Peter's Ranting: Coping with a long term injury (the story of why my arm looks funny)

Disclaimer: This is a personal story about long term injury and is not intended to trivialize the struggles of those people who suffer from more severe injuries or handicaps and who cannot use bicycles to the same ends. 


When I started riding bicycles, I discovered a wonderful way of escaping the rules and regulations I faced in life. I was so naive that i presumed myself a bicycle mechanic and started collecting old scrap bikes to fix and sell.

When I was 16, my passion for bikes took a serious turn when I started working at a local bike shop. By that time I had discovered the joys of the BMX bike and had become fairly serious about riding. Launching myself down sets of 10 or more stairs and landing on flat ground at the bottom was normal to me. In fact, I was so blinded by inexperience that a truly terrifying 30 foot step-down at a set of local jumps didn't even scare me. I rode over it all the time on my BMX bike, challenging mountain bikers to do the same. One time at the age of 18, I brought a coworker with me. He rode a full suspension mountain bike and when he saw me do the massive 30 foot drop, he simply said “Ok, now do it on a real bike”. Foolish young me pedalled slowly over the edge and promptly fell over the handle bars, snapping both arms and scraping my face badly on the rocky slope before the landing. I woke up in bandages. Before i fell asleep (from a combination of true weariness and a concoction of strong pain killers administered by the surgeons), I was told that my arm were being held together by screws and plates and that my face looked like Two Face from the Batman comics.

The healing process was slow but successful until another night when luck didn't seem to like me. A few weeks after being cleared to return to work with my freshly healed arms, I decided to ride my longboard instead of my bike to avoid road vibration. I also made the decision to do this at night. Without lights. So the pickup truck driver can't really be blamed for not seeing me. He never actually hit me so he never even knew I fell. He just drove off, oblivious. I, on the other hand, had jumped off my board when he pulled out of the driveway. Realizing I had glass bottles in my bag, I decided not to roll, but to try and land on my feet from full speed. When that failed, I put my arms out to stop myself as I fell. Next thing I knew, my right arm had a funky new shape. I went home, splinted the arm, put on a long sleeve shirt so it wasn't visible, and went out to continue boarding.

That was four years ago. My arm is still the exact same shape it was after that night I had the mix up with the truck. It healed like that. The radius bends upwards in the middle and the ulna bends up at the wrist, leaving the joint in a somewhat dislocated state. The human body is absolutely amazing at healing itself, so the range of motion has come back, albeit off axis a little. There is chronic pain, though. A fair amount of it. I sometimes feel like the old men in cartoons who say they can feel a storm brewin' in their rusty joints. The slightest humidity triggers arthritic symptoms. Any slight impact in the wrong place triggers a wave of hot pain throughout my arm. I never actually enjoyed prescription pain pills because of the feelings of numbness that come with them. I never even finished the bottle of codeine that they gave me when I left the hospital. So aside from the occasional herbal remedy, I don't take anything for it. I could get it fixed, but it would involve removing the current hardware and starting the whole process from scratch. It's not that I'm scared of the pain, more that I'm scared of losing another year or two of my life right in the middle of my 20's. It will have to be fixed at some point. It's inevitable. I just want to wait until my life is both financially and emotionally stable enough to take the time and heal properly. Ironically there's only one thing that really helps with both the physical pain from my arm and the painful guilt of ruining my body through stupidity. That one thing is riding bicycles, the exact thing that put me in this mess to begin with.

There's two different reasons behind it.

First is the physical benefits. I'm not talking about fitness here. Well I kind of am, but fitness is a byproduct, not the end goal. When I ride my bike, the first thing that hits me is how well the bike is set up. How well it corners. How smoothly it accelerates. The first few minutes of the ride are always consumed by examining the details of the setup, even on my own personal bike. Once that wears off, a period of slight discomfort happens. I feel the tightness in my wrist and the general body stresses of riding a bicycle. But after about ten minutes, the ride takes effect and i feel the waves of dopamine, the body's natural feel-good chemical hitting me and I can't stop smiling or even laughing. After another ten minutes, I feel the all the pain in my body dissipate and be replaced with a warm, fuzzy feeling as I get into the swing of it. After I'm done, I can still be feeling giddy and pain free hours later. On top of that is the adrenaline rush of doing tricks on a bike. Obviously I can't do the tricks I used to try. Barspins, tailwhips, and big no-handers are relegated to the foam pit for me now. In the real world, the tricks I do are simple and I focus on smoothness. With a nicely shaped ramp, simply laying the bike flat on a nice high transfer and feeling the G-forces gives a strong enough shot of adrenaline to make the warm, fuzzy feeling turn a feeling of overflowing with sheer power.

