January 16, 2025 to January 17, 2025
Two days, two rides
You wouldn’t know it from the tenor of recent posts, but suddenly life is feeling stable for us. We’re steadily getting ourselves better organized and our new Tucson routines established and feeling at home and in control again. We went out for rides together on both of the last two days and have another planned for tomorrow, each of them longer than any we’ve taken together since leaving Spain nearly two months ago. And we have video! Let’s take advantage of this sudden bend toward normalcy, batch the two rides together, and really get caught up again.
Thursday: Julian Wash OAB
Today’s is our first real ride, with the previous short outings being primarily shark-outs to make sure the bikes were ready for the road. Our 24 mile out and back to Julian Wash is the longest ride we’ve taken together since returning from Spain.
The ride had two purposes. One of course was the ride itself, and a test of how biking will be for me now. It was really no problem at all, at least on a safe environment like the wide, carless paths of the Loop.
The other purpose though was to test out the ride from a safety and security perspective, to see if this is a direction Rachael will feel safe biking in unescorted. Were happy to report that it felt perfectly fine and probably improved since we were here last winter.
And then I really do bike through to REI without stopping for photographs, with one exception. It’s not the thrasher though, who remains a no show for the day. It’s a shot of the Catalina Mountains from Rillito Wash. An undeclared shot, but it’s on her. She stopped to blow her nose so I took advantage of it.
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Tonight is Rachael’s eat-in night, to finish her leftovers from Locale. Our general model here is that we’ll go out to dinner together every other night, and when she eats in I’ll pursue the Quest. Tonight that takes me to the Agave House, a taco place adjacent to the university campus. It’s a really pleasant spot to sit and admire the art works, but their single nonalcoholic option isn’t the most imaginative.
Sound track: Sunshine Express, by Bud Shank
Friday: a trip to the REI
Today’s ride has two purposes. First, I’m giving Rachael an escort out to another of her main riding routes through town. Today we’re biking north to Rillito Wash, following our now standard route: east through the Universiry and its eastern neighborhood to Treat Avenue (which I call Treat Street anyway because I like the rhyme). Like yesterday, this route feels perfectly safe.
Also though, it’s an errand run. Once we come to the wash we’ll head west to the Tucson Mall for a visit to the REI. We come with a wish list:
- We’ll pick up the new long sleeved bike jersey Rachael ordered to be picked up here.
- I need a new cable lock for the one left behind in Barcelona.
- I need a new mirror for the right side of my bike, to compensate for my blind spot.
- We need either a screw or a new mount that will allow me to mount my Varia on the back.
- I’d like a new pair of bike socks. I picked up one at Fair Wheel, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to have two pair of bike socks.
- It’s not all about me. Rachael would like a new pair of bike socks also.
- And in a real stretch goal, I’m hoping to find a new pair of short-legged pants. The ones I have look like they were on the road for nine months last year.
Before we leave the house, I tell Rachael that I’ll bike straight through to REI, but if I hear a Gila woodpecker or a curved-billed thrasher I’m going to stop. These are both birds I know you might find in the inner city, but usually you’re tipped off by hearing their distinctive cries. You just have to be lucky to pass by one; and if I’m in luck today I’m going to stop and look around.
We’ve only gone two blocks when I pull off and tell Rachael I’m stopping. I can almost hear an audible groan or sigh - what’s the purpose of making an agreement like that if I’m not going to honor it? it’s not that though. I just heard a Gila woodpecker. One down!
At REI Rachael stays with the bikes while I raid the store. I do well, coming out with a cable, a mirror, a mount for the Varia, and a pair of new socks. No socks for Rachael because they didn’t have a pair in her size; and no short-legged pants either. As soon as I’m back outside Rachael points behind me at the neighboring Macys shop; and ten or fifteen minutes later I come back with short-legged pants I’m very pleased with.
Errands done, we reverse route and bike home again until about three miles from the end I decide to stop at Himmel Park to see if there are any birds around, something I’d discussed earlier with her. She’s fine with that, and almost immediately turns the corner onto the University Bike Boulevard and its straight shot home.
I stay around, sitting on strategically placed benches for a few minutes each to just wait and see what turns up. It’s time well spent.
It’s dinner out night tonight, so in late afternoon we make the 15 minute walk down busy Stone Avenue to El Charro, perhaps our favorite Mexican restaurant anywhere. It’s a remarkable place, full of the character it’s acquired in its full century in business - it’s the oldest family-owned Mexican restaurant still operating in America. And we like the food too.
I’d say that we typically found our way here two or three times each winter, normally arriving around five and joining a long waiting line queued up on the sidewalk. We’d put our name on the list and go for a walk, or like others we’d sometimes sit at one of the picnic tables on the sidewalk, have a beer, and watch the Catalina Mountains start to take on an amazing rosy glow.
Eventually though our name would come to the top and we’d be shown to whatever table had freed up - so we’ve seen a lot of the interior. Today though we headed down not long after three, not wanting to walk home after dark. The place was only partially full this time and we got seated in a room we’ve never seen before, the Mo Udall Room. It looks like it must be the premier room here, and it’s full of wonderful material lining the walls and crowning the trunks. It’s a delight to just sit and look around, and the meal when it arrives is pretty good too.
