Today went well, though it was very unusual. I’m reminded of the scene in The Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy and friends arrive in the Emerald City and gets a complete makeover.

The Better World Club (AAA for bikes) picked me up in a reasonable amount of time (though at first saying it would be 2 to 3 hours, this in the Minneapolis metro area!). I got a ride to Erik’s Bike Shop, where technician Ryan replaced the spoke, trued the wheel, and cleaned and lubricated the drive train (chain and derailleurs). CC looks beautiful again, and more importantly, was free from all the damaging crud that we had picked up on unintended dirt and gravel roads in the first 1500 miles. She shifts so much sweeter now, important when you change gears thousands of times a day.  (You know me well enough to know this is not a figure of speech.)            Thanks Ryan!

Then it was my turn. I rode about 5 miles on some of Minneapolis’s amazing network of bike trails to see a physical therapist, an expert on bike injuries, who squeezed me into her schedule. She did an amazing job, working with – and on – me for over an hour to help to resolve my anterior tibialis tendinitis (her diagnosis). I probably partly induced it by protecting my left knee with my right leg (see earlier post). There’s more to the overuse injury than that, but probably not of interest to even my very best friends. She recommended a suite of techniques I can employ, which should have me cautiously back on the trail before long.

(I use her website photo, because the one I took was atrocious.)

This rest-ice-massage-stretching strategy sure beats the alternative: I was checking out the price of flights from MPL to LGA while I was waiting for CC to be repaired.

Minneapolis is a wonderful city of lakes. Though I’m too much of a water chemist not to be dismayed by the hyper-eutrophication I see in some of them. The problem is too much fertilizer put on too many lawns; it’s the most chemically intensive form of agriculture out there.