Max's Blog

January 21, 2015
Max Cycling, fitness, Life

Crash Recovery, continued…..

As I have posted elsewhere on this blog, I was knocked off my bike on August 1st.

Since then, I have gone through two surgeries to repair my collarbone.

My recovery is progressing slowly, some days I think that I am not getting any better, other days I realise that it is less painful nowadays than it was, say, a month ago.

Then I move awkwardly, my muscles spasm and I have pain tearing up my upper arm and my shoulder and tears in my eyes.

The current status is that I have seriously restricted movement in my left shoulder.

Standing straight up, I can raise my arm forwards to about 80*, I can get to about 60* sideways and maybe 10* backwards. When I reach those limits, I get significant muscle spasms in my upper arm and a  sharp pain that stretches from my left ear to my elbow.

Obviously I try not to move my arm too far.

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November 25, 2014
Max Life, Technology

I have a love-hate relationship with Apple and Android….

A few weeks ago, Apple launched their new iPhone 6 and the XL iPhone 6 Plus.

The iPhone 6 is the one that interests me more than anything. I currently use a Samsung Note3, albeit one that long since jettisoned the original Samsungised version of Android that it is intended to use and one that now runs Cyanogenmod 11 (nightly).

I love and hate the size of the Note3, the screen is pretty good in all but bright sunlight and the lightly extended version of AOSP plus Google services adds up to a nice phone.

There are very few things about the Note3 that I dislike.

– The battery life is poor, I struggle to get through a busy day

– There are still vestiges of Samsung – the home button for example.

– The camera is really ‘not all that’ and when you run a third-party ROM you are giving up many things, NFC is a prime example of this.

So, why am I writing about the iPhone 6  ?

Because deep down I beleive that the Apple ecosystem is a better one than the Android / Google one.

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November 3, 2014
Max Cycling, fitness, Life ,

Crash – Recovery Month FOUR

I almost went out on my bicycle yesterday. It would have been very appropriate, three months and a day since my crash. 2014-10-26 08.33.50

I got a new helmet on Saturday (November 1st) to replace the one that took the brunt of the impact last time out. I decided to get the exact same helmet as before. I reasoned that as the previous one did such a good job, why change ?

I did not go out as it was very wet and incredibly windy. Not ideal cycling conditions really and certainly not good conditions to take the first steps after a major crash.

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October 1, 2014
Max Cycling, Driving, fitness, Life , , , , , , ,

Crash – Recovery Month Three

Today is the start of month three of my recovery.

As you will have read in previous posts, I was knocked off my bike on August the 1st 2104.

One plate and six screws

One plate and six screws

While I had several other, relatively minor injuries, the major one was to my left collarbone. which was broken fairly badly.

I underwent surgery on August the 14th to stabilise it. They inserted a titanium plate and six screws into the bone. For the last few weeks I have been recovering slowly from the procedure.

Unfortunately I am not recovering very quickly, I am struggling with quite badly reduced mobility in my shoulder and severe stabbing pains and muscular spasms when I move the wrong way – or indeed too far. I also have significant pins and needles that stretch from my shoulder to my little finger on my left hand.

I have an appointment with an orthopaedic specialist next week to discuss further options which looks to include additional surgery.

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September 1, 2014
Max Cycling, Driving, fitness , ,

Crash – Recovery Month Two

Note: This is part 2 of my recovery, for the first part, read this post first.

Monday September 1st 2014
(feeling very sorry for myself)
A full month has now gone by, it feels a lot longer. The first few days after the crash were miserable beyond belief, I could barely do anything at all, any movement sent shocks of pain through my body, As the bone was broken and separated it was especially painful when movement would cause the ends to touch.

I was somewhat happy to be considered for surgery, but frankly I totally underestimated just how huge an impact it would have on me. I assumed I would be in and out of the hospital and that I would be back to normal in a few days.

Healing really nicely

Healing really nicely

I am now over two weeks into my post-surgery recovery and I am still not back to normal, not by a very long way.

I almost cannot imagine riding again this year. Maybe in a couple of months I will be fine, but by then the weather will be crappy and it will not really be the time to go out.

I just made a physiotherapy appointment, it is not for three week, so even if PT is a miracle cure, I have another three weeks of limited mobility and a doubt about how it will heal and if it will ever return to normal.

All in all, it could be a lot worse, I am sore and in pain a lot and I have limited mobility. I am looking forwards to fixing my bike and I am looking forwards to getting out there again in the future.I just wish it was sooner rather than later…

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August 20, 2014
Max Cycling, Driving, fitness, Life , , , ,

Crash !

[Warning – this is a bit graphic]

Over the years I have been incredibly fortunate to have been able to cycle many thousands of miles and stay pretty much on my bicycle. Sure over the years I have fallen off a mountain bike, but it has always been my fault, often a combination of too much speed and not quite enough talent in the dirt.

