Rehab #33 Style!

I just counted the months since my accident down in Mexico at the Baja 1000 occurred and it is now at the 6 month mark!  Wow how time flies when you are NOT having any fun.

I have been doing some rehab therapy now for almost 2 months and am just now seeing any REAL progress. Karen, the therapist I am seeing is very good and tells me how great things are going, but I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. I know part of her job is physical therapy and positive reinforcement. The doctor has been holding her (and me) back because of the extensive repair he had to perform on the fingers and wrist. Doc has had me limited to no more than 5 lbs of weight for the first month. When he took the weigh restriction off I knew it was time for me to take matters into my own hands (or the one good hand) and start making some progress.

So I started out on the bicycle to test the amount of weight bearing exercise I could stand. That was ok and I found out I could support about 10% of the load on the bad hand. It gets sore quickly and keeps me from getting too big for my britches. So now I am looking for the next step in physical training/therapy when I come across a Help Wanted ad in the paper for motorcycle riders! WHAT? Someone is going to pay me to ride a motorcycle! Who do I have to kill? This sounded like the perfect way to rehab a damaged hand, pulling the clutch over and over, you know muscle memory and all that crap. I couldn’t imagine a better way to retrain my now reconstructed rekluse qualified left hand than to go out on someone else’s bike, use their gas and burn up their tires.

It seems there are companies out there that do product durability testing and need bodies to log miles, lots of miles. So I inquire and find out I am qualified.  Who-da-thunk, so I sign up and have been out about 6 times now. The good is that I ride about 350 miles a day on the road and have seen some very interesting things along the way. The bad is that it is all on the road, and as I pass the occasional open area and fields I can feel that big 100 plus cubic inch V-Twin engine trying to drag me off into the dirt. I would love to play Jay Springsteen for a few minutes. I am wondering how these things would jump. Nothing big, just a few small hits. But until I get the doctor’s permission to ride a motorcycle, I have to keep this on the down low. So keep this to yourself, homie!

#33

“Don’t count the days, make the days count”