Holy shitbuckets, it’s rainin’.

This weekend saw record breaking rain, the likes of which the Dee Cee metropolitan area has never seen before. We’ve had flooding. We’ve had mudslides. We’ve had banks breaking, and trees collapsing. At one point, a big beardy guy in a big boat was seen loading critters on there, two by two.

All of this is somewhat convenient for me, since it means I’m not missing anything in terms of soccer games, and rides! Mwahaha! But I’m worried what this is going to do to the local trails, and to the various footy pitches. Because while I and most others I know are sensible enough to stay off them, I KNOW there’s going to be douchebags who won’t. Ignorant dickheads who think “NICE! MUD!!” and promptly go out and destroy a season’s trailbuilding work.

But I digress.

Perfect weekend to spend in front of a teevee. Watching the World Cup. Started off with Germany against Sweden on Saturday. Decent match, Germans are raising themselves in my estimation. Then came the downside of living with a woman. As a way of backlogging against constant complaining at her being a World Cup Widow, Tracee and I tore off to the movies to see Cars (cute). Of course, this meant I had to DVR the Argentina v Mexico game, which of course didn’t bother recording the extra time. Ergo, Gee-Money doesn’t get to see the winning goal. Which was goal of the tournament. Grrr.

Watching Eng-er-land squeak through against a plucky band of Ecuadorians. Beckham stepped up, a nation held it’s breath, and the Spice Boy is a hero once more. Twats. Later that day, I had the pleasure of sitting down to the most anticipated match of the tournament so far (for me), Holland against Portugal. And once more, horrendous refereeing destroyed a potential classic. Finished it all with King Kong on Netflix (well made, would have been nice to see it on the big screen for the effects, but glad I didn’t pay to see it). All in all, a slovenly weekend.

Isn’t that what rainy days are for?

This year just is NOT going to plan. Going into 2006, I was planning on righting the wrongs of 2005, whipping my arse back into pre-Tracee shape, and was planning on involving myself in biking a LOT more, to the point where my plan was to try the Cranky Monkey, or even take a crack at Lodi or (pushing the boat out here!) the SM100.

Instead, I weigh 172lbs. (Two years ago I was 150.)

Frequent injuries, twists of fate, hectic schedules, and flat out laziness have won out over my best intentions. It’s been a week and a half or so since the right foot incident (sorry, I’m in DC – I should call it “footgate”) and it’s feeling a LOT better. Swelling’s gone, bruise is faded to nothing, and it’s more or less pain free unless I poke at it (which I invariably do, out of boredom.) So, of course, I’m fighting the urge to go play footy on Thursday night, and had to fight the urge to ride to work this morning.

Aside from pent up energy, and sheer boredom, the urge to play/ride is being fuelled by my increasing gut. This sedentry thing is killing me – I think I left my metabolism behind in 2002 or something. The world cup isn’t helping, since in lieu of the usual salad or protein shake at my desk I normally do for lunch, I bunk out to Rumours or Sign of the Whale for lunch to catch a game, and end up with a burger and beer, or something.

What makes this worse, is Jeff called last night. Rather surprising. Was in the middle of watching the undeserving Canes (okay, the team is deserving, but I’m still annoyed at the rampant expansion of the NHL, plopping hockey teams in places where the only ice they see is the stuff in their “sweet tea”) win the Cup, when he rang looking for advice on camera purchases. After chatting about that for a bit, the talk turned to riding together in CA next month, hitting up Tamarancho and Downieville. I couldn’t help but turn my eyes to the slacker ass body, and wince. This is gonna suck!

But must obey doctor, and remain on my kiester, lest I damage it again and put myself back to square one. But damn, this is frustrating.

So for the past 6 months or so, I’ve been dealing with stress fractures in my feet. (Not the sort you get from work, where you get really annoyed to the point where you fracture your boss’ jaw with a baseball bat, but the way this month has been going, that’ll happen too!) As you know, I play soccer as well as ride, so put the issues I was having down to that.

But last night at the gym, while (gingerly) riding the stationary bike to try and keep up some modicum of fitness, I fell into conversation with another cyclist. She’s a triathlete and a former semi pro cyclist (who’s name I can’t remember) and teaches various spinning classes there. I guess she saw me wincing while I was pedalling (and yelled at me to stop) so struck up a conversation about my maladies.