On the road though I have been either very lucky, or very observant, managing to avoid a road-crash for at least the last thirty years. I think that the last time I fell off my road bike was back when I taking my O-Levels.

Now I have a Titanium plate holding my collarbone together.

This is the story the crash and of my recovery so far…

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December 26, 2013
Max Driving, Life , ,

386 Miles in a Nissan Joke.

Sure, we have all heard about the Nissan Juke R and the Nismo R, but are you aware that there is a Nissan Joke Dismal available in the UK ?

I was not.

Until Hertz handed me the keys to one with just 1.4 miles on the ODO.2013-12-21 11.43.48

….and I headed out onto the M25 in the pouring rain and howling gale-force winds. Oh yes, it was dark too

The Nissan Juke 1.5 dCi 110PS Stop/Start has 81hp at 4000rpm and goes from 0-60mph in something like a month of sundays. Officially it does it in 11.2 seconds, but it feels slower than than. Much, much, much slower than that. It tops out at about 100mph. Again it feels slower than that too – 75-80mph is comfortable, beyond that I have no idea.

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October 16, 2013
Max Diet, fitness, Life , , ,

The Top Secret Weight Loss Formula.

I see lots of people pontificating about some new wondrous diet or other and how they have lost endless weight by following them. There are some seriously strange ones that are popular at the moment too.

I may have eaten too many pies

You may have eaten too many pies

I also see endless people hopping from faddy diet to plain weird diet and failing to lose any weight at all. Or more often, losing a bit, then putting it all back on again and again.

Here is the secret.….

If you are over-weight and you want to weigh less, eat less food and burn more calories.

It is actually that simple.

Your body needs food in order to function, but if you over-feed it, then it turns the excess food into fat and stores it for use later.

If you consistently over-feed your body, you will continue to add to the fat stores.

When you move around, when you heart beats, when you are awake, when you are asleep, your body uses energy. If there is not enough food available to burn, then those reserves of fat are raided.

Again though, if there is more food available than you need, then the excess is added to the fat stores.

Depending on how old you are, what sex you are, how much you weigh and how active you are on a daily basis, your body will burn a reasonably calculable amount of calories.

For example, At my age, given my relatively sedentary lifestyle and my current weight, I need around 2500kcals per day on average to maintain my weight.

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August 31, 2013
Max Cycling, fitness, Life ,

Stuck in one gear….

Some time ago I bought a single-speed bike.

I love the idea of a simple, honest bike that needs little maintenance and is easy and simple to ride.

[EMAREN] the bicycle

[EMAREN] the bicycle

So I bought a nice, SE Racing, Draft. It was pretty nice, a steel frame, coaster brake (no hand brakes), nice, simple, easy.

Except that I realized that I did not really like the coaster brake, several very near misses later I added decent brakes to it. which lead to lighter wheels.

This changed the dynamics of the bike.

Some Aero Bull-horn bars with a double layer of cork tape, a carbon seat post with a decent seat made it ever lighter and faster…

The latest changes have seen the crappy original bottom bracket replaced with a nice Shimano unit and the steel crankset replaced with a polished alloy FSA unit.

I added some nice custom graphics as the bike is no longer an SE Draft, it is an [EMAREN] branded bike now 🙂

So, how does it ride now ?

It is fast, but I spin-out at 26mph now. I might have to change the gearing to 44T/15T vs the current 44T/16T. The 16T is pretty much a standard though, so 15T cogs tend to be a special order. Perhaps I will see how it goes on longer rides.

I am pretty happy with it….

May 9, 2013
Max Driving, Life

Goodbye Audi…

Normally when you say goodbye to someone, or maybe something, it is normally followed with, ‘see you soon’, or ‘nice meeting you’.

I said goodbye to my Audi A3 last night after a mere 21 months.

This is the shortest period that I have owned a car in a very long time.

I had a twinge of regret when I handed over the keys to the BMW dealer. The car was a truly great car hampered by all manner of minor issues that made it reallly very hard to live with.

Let me rewind though….

I bought it used in August 2012. I paid about the going rate for the car, it was very well equipped with a huge sunroof, DSG gearbox superb leather sport seats and one of the nicest 2.0 Turbo engines I have ever encountered. It was also very, very low mileage in the two years and two months since it was registered it had covered a little over 17,000 miles and had obviously been extremely well cared for.

In the first two weeks of ownership I had a ‘TMPS System Failure’. I reported it to the Audi shop – CommonWealth Audi in Santa Ana and they said to mention it at service. The light had done out and the car felt normal and I passed happily through 18,000 miles. This was of course a mistake that would prove costly.

Very Costly.

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