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Afterwards I talk a skeptical Rachael into taking the streetcar back, telling her the walking distance is the same, it will be nearly as fast, and much quieter and more pleasant than walking beneath the Stone Avenue underpass again. And I’m right, and she agrees. It’s a seven minute walk to the nearest streetcar stop at this end down on Broadway, and another seven minutes from the closest stop on University to our home. It’s the same walking distance but broken up, and definitely much more enjoyable. Next time we’ll take the streetcar both ways.
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The New Normal
I’ve spoken over the last three weeks about the miracle of regaining essentially complete recovery of my sight in my left eye, which is of course life-changing for both of us. I haven’t done much more than allude to other aspects of my condition though, which leave me in a different spot in several ways than I was before all this came on. Before moving on I think it’s time to talk about what I think of as my New Normal, since that might answer some questions a few of you have raised, as have we ourselves.
First, there are the vision issues. There’s the obvious one of the loss of my right eye, and the resulting blind spot and narrowing of my peripheral vision on the right. There’s no news there of course, and the plan is to train myself to it and add a right side mirror and the Varia to the bike. Now that I’ve been out riding for several days, nothing here seems like it will be hard to cope with. It’s really just a retraining thing that I’m still working on, carefully and slowly.
That’s not the only issue though. I also have poor night vision, especially when looking down. That’s why I crashed into that curb. I couldn’t see it, and in my mind I was seeing what looked like an imagined straight path forward. It’s another training thing: in this case, what you see isn’t what you get, and when I come to spots like this I’ll need to stop and be sure of the situation.
And when looking down at night, things just disappear. Last night I used my iPad to light the way to bed after turning the lights off. When I reached the bed I set the iPad on it while I took my clothes off, but then couldn’t find it again. It had disappeared completely, and I had to relocate it by scanning my hand across the bed. So that will be an adjustment.
And finally, there’s an issue with depth perception at close distances. For example, when I extend my finger to touch a key on the iPad, I’ll at times find my finger hasn’t actually reached the pad or has touched the adjacent key to the one I was targeting. That’s why we’re seeing so many Rucsons: the R is just to the left of the T.
That’s about it for vision issues though, which really isn’t bad at all. Also though, I think there are behavior or even personality changes going on which I attribute to the strong dosages of prednisone I’m on. Prednisone has many side effects and seems to affect everyone differently. I thought at first I was lucky and had none at all, but I now believe I was wrong. I’m much more easily distracted now and go off on mental tangents than I used to be, and when I come back I’m much less prone to regain my former train of thought. I seem to be operating on a stack that’s maybe only one deep, and I’ll have a hard time finding my way back to that one if I get drawn away from it. This really is a little disconcerting, and leads to such good story days as our trip to the bike store. I suspect we’ll still have good story days more often than the past, and we’ll really have to be careful with situations such as preparing to board trains. This is one I’m hoping will improve once my prednisone dose gets backed off, but we’ll see.
In other news
The streetcar
We have never hopped on Tucson’s streetcar before this winter. It’s similar to Portland’s system but smaller in scale with only a single line that runs from about two miles east of downtown on one end to a stop on the opposite side of the Santa Cruz on the other. I’ve been on it a half dozen times now though, and am greatly impressed at what a great resource it is if you’re trying to get around the center. If you include starting from spots within a few blocks of the nearest stop, it creates a wide band of coverage that lets you be in the heart of downtown in under fifteen minutes.
For one thing, it’s free. No fares, no need to carry a card and find the kiosk, you just wait for it to arrive and hop on. For another, it runs frequently during the core hours of the day, with service every fifteen minutes. It’s just luck whether you arrive just as it’s arriving or just left, but in my experience wait times averaged five minutes or less. And once you’re on, it’s fast.
I wish we’d discovered this long ago. We’d have taken the streetcar in rather than the car and scrambled to find parking.
The Ray-Bans
I mentioned that I picked up a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses when I walked to the optometrist to try to get a quick replacement for my lost glasses. Before buying them though, and actually before reading up on them while writing this post, I knew nothing about them and why they were developed. They were developed by Bausch and Loeb, a pair of German immigrants, who started the company in New York back in 1853. Before the company was sold in 2013 it was one of the longest continuously operating companies in the country.
Ray-bans were introduced into their product line in 1936, back in the early days of commercial flight, to protect pilots from the vision problem of staring into an intense blue sky all day. Or in other words, they were developed for someone like myself who’s been finding it nearly impossible to walk south on a bright sunny day. I honestly think that I’d have found it nearly impossible to get around in Tucson during this spell of one clear blue sky after another.
They not only cut the glare, they cut it intensely - enough so that my right eye has for the most part stopped hallucinating and casting off mirages and imaginary light. And they offer physical protection with their sturdy frames and impact resistant lenses- just what the doctor ordered.
The ribcage
The ribs are going to be fine. The first night was difficult, the pain bad enough that I quit getting down on the floor because it was too painful to lift myself up off the ground again and I couldn’t sleep on my right side. It’s gotten steadily better each day since then though and really doesn’t bother me much anymore. So clearly not broken.
Surprisingly though, this injury isn’t the one most visible. we were startled the next morning when Rachael saw that I had a large purple bruise lower down on the left about two or three inches wide, so I must have hit the handlebar there also somehow. Colorful, but painless.
Today's ride: 43 miles (69 km)
Total: 78 miles (126 km)
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