82 Days and Counting...

I know, I know...the frequency of my blog posting has decreased.  I was once a prolific writer, but now it seems as though I have slowed down.  To be honest with you, it is painful to write.  Yep...the elbow.  This thing hurts!  

I am amazed at just how bad something that I once thought of as a 'whiner's injury', could be so bad!  Maybe its the fact that I now am 47-years old (today) and my old age has caused me to become one of those 'whiners'...no way...this is real!  This condition affects the most mundane, simple tasks of daily life that we all take for granted...like typing, or shaking someone's hand, even brushing your teeth.  It sucks, to put it bluntly!

Oh my aching back, I mean elbow...both really

I visited my friendly orthopedic surgeon recently, to speak with him about some alternative treatment options.  The result...either stop training, or suck it up until after the race.  That's pretty much how it went down.  So what can I do?  I certainly wont elect to stop training...not when the race that I have been training for, and spent a great deal of time and money preparing for, is just around the corner.  So yes, I will continue to suck it up, but unfortunately the frequency of my blogging will surely continue to decline.

To make matters worse...I followed up on my bike today with Ellsworth Handcrafted bikes, and was told (yet again) that the frames are still enroute from their Rare Earth Carbon manufacturing plant in China...blah, blah, blah.  I was told that they are currently on a ship, headed for the United States, and that once they arrived, they would have to go through customs...blah, blah, blah.  This is the exact story I got the last time I called, and the same story I blogged about in Day 115...A Close Call.  If you remember, at that time, they told me it should be about three weeks.  I figured, since three weeks was fast approaching, I would call and see where we stood.

 So now we have come full circle...back to where my story started...at the point where I was being told, again, that my bike is "on the water".  That means that it still has not arrived at the Ellsworth plant.  This could mean that it is actually still on the slow boat from China, or that someone was trying to ship some illegal Chinese products in the crates of bike frames, and the whole shipment got caught up in customs.  Who knows.  Who knows if what they are telling me is the truth or not?  Certainly not me. I guess I just have to continue to be patient.

I think I see my bike on there!