I’ve watched most of Iohan’s 40 videos. He was inspirational. I always liked his soft voice, and his cheery disposition when faced with technical problems, or bears, or extreme weather, or any other obstacle. Iohan suffered from sleep apnea. His body kept on waking him up in the night because he couldn’t breathe. Sleep deprivation robbed him of his mental health.
The takeaway lesson for me is to manage my sleep better. For too many years I did stupid things like pulling an all-nighters for work. Your body requires its circadian rhythms. So I guess it’s important to take my melatonin drugs on time every night. Perhaps I need to think about getting to bed at a sensible hour every night?
When I do go bikepacking I will need to stick to the discipline of only riding during the daytime, and stopping to camp before dark.
In 1980, when I turned 28 years of age, we purchased our first bikes. Since then, cycling has been a constant passion in our family’s lives. It has taken me to many places in this world, leading to many adventures, and developing many friends. Together with my dearly missed father-in-law, Herman, and my wonderful wife, Rita, we’ve encouraged most of our extended family and lots of friends to share in cycling pursuits, particularly cycle touring.
As a consequence, my wonderful son, Steven, shared many of these good times, developed outstanding mountain biking skills, and in turn, during my senior years, took over the leadership role.
Steven at Mount Stromlo, Canberra
Nowadays, Steven takes me to various mountain bike parks where I try my best to keep up with him. Steven is very patient with me. He waits for me when I’m lagging behind, or he comes back to find me if I’ve taken a tumble. Steven has rescued me a few times after serious crashes, called an ambulance for me, or accompanied me to the hospital.
Son looks after Dad, in the Pilliga near Coonabarrabran
When I turned 60, back in 2012, I rewarded myself with a lovely custom-built road bike. That was the year I retired after discovering I had early-stage prostate cancer. During that final year of my working life, I constantly felt puzzled by my lower levels of energy and shortened spans of concentration. I felt stressed and embarrassed by my waning productivity, without being able to put a finger on what exactly was going on. So immediately after the cancer was diagnosed I quit work to concentrate on getting better. Once an operation to remove the cancer was over, the shiny new road bike became an important tool in my physical and mental recovery.
In 2013-through-2015 my wife, Rita, embarked on her own adventure with a lovely fulfilling job at the Research Park at the Univerisity of Illinois. Together we lived in Champaign, Illinois. We took our bikes and enjoyed many wonderful cycling adventures in the prairies. During those years I found a part-time job at the local Champaign Cycles store and made new friends. I worked as a bicycle mechanic putting together the bikes that arrived partially dismantled in cardboard cartons prior to going into sales inventory. Our job was to ensure that the bikes were put together so that they would be safe to ride. Making certain to torque all the bolts properly, put grease on the proper places, adjust gears so they would change smoothly, true the wheels, adjust brakes so they worked properly so that every component worked as it should. Each year there was a crescendo in bike sales. As new students arrived to begin university they needed bikes to transport them around the campus. We had to work fast to build enough bikes to meet the demand. I learned new skills and made new friends.
With friends Mary Anne and Lisa in the cornfields near Champaign
Later, when I turned 65 in 2017, Steven was having to wait for me to catch up more often. Age was catching up, as I was finding myself getting over-heated and out-of-breath on climbs. That year I rewarded myself with an e-MTN bike.
My 2017 Specialized S-Works Turbo Levo 6 Fattie e-Bike
The electric power-assisted mountain bike was one of the best investments I have ever made. It enabled me to get to the top of hard climbs like the top of Mount Stromlo here in Canberra without as many stops to catch my breath and without using up all my energy. My e-bike enabled me to descend the downhill trails more safely, with fewer falls because I was less exhausted and able to think more clearly. I found myself riding further and more often and my mountain biking skills improved markedly. Giving both Steven and me lots of pleasure.
Steve with me after we rode across the face of Mt Wellington, Hobart
Journals, photos, mapping stuff from my Garmin and Strava, philosophical ramblings, and good experiences. From Bruce as he undertakes off-road, gravel-road, fire-trail journeys and camps out in Australia’s wilderness. Escaping from city life, mental health struggles, and Covid-19 stress.
It was a hard decision to sell my Road Bike
After a devastating fall, permanently damaging my left shoulder it was time to sell my road bike. Time to admit I couldn’t balance on those skinny tyres anymore, and time to accept that I wouldn’t be safe trying to reach the drop-style handlebars. Yes, I’ve experienced many many hard falls over a lifetime of riding, both on my road bike and my mountain bike. Is it because I take more risks than others? Or maybe I have a poor ability to maintain balance and recover once something starts to go wrong? I certainly do have more falls than any of my family or peer group. I’m famous for it.
Up to now I usually sustain bruises or scrape off some skin. About two years ago one of my mountain-bike crashes on the Western Wedgetail trail on Mount Stromlo resulted in me needing face surgery and tungsten straps inserted to support my eye socket. That was pretty scary for my wife, Rita, and our family. But I was soon back on the horse.
This time seemed fairly innocuous. The valve stem on the front tyre was gummed up with a little Stan’s No Tubes fluid that had gone gummy. I should have been more diligent about maintaining it. So the front tyre suddenly deflated going into a corner. It was just two streets away from home at the beginning of a training ride. The front-wheel washed out in the turn and I was suddenly on the deck, sliding on the course-gravelled bitumen. Bang! My shoulder bashed into the curb and it was dislocated.
Six hours of waiting in Calvary Hospital’s emergency rooms for a resuscitation room to be free, where the young doctor could use anaesthetic to knock meet out was an awful ordeal. Copious amounts of morphine and fentanyl every 45 minutes seemed to do nothing to ease the pain. Then once they were able to knock me out, it only took a few minutes to manipulate the shoulder joint back from being in front of my chest to its normal position. When I woke up, a mere 15 minutes after I was finally admitted to the resuscitation room, all the pain had miraculously gone away. Yeah, but I was so wired from the painkillers that I remained on full-on hyper-alert for the next 36 hours.
Since that day, 05 January 2021, I really haven’t had any shoulder pain. However, even after months of diligent physiotherapy, my range of movement failed to recover. Eventually, I went for an MRI and a visit to a specialist orthopaedic surgeon. She pronounced my shoulder to be inoperable. Two tendons were ruptured, snapped completely away from the bone and retracted. Given my age, nearly 70, and the several months’ gap in time after incurring the injury, the tendons had atrophied away. Dr Gorbiev described the tendons as, “Like Wet Kleenex.” It meant that she would never be able to hook onto the tendons and stretch them back into place and reattach them to the bone, because they would just snap off again.
So, I sold the lovely custom-built road bike that I got for my 60th birthday….