Anyways, when she heard I rode, she asked me what type of riding I did – off road or on. When I mentioned MTB, it was her turn to wince. In her experience, stress fractures of the foot (particularly the metatarsals, which I have issues with) is very common amongst our muddy band, because of… pedals? Because of the smaller platform, and our tendancy to get out of the saddle to “mash”, it creates a much smaller pressure point on the soles of the feet that experience some serious force. While this may not break bone, it apparantly is widely known to weaken them, and make one far more susceptible to such injuries. For example when someone tackles you on a soccer pitch, and you end up with something like you see below…

I told her that my ortho said that I could ride as normal, and that I should use pain as my indicator, to which she replied that my ortho is saying that under the assumption that I’m riding roads. Her parting advice was to stay away from trails for 3-4 months, and when I do resume riding, to ditch the clipless pedals in favour of platforms.

I would normally tell this woman to take a long walk off a short pier, but I’m sensing some truth to what she said – I used eggbeaters originally, and did get a wee bit of foot pain where I engaged, so I switched to Candys to give me a little bit of a platform. I also ditched my cheap Diadora shoes this year, in favour of a pair of Sidi Dominators, since the soles of the old ones were a little flexy.

I wonder if anyone else has similar problems with their tricksy hobbitses feetses? Should I ignore this woman and get back on the trail asap? Should I take my ortho out back and beat him senseless?

All I know is I’m bored!

So it’s Sunday afternoon. Right now, the plan was to be on my way back from a couple of laps at Rosaryville. Instead, I’m in front of my computer, dealing with a couple of work emails, and feeling the need to vent.

Black Cats game on Friday night. Against a team that’s bottom of the division, a team that we’ve flat out owned since the team started. Last time we played them, we won 7-0.

Lou, in his infinite wisdom, recruited some new guys. Which we don’t need – we have plenty who show up. This new guy, Oscar, is latino. Which means he doesn’t pass to anyone other than his buddy Osmin. The girls don’t get squat, and neither do the rest of us. 15 minutes into the game, he’s costing us. We’re running around on a crappy muddy pitch trying to get free, and the balls just aren’t coming. Finally, out of sheer annoyance at this going on, not for just this game but for the season to date, I scream blue murder at him. At the top of my lungs. “JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, PASS THE FUCKING BALL!!!”

This earned me a yellow card. And players from both teams yelling at me for my bad language. Christ. Playing ADULT soccer. I felt immediately nostalgic for the league at home where you could scream whatever you wanted, and the game was played the way it was meant to be played. Here in America, it’s all rah-rah, let’s have good clean fun, way-to-go-nice-effort! horseshite. So the F-bomb earns the ire of the referee. But yet for some reason, during the second half, when I go up for a header and get elbowed in the face, this apparantly is ok. It’s also ok when the same player comes through me in a slide tackle (which, according to our league rules is an immediate red card) causing me to spin 180 degrees in the air, and a fractured right foot. Well done referee, he gave the foul, but no card.

So to sum up: swearing is BAD. Deliberately playing dangerously and taking out an opposition player: not as bad.

The cherry on top of this sundae of retardation was at the end of the game, when I’m sitting on the bench nursing an ankle already sporting a lump the size of an egg, and turning an interesting shade of yellow-green, the referee comes up to me. I’m expecting a “man, I blew that call, I’m sorry” or at least a “holy crap, are you ok?” but no – I get chided again for my use of language. “Gary, as far as I know, the f word is not in soccer’s vocabulary, please don’t use it again.”

Thankfully 36 hours of RICE has helped the swelling go down a LOT, but it’s still not a pretty sight. Don’t take my word for it? Here it is:

Appointment to see the doc on Tuesday, but he’s already pretty much told me to stay off it as much as possible, and that it’s likely another fracture.

So anyways, that brings me to the now, sitting in front of a computer with my foot iced and elevated rather than doing what I’ve been looking forward to all week – riding. I was REALLY looking forward to a couple laps of my new favourite trail, with Drew, who I haven’t seen in ages (and the main instigator of shite against me for not riding as much). Even was hoping to get some time in on his Niner, to examine my own thoughts of going big wheeled. Instead, I can’t really walk at the moment. On top of that, my fitness plan has taken yet another knock (no pun intended) so I’ll be riding with Jeff in Marin fat and crappy…

Ah well. At least I get to watch the World Cup…

So apparantly, the correct response to your fiance saying “Don’t forget we’re having brunch with my parents on Sunday” is NOT “Fuck that, I’m going to Rosaryville with Michael and Fookie.”

That’s all for now, have to finish moving my stuff into the doghouse. (Still riding on Sunday, though!)