DVT and My Afternoon Ride

Blogger and friend, Steve, was recently laid up in the hospital suffering from a pulmonary embolism likely caused by deep vein thrombosis (DVT), basically blood clots in the veins of your legs. This kind of thing is life threatening and usually affects people on long distance flights or similar situations when movement is limited. Remember when NBC report David Bloom died from DVT in 2003 during the invasion of Iraq. According to Steve, it's also quite common among cyclists. Steve commutes to work every day. I won't repeat everything Steve has to say, you should drop by his blog for info on how to lower your risk of DVT. It's hot out there, stay hydrated.

**********************************************************

I left work a couple of hours early yesterday and as usual rode off with no particular destination in mind:

When it's hot I'll usually carry two bottles although once the water in my bottles heats up I find it hard to drink. I made a conscious effort on my ride yesterday to drink more (yes, thanks to Steve). After a couple of hours of riding in high heat and humidity I returned home with one of my bottles 3/4 full. Maybe I'll re-attach my Wald basket and carry a Camelback in it. At least my water will stay cold and I'll be more inclined to drink.

Riding through Trinity Park.

I've never seen this train before. I wonder where it goes?

I'm going to start screen printing again, on a very small scale, so I decided to stop here and see what supplies they had available.

The usual Speedball stuff.

Since I was in the area.....

This is good stuff. Since I was a sweaty mess I figured I should grab a seat outside.

I saw this building on Foch Street. It was just your typical WWII style arched metal building that you've no doubt seen everywhere. The front and back walls have been removed and replaced with glass. A very modern looking addition can be seen on the right. Very interesting. I wonder what this place is going to be?

Broken Films Cross

Fellow BABBLE member Steve A (DFW Point-To-Point) had the crazy idea to compete in the Broken Films Cross cyclocross race. Since the race was being held in Fort Worth, and there was a good possibility that I could get a photo of Steve puking or worse, I decided to go. My little girl accompanied me and really enjoyed taking photos and video of the carnage occurring in what I'm calling the mud pit. Unfortunately there are no photos of Steve losing his lunch. Steve actually did a pretty darned good job.

Here's Steve hanging tough in the mud pit. There were lots of crashes here at the beginning of the 10:30 AM race. The ground seemed to firm up as the day continued resulting in fewer falls.

This is my daughter capturing the action on video.

The mud was worse than it looks in these photos.

I was really impressed with this guy, first of all because of his cool white beard, and second, because he was the only guy on an old lugged steel framed bike. He was pretty tough.

I think 1x9 is a great setup for this type of event.

Mad Duck Cyclery. These guys are always at the major cycling events.

Cyclocross wasn't the only thing happening at the park this morning.

Racers gathering for the start of the 11:30 AM race.

Me and my daughter took turns filming the race. We didn't bother moving out of the mud pit area since that was one of the more entertaining sections of the course. Unfortunately we didn't stay for the men's 1,2,3 race.