Fully Operational

Yesterday, with the help of a couple of good friends (Thanks Dan and Spencer!), I managed to get my last no-operational bike together. This is quite a big deal to me, since it was the bike that I had broken my (left) wrist on a year and a half ago.

Throughout my cycling life, I have managed to a few traumatic injuries, and each time, it seems like it is hard to get over them mentally. My first, getting T-boned by the largest SUV to exist at the time (Excursion), left me with a broken femur in possibly one of the worst/hardest spots to break. My mental recovery didn't take all that long at all. Once I figured out crutches, the 9 months I had to use them didn't seem like a big deal at all, neither did the extra 4 months after a follow-up surgery a year later.

This injury, however, was somewhat straightforward, and my recovery time was not really all that long. It did leave me afraid of bicycles for a while, but as soon as I was able, I started riding again.

[Edit - After posting this, I realized I put up the wrong X-ray. That's the other wrist]

What I didn't manage to do, was even look at the wreck of a bike that I was on at the time. I robbed a couple parts off it once to fix another bike, and I think I used the crumpled fork to shovel up a dead squirrel that was just outside my front door.

Reassembling this bike this bike into a much different and stronger machine has been somewhat symbolic of rebuilding myself into a different and stronger machine.

The bike, when finished, came with some interesting hacks and tweaks, but it just wouldn't be like me without them. Try to spot them all:

And now, to leave you with a motivational video for 2012.