Got those Adventures in Dentistry, Jaw-Molly, Kickin' the Hydrocodone Blues - Part 1

Nothing like eating a dainty treat at a public event - in this case a tiny little biscuit muffaletta at the public input event for Better Block - and having a molar crown break off in my mouth.

As I stood there, having just expelled the crown - lightly crusted with biscuit, ham, and olive salad - into my hand, staring at it as my tongue began to explore the shard that remained while trying to maintain the conversation I was having at the exactly moment . . . well . . . shit . . . here we go again . . ..

Yes, that's the remnant of my bottom left molar

Clearly, I had an Adventure in Dentistry ahead of me. Nothing new, as all that other stuff in the x-ray tells better than I could. Still, despite all the time I've been in a dentist's chair over the past nearly six decades, it isn't something I get all happy about. More like resigned to the necessariness and, more importantly, expense of it.

Nothing for it but to go have it looked at. <sigh>

Fortunately, there was an opening at my dentist's office the following morning at a time that wouldn't require a lot of shift shifting (we have assigned desk shifts at the Library and it can be difficult to get others to take a shift at the last moment). So, on my bike and off to the dentist down one of the more unpleasant streets in town - Highland Road.

After an only moderately threatening ride I arrive in time to see the good dentist. The tech created the x-ray image above and when the doc came in he immediately said, "Huh . . . that's bad." 

Great.

How bad?

The obvious part - what was left of the tooth had to be extracted. No hope of just pasting the crown in my pocket back onto the stump. That would be too easy, too straightforward. 

So now what? Extract it and do what? 

Two choices - removable bridge thing or implant. The bridge would be shorter lived than the implant but cost less. Then again, it would need to be replaced at least once (assuming I don't die sooner than later) and that would incur more expense. 

The implant would cost more but be more permanent (same caveat as above, that is, only as permanent as I am).  Knowing my predilection for letting things slide I thought it best to go with the implant. That meant getting a CAT scan of my jaw right then, no big given that they have a head scan device in the hallway . . . convenient!

Before getting my head irradiated the doc was good enough to smooth off the jaggedness that was aggravating the hell out of my tongue. A little while later I had a good scan, an appointment for the following week, and a fist full of prescriptions. Yee-haw.

The next Wednesday I spent 2.5 hours, more or less, in a dentist chair having the broken molar extracted, the bone excavated, a molly implanted, the gaps filled with a mix of sterilized, granulated cadaver bone and platelet rich growth hormone spun out of the blood drawn from my arm. Here's what that looks like when all is said and done.

Hello, Molly!

Now, in a week I'm to see the doc again to make sure the gum, sutures, and everything are doing well then, assuming no problems, a four month wait for Phase 2 - removing the protective cap, screwing in the post, creating a temporary crown, and taking a mold for the real crown. 

Yeah . . . I know what you mean . . .

In our next thrill packed episode (yawn) - me and hydrocodone become friends then have a falling out . . . cue "Me and Mrs. Jones" . . .

Sunny day, lazy day - Part the 3rd (at long last)

The short version of this is . . . I didn't do laundry. There . . . I said it.

What I did do was go for another ride the next day. Turns out it was another beautiful, cool day with light breezes, partly cloudy skies, and . . . well . . . isn't that enough?


View Larger Map

I headed to Farr Park, about 5 miles downriver from me, partly in hope of seeing if the bald eagle's nest remained occupied. I'd heard about it and had gotten a fair idea of where it could be seen in the batture from the levee. I didn't want to bother the nest but I enjoy birds and seeing bald eagles is a good thing.

As I headed out I had to make the usual choices for route. The levee was my immediate goal so there weren't too many choices - basically, over to Spanish Town Road / 3rd Street / Lafayette / River Road or 6th Street / North Boulevard / River Road - for the first choice. I don't much care for the 6th / North option so STR it was.

The next choice - how to access the Levee? There's only one "authorized" access point to the levee path in downtown and it sure wasn't designed by someone who rode a bicycle. To get to the access you have to get to South Boulevard via St Phillip, a sometimes trafficky street that feeds a major southbound thoroughfare out of downtown. South Boulevard isn't that bad in itself.

The other option is a dicey bit of River Road that runs between the casino parking garages and the casino hotel. The surface is pretty beat up, there's usually motor traffic going in and out of the garages and the parking lot, and the street runs parallel to and on the same grade as the railroad tracks that feed and empty the refinery complex just north of downtown. Not pretty. At the end of that stretch is a stop sign that requires a 90 degree turn onto South then a short sprint to the access point.

From under the Bridge it looks like this.

One of the Casino parking garages in the distance.

Welcome to the Levee Path

That access is in a curve where River Road becomes South Boulevard under the Mississippi River Bridge / I-10. You have to cross a band of gravel kicked to the side of the curve by the motor traffic then push up a short steep section while dodging bollards and warning signs. That's followed by a brief flat then another incline. There's a smaller intersecting path that allows access for the golf carts hauling gamblers, too lazy or too infirm to walk, from the parking lot to the casino. More often than not the golf carts have to really gun it to make the incline with their load of obese hopefuls and we're often in conflict.

