Cyclist Gary

   Well, this week has been quite the week. First off, last Monday one of my granddaughters went in for surgery on her leg.  She has a mild case of cerebral palsy and had limited use of her right leg.  The foot was totally extended so she would walk on her toes.  They did botox for a couple of years and it helped, but was beginning to be of limited help.  So they went in (at Primary Children's Hospital) and cut some nerves and the achilles tendon so that it would flex her foot enough so she can walk normally.  It is very early yet, but her flexion has already improved.  She is in a cast to hold her foot in place.  She is riding a trike and pushing herself in a wheelchair already.

    Next, my wife Sheila has been having problems the last month or so with being able to stay at work once she got there.  She kept getting light headed and winded.  Finally, this last week we went into the hospital for what we thought might be pneumonia.  X-rays, however, showed an abnormal amount of fluid in her lungs.  They immediately started her on oxygen and diuretics.  Further tests showed she had leakage from both her mitral and tricuspid valves.  They control the blood flow between the chambers of the heart.  Heart surgery was indicated,  but we thought it might be a week before anything was set up.  However, Dr Frischknecht really got the ball rolling and within a day she was transported from Mtn View Hospital in Payson to Timpanogas Hospital in Orem, with surgery scheduled for early the next morning.  Dr Sherlommer, on rotation from St Marks Hospital did the surgery.  Her right chamber was quite enlarged, with very heavy muscle build-up.  He said he had never seen a heart wall that was that big.  Also, he said she and no trouble at all coming off the heart-lung machine.  Very few people can do that.  Although she has been in quite a bit of pain, as you can well imagine, she has done very well post-op.  After the first 6 hours, and then every 2 hours during the night, they got her out of bed and standing up for a few minutes.  That helped ease the pain in her back, from lying flat all of the time.
    Just remember, anything we can do in our everyday lives to prevent these kinds of things (although sometimes it just happens) we can try to make ourselves stronger so that we can bounce back quicker.
    A big thank you to everyone who has prayed for us and offered their help.  We are most appreciative.

Well, a son, son in law and I took time to shake the dust off our bikes, after mostly just looking at them all winter. We have had just altogether too much snow this year.  Is that possible, to have too much snow?  Well, when you want to ride outside, it is too much.  Anyway, we started early this morning when it was still cool.  In fact, it rained most of the day on Friday and the roads were still wet this morning when we went to the starting place (Bloomington Park).  Blu and I started about 7:30am and Heath started about 8:00.  Blu and I were the first riders (of course) to the first two rest stops, but, as we stopped at the second stop, four riders went flying by.  We found out later that Heath was leading that group.  We kept going and I finally caught up with Blu at the Hurricane Park rest stop.
  At that point it started raining, and since I was somewhat tired, from very little practice all winter, I decided I was going to head back to the start. Blu decided to tuff it out and keep going.  To make a long story short, I ended up being the first 100 kilometer rider back and Heath ended up the first 100 mile rider back.  Blu finished after warming up.  I tried to get his rain jacket back to him, but it quit raining before I got there.
  Hopefully it will warm up soon so we can get out more.
   Gary

What a great day!!! Tiring although it was.  My youngest son Heath, a professional triathlete, began the Florida Ironman (at 5:50am MDT) and ended up in third place overall coming out of the water after the swim (2.4mi).   I was able to see him live on video streaming on the computer come out after the first lap and he did his signature 4-5 strokes of butterfly, so we knew it was him.  Right after that, I had to leave to go pick up Blu, as we were both participating in the T3 Telos Turkey Tri at the Orem Recreation center.  There, Blu ran an amazing 23 min 5K while I was disappointing  at 31 min.  He then rode a 29 min 10 miles on the bike while I went an OK 33 minutes.  I then beat him in the swim (350m) 8:54 to 9:05.  Wow, now that I see those times together, they are not that far apart.  Either he is getting much better, or I am declining in my dotterage. But at least I was first place in my age group. In the mean time, Heath continued grinding it out on the 112mi bike course.  He was in 133 place after the bike, then took off on the marathon run.  He made up alot of time, ending up in 43rd place out of the 70 pros, and 87th overall.
While Heath was still toiling on the bike and run, Blu and I attended the CSU @ BYU football game which took place under beautiful blue skies and 55 degree temperature.  Oh yeah, we won 35-16.