Bikes unlock the body's best built-in drugs.

Second is overcoming adversity. Bicycles were supposed to be an escape from school, from social drama, from road rules, from housework, from everything. I trusted them to bring me some kind of enlightenment and they threw me under the bus, or over the bars, as the case may be. So yes, I want to overcome every challenge a bike can throw at me. The lasting arm injury prevents me from overcoming the specific challenges that I used to dream of taking on, and I have to accept that I no longer have a chance of being a professional BMX rider. So the only way to beat the bikes at their own game is to change my perspective on cycling. The goal is no longer to learn all the tricks or to reach a certain level of ability. The goal now is to enjoy bicycles to their fullest extent. That means I no longer focus on BMX exclusively so I have more opportunities to enjoy bicycles. That broader focus lets me perform better at the shop (yes, I still work at that bike shop) with an expanded bicycle encyclopedia inside my head. Now, I actually care about the single mom who needs her bike to get to work or the kid who has a disability and rides a recumbent trike to cope because I identify with them. I understand that it's not just a sport to them, they actually need their bikes to maintain their lifestyle. I want them to have the best bike possible so I do mind numbing amounts of research and experiments with bikes to perfect my craft. So while I still struggle with the reality of my permanent injury and I never got my enlightenment, I at least found some small eureka that my opening up my mind to the wild diversity of the cycling world could lead to beating my problems. I fight my demons not only by making bikes better for myself, but by making bikes better and more accessible for everyone. 

changing tires, bike shop style (not a rant, really)

The following is an excerpt from Cyclepath Mississauga's employee handbook. It is a detailed how-to on tire changes for entry level mechanics. Tire changes are the bread and butter of any good bike shop so a proper tire change is the first thing any bicycle mechanic should learn. Outside of the shop, any BMX rider reading this blog can use this guide to make sure they're doing their own tire changes properly, and can also make sure they handle tire changes on their friend's and family's non-BMX bikes the way the manufacture intended.

Peter’s Tire Change 101

Types of tires

There are two common designs for how tires are mounted to rims. The first and most common is the clincher tire. These tires use an innertube (or sealant in the case of tubeless tires) to hold the air inside the tire while the tire itself is mounted to the rim by a wire or kevlar bead. This hooks into a lip inside the rim as the tire inflates. A tubeless tire functions the same way but it uses sealant instead of an innertube to hold the air. The other design you may see is the tubular tire. These tires essentially have their innertube built in and are mounted to the rim with glue instead of a hooked bead. Tubular tires are almost exclusive to vintage or high end road bikes.

99% of the bikes you see will use clincher tires with innertubes. In the case of both tubular tires and tubeless tires which use sealant, the job should be performed by a senior mechanic. Both of these tire setups must be installed in a unique way.

Tires sizes

Tires can be broken down into three basic types to keep the sizes straight; Kids, Mountain, and Road. Each tire has three numbers designating its size. For example, 26” x 1.95 (559) is one of the most common sizes for department store mountain bikes. The first is the diameter (26’), the second is the width of the tire (1.95”), and the third is the BSD or Bead Seat Diameter. This is the precise diameter of the hooked bead’s interface with the rim. In most cases, the BSD can be ignored if the regular diameter and width match. If a tire looks like it should match a rim but doesn’t, check that the BSD’s match.

Road tires generally use metric measurements, with the exception of the old 27”x1 ¼” tires, which appear on old steel framed road bikes. You may see some other unusual sizes such as 650c, but in general you will see 700c x _____ (622) on road and hybrid bikes. Road bikes usually have a width between 20mm and 28mm. Hybrid and cyclocross bikes can use tires as wide as 45mm if the have the clearance.

Mountain tires come in three common imperial diameters: 26”, 27.5” (also known as 650b), and 29”. The widths vary from around 1.5” for street use, 2” for XC use, 3.5” for DH use, and 5” for fat bikes.. 26” and 27.5” tires are largely only compatible with their own sizes but 29” rims have the same BSD (622) as 700c wheels, meaning that wider hybrid tires will fit on a 29er wheel for street riding.

Kids tires come in a wide variety of diameters, but they all have a width around 2”, give or take. Bike shops tend to sell 12”, 16”, 20”, and 24” kids bikes, along with 20” BMX and some 18” BMX. 14” and 18” sizes are usually sold as childrens sizes at department stores so the options for replacement parts are not as plentiful.

You may see some older standards on older bikes. Pre-1970 cruiser bikes sometimes use 26” x 1 ⅜” tires. These are not compatible with normal 26” tires. A similar standard is used for wheelchairs, which use 24" x 1 ⅜” tires. Again, these are not compatible with regular 24” tires due to a the Bead Seat Diameter being measured from a different point.

As a general rule, equivalent conversions between decimals and fractions does not mean two tires are identical. A tire with an indicated size of 26" x 1.25" is NOT compatible with a tire with an indicated size of 26" x 1 ¼"  because the change in units indicates a change in where the measurements are taken from.

Valves

There are three types of valves, two of which you must know how to use. The standard Schraeder valve is identical to a car and can be use with a regular air compressor head. Higher end bikes use a Presta valve, which is skinnier, must be opened and closed manually, and holds air longer at high pressures than a Schraeder valve. Dunlop (also known as Woods) valves are outdated and must be changed to the appropriate Schraeder valve tube.

Changing the tires

A tire change takes the average person half an hour from start to finish. Ideally this job should be fast and simple, taking around 10 minutes for a shop mechanic. The finished product should be perfectly seated so the tire runs round with no lumps and pumped to an ideal pressure roughly in the middle of the tire’s recommended range.

step 1

Remove the wheel(s) that need repair from the bike. Remove any remaining air from the tires by pushing on the valve cores. Most tires can be both removed and installed by hand, using force from the thumbs and palms. Tires that are too tight to remove by hand should be removed with tire levers. NEVER USE A SCREWDRIVER. Insert the lever under the bead and push down, forcing the bead off and out of the rim. Repeat for the inner bead.

step 2

With the old tire removed, separate the tube and tire and carefully inspect any parts that will be re-used. If the tire is be re-used, carefully run your hands inside the tire to check for foreign objects embedded in the tread. Tires that still show tread depth and are not dry or cracking can usually be re-used. Check the rimstrip for damage, and replace if knicks or wear are found. If the wheel needs to be trued, this is the best opportunity.

step 3

When installing the tire, install the first bead by hand. Make sure the logo on the tire is lined up directly across from or directly at the valve hole. This makes it easier to locate later punctures and looks professional. Put some air in the new tube just so it hold shape. Insert the valve first,  then carefully push the tube into the tire all the way around. Some talcum powder applied to the tube may make it easier to push into the tire.

step 4

Most tires should be installed entirely by hand. Starting at the valve, use your palms to push the bead onto the rim, being careful not to pinch the tube between the rim and bead. If the tire is too tight (usually occurs with tubeless or high pressure tires), carefully use tire levers to install the tire by turning the lever around and reversing the process used to remove the tire. Remember to check that the tube is out of the way before each use of the lever and that you don’t scratch the surfaces on tubeless rims.

step 5

Check over and reinstall the wheel(s). Inflate the tire in small increments, to a firm pressure, ensuring the bead is properly hooked onto the rim. Reinstall the wheel and make sure the valve has a cap.

Check that the wheel is properly aligned in the frame and that quick release skewers are closed properly. Rear wheels cost more in labour because mechanics have to work around the gears and brake. Make sure the brakes and gears are working as well as possible and advise customer if any parts should be replaced or any additional service is needed. Finally, if the chain is dry, give it a light helping of lube.