Coming down there is even more fun as the relatively steep decline requires dodging the same bollards and signage keeping motor vehicles (mostly) off the levee while braking to avoid the gravel and being shot straight out into traffic passing in the curve. It can be fun to attempt an exit there at speed but "fun" is interpreted differently by different people. Most would say is was anything BUT fun.

Me? I prefer the unauthorized access via the "Labyrinth" between the LASM and the USS Kidd.

Granted, it's not really a labyrinth but a handicap access ramp that cuts back and forth from the railroad tracks running between the street and the levee to the top of the levee. Built back in the 1980s (maybe?) it probably doesn't meet the current ADA guidelines for slope but, hey, it works on a bicycle and I've never seen anyone in a wheelchair on that facility.  In fact, the labyrinth is mostly, from the smell of it, a urinal for the homeless and the drunk.

At last . . . on the levee and heading downriver. The first thing I noticed was the river was up. Not flood stage up but way higher than it had been. The USS Kidd had been sitting there by the batture with air under her keel for months and now, somewhat suddenly, she was riding high in the Big Muddy. Hard to miss, that.

As I headed past the casino (no golf carts this time) and under the bridge I noticed the barge traffic, lots of barge traffic. The River had been so low that the Corps had imposed restrictions on barge loads. With such low water the barges wouldn't haul as much weight meaning more frequent and lighter trips meaning higher costs. A lot of traffic just stopped while waiting for the water to come up; now that the water was up so was the traffic. The diesels in the push boats and pull boats and auxiliary boats were chugging and spewing away in the river and along the banks of the river.

Amphibians in a piquant diesel sauce

I stopped at one point where the high water had flooded the batture a little. The relatively warm weather and the high water had gotten the amphibians all excited and they were chirping and croaking and buzzing back and forth loudly enough to overcome the sound of the boats. I love the sound of those places on the batture when froggie goes a'courting. While far from a herpetologist (though I did dabble in it back in junior high school) I am convinced there are different populations of amphibians in various sections of the batture when flooded based on the sonic differences alone. If anyone reading this (assuming . . . ) knows for sure, I'd love to hear about it.

 At this point, turning to get back to riding I noticed how beautiful the light was. It had taken me quite a while to leave home and my late start put me by the frogs with an hour or so of light left in the day. There's something about the quality of light just then combined with the high thin, though broken, clouds that gives everything a slightly metallic blue-gray edge backed by an increasingly yellow-orange quality. As time passed the twilight gathering behind me added that great slow fade to blue-black . . . but that's getting ahead of things.

Not too much further along three white pelicans came in low over the levee behind my right shoulder. They were skirting the tops of trees in the batture at the edge of the River headed across to the south and west. Odd yet oddly majestic in appearance these big migratory birds are another seasonal favorite of mine. I love it when they arrive in December or January and miss them when they leave.

A little while later I made it to Farr Park and a bit beyond to the eagle nest. I was in luck as there was one adult bird there, back lit by the setting sun, perched on a branch high above the ground near the nest. Because of the light I couldn't tell if it was the male or the female. Luckily, a young couple was there and they let me borrow their binoculars for a minute or two of enhanced peeping-tomery. With the enhanced sight I could distinguish the eagle was male. People can be so nice!

It was really beginning to get on to sunset, the sun was more red than yellow, the twilight in the east more pronounced, so I headed back upriver. On the way, as I neared the LSU campus, I noticed once again what I had taken for a parasail earlier but it was too far up and away for me to be sure what it was. Now, as the sky darkened and the thing leaded for landing I could see that it was an ultralight craft of some ilk, kind of a glider with a push motor behind the pilot. What I had taken for clever handling in, around, and through thermals at the end of the day was really motor-driven pilotcraft. Slightly disappointed to know there was a motor involved. I watch the flier approach the ground but didn't watch him land.

The transition from day to night as it passes through twilight is one of my favorite things to experience. The light changes so much, the sounds change, temperatures, everything slowly shifts from one form to another.

I could see the edge of night come across the sky as the sun fell below the rim of the earth. The first planets and stars appeared, cars on River Road now featured two bright spots, and the new lights in the upper tiers of Tiger Stadium began to cycle through their purple and gold routines. Lights lining the Mississippi River Bridge came on and the Capitol, lit up from above and below, guided me home.

We interrupt this program . . .

I know . . . you're waiting breathlessly for me to finish what has become the saga of my doing laundry but I have to interrupt that story line for a moment . . .

. . . BREAKING NEWS . . .

I often, but not always, use a particular "cut through" on my commute to and from work. It all depends, as you might well imagine, on which of my routes I use. Nonetheless, this particular little back door treat allows me, and everyone who knows about it, to avoid two heavily trafficked streets near the LSU Campus. It also allows riders to enjoy a more or less serene view of one of the little lakes near campus and, a particular pleasure of mine this time of year, to enjoy the scent of the Banana Shrub (Michelia figo) in bloom at the intersection of May / July Streets and the cut through. Pure olfactory delight, I'm telling you.

Unfortunately, the cut through, though named on maps, is in fact a private street. Yes, you read that correctly - a private street.

Granted, part of it runs behind and through a series of apartment / condo developments and serves as their means of gaining access to the public roads at each end. And, granted, those are private properties. Given Louisiana land laws, the owners can do whatever they damn well please and do it they are.

It seems the owners of the large apartment / condo complex has succeeded in buying the two smaller adjoining apartment / condo complