Home, healing, and Big Ethel

Well, I am back home at my apartment after precisely 3 months at Garden Villa. The experience of convalescing in a retirement home was an interesting one, to say the least. I thoroughly enjoyed the friendly banter with the residents; the 3-home-cooked-meals every day were wonderful – to the tune of ‘15-extra-pounds-wonderful’; having a cute young nurse wash my back every night  was easy to live with; all in all, it was none to shabby a time at the ole Villa.

But I gotta tell ya’ – it is good to be home! Even if that means climbing 3 flights of stairs anytime I go out (believe me I have learned to both limit and maximize my excursions) and cooking my own meals. Okay, truth be told there has not been a lot of cooking yet – more along the lines of take-out or microwaveable fare, actually. But I plan on taking on a little culinary project this weekend. It is time that I learn how to prepare a good Thai cashew chicken plate. This is a meal that I go out to eat in restaurants at least 3 times a week, so it would certainly behove me to learn how to prepare it at home. Other plates will follow, I am sure.

The physiotherapy is going very well. My right ankle is quite strong and has a good range of motion again. My left is still really weak, and it swells like a balloon after a very few minutes of weight bearing. I am now swimming at least 4 days per week at a City complex, and also using the cardio machines as well. I am getting more exercise now, as a component of my rehabilitation, than I have in years. As a matter of fact this is the first time in my life that I have ever held a membership to a gym.

Just one more silver lining I guess.

I moved back home from the retirement residence on Saturday, August 30.

I brought Big Ethel home on Tuesday, September 2.

Big Ethel? you ask…

 

She is quite different from the black beast that I used to ride. A Suzuki V Strom 1000, she is a bike that offers a much broader choice of riding styles, and environments, than my recently departed cruiser. Big Ethel is more than happy on gravel roads, likes to play in the mud, and is a very willing and adept dancing partner in the twisties. She likes to show off a little, and if not treated with a gentle touch she will stand on her rear wheel with the finesse of a brahma bull, but at the same time this is a quite forgiving lady who wants nothing more than to be taken on long, long adventures through areas most often overlooked by my old cruiser-riding eyes.

I am so looking forward to the time when both of my ankles are strong again. So that the only thing limiting my riding is time. As it is right now my ankles just aren’t up to anything more than a short jaunt. Ah well, when taken in perspective, I am very pleased with my recovery to this point. And it appears to get a little better every day.

Finally, to get down to brass tacks – this particular blog post was completely unintended. I had no plans to write today. At least, not in the forefront of my brainbox. But I got an email from Factory Direct last evening advertising the Dell Latitude 2100 Netbook for a very reasonable $160.00. Always on the lookout for a more motorcycle-travel friendly machine than my 15” Toshiba Satellite, I thought I should try this little machine out. And so far, I have to say I am very pleased. Small enough to fit in my tank-bag, it is a fully functional laptop in netbook sizing. While not powerful nor fast enough for gaming, it will certainly do the job for moto-vlogging / blogging from the road, word processing, surfing and emailing.

And so, that brings us to the end of what really was a rather bland post. Oh well…sometimes bland is all the palate can handle…

I will be posting a little more often as my ankles improve, and the adventure unfolds…

As always, thank you for riding along.