my hand and haven't ridden since.

How did this happen? Was I run off the road by an inconsiderate driver? Did the Franken Peugeot suffer a sudden mechanical failure while I was coasting downhill at 40km/h? Was I riding heroically over super gnarly terrain?

Nothing quite so exciting as all that.

Here in the Nordic lands, they spread gravel on the roads and footpaths/bikepaths in the winter time. I'm not sure how common this is - I grew up in the driest part of the driest continent that isn't Antarctica, so anything to do with the management *naturally occurring ice* is very near to me. On TV, and presumably the parts of the Real World that TV comes from, they use salt. I don't think that happens here, but I could easily be wrong. Anyway, the gravel thing works relatively well. People walk on it, and the high pressure that results from their body weight pushing down on small bits of gravel causes localised melting of the ice. The gravel bits sink down into this local melt, which quickly refreezes, and before long the icy footpaths effectively become studded.

This is great until Spring comes along and all the ice disappears, at which point the roads and paths are covered in gravel and also the dust that inevitably gets distributed with the gravel. You can actually visibly see all this dust kicked up by cars early Spring, and the Finns even have a word for it, which I've already forgotten. When conditions are dry, this gravel is actually surprisingly treacherous stuff for cyclists. It's relatively fine stuff, and is very "scrabbly" when piled up on a dry, hard, flat surface. And it does end up piled up, as cars and pedestrians naturally push it to the sides of paths.

I had my first encounter with the effects of this stuff earlier this year. I was riding home down a quiet road, when I saw my wife walking in the opposite direction on the footpath beside the road. I tried to stop relatively quickly and pull up by the kerb alongside her, not realising the gutter beside the kerb was basically a narrow gravel pit (I think this fact was partially concealed by old dead autumn leaves which had been trapped under ice all winter). I started rolling into the gravel at about the time my pull on the front brakes started to finish its gradual build up. I guess what happened is that at some point the tyre floated up on the gravel so that it was no longer in contact with the road at all - without traction against a solid surface to resist it, the amount of braking force which was previously suitable for slowing down suddenly became more than enough to lock the wheel, and the locked wheel naturally dug back down through the gravel until it hit road again and then, well, the predictable happened. Thankfully I wasn't going terribly fast by that point, and I fell clear of the bike and immediately got up with no harm done to anything except my pride for having fallen at low speed on a flat, quiet road in front of my wife.

After this first incident I became pretty cautious about this stuff, or so I thought. The day before Good Friday I went for a ride around one of my usual local loops in the evening. I'd been riding regularly, and a lot, at this point, and was generally feeling really good about my cycling and about my fitness. I'd found cool logging roads through a large forest in a small nearby town the previous weekend and I was looking forward to riding them some more over the upcoming Easter long weekend. Then, on my way home, not 100m from my house, I did basically exactly the same thing on my approach to a pedestrian crossing. I'm sure I was going slower than the first time it happened, and that there was far *less* gravel, and I know that in the seconds leading up to the fall I was thinking "careful, now!", and preparing to ease up on the brakes at the first sign of trouble. Somehow, down I went. If anything, this fall should have been even less of a big deal than the first. But I suppose it all comes down to precisely how you land. In this case I must have put almost all my weight onto my left hand, possibly with the smallest finger taking the load. My hand was sore, but I was otherwise fine - I went right home, put some ice on it, and mostly was just really, really annoyed at myself that I'd let this happen a second time.

By the next day, about two thirds of the surface of my palm was bruised blue, and the upper side of my hand was so swollen that individual knuckles weren't visible and there was no sign of the usually very prominent veins on my hands. I was kind of worried about the prospect of a fracture, but it was Good Friday so ordinary doctor's offices were closed and I wasn't keen to go to a hospital because of the increased risk of exposure to COVID-19. Sweden has (like a lot of countries nowadays, I guess? Australia has had this for many years now, too) a free hotline you can call where you get put through to a qualified nurse who can give you health advice and tell you whether you should go to a hospital, or just a doctor's office, or treat something yourself at home. The advice I got was that if I could move all my fingers, if nothing felt numb or cold and if it was possible to find a position where I didn't feel any pain while not moving things, then probably nothing was broken and I should just do standard RICE treatment.

The healing has been pretty slow. I suspect I probably...sprained? pulled? tore? some muscles in my hand. Maybe all those terms mean the same thing, I dunno, I've never had a genuine sports injury in my life before this. Anyway, needless to say, for the past two weeks I haven't ridden my bike at all, which has been hard because I was enjoying it so much, was in probably the best shape I've ever been, and the weather has just been getting ever lovelier. If I'd been unable to ride because, say, my bike was broken, I would have at least been able to put my time and energy into phlogging or gemlogging, and working on my various online projects. But for most of this time I've either been unable or thought it unwise to type much with my left hand at all, and typing one-handed is way too frustrating for anything like programming. So, I've been much quieter than usual lately, which is why I haven't posted anything here or elsewhere, and why I've been bad at email and similar things lately. Sorry about that!

As of today, though, I'd say my hand is 90% better. I can do most regular daily tasks without problems, and even the few that still give me some trouble would be better described as "uncomfortable" rather than "painful". I suspect I could ride right now if I wanted, but no sense in pushing my luck. I'll wait until this Sunday (when the weather should be better than Saturday), and give it another two days of rest. Man, I'm looking forward to it!

I'm kind of anxious, too, though. This experience sucked big time and I don't ever want it to happen again. I'm confused by the fact that one the one hand this happened twice within as many months, suggesting I'm still not very good at adapting my riding to conditions, but on the other hand this kind of thing has *never* happened to me before, even when doing what feels like it *should* be much more dangerous riding. Of course, one week after this accident to the day the city swept up all the gravel in my area, so this precise risk is gone for the year. But I can't quite convince myself that the physics of loose gravel on pavement is hugely different to loose gravel on dirt, or on other gravel, and I ride stuff like *that* all the time. Without ever having locked my front wheel or even come close to it, mind you, but have I just been lucky all these years?

Anyway, expect posting frequency here (and elsewhere!) to gradually increase, now that I can type fine again. I have some drivetrain fiddling planned for next month which I'll certainly be writing about. Please look forward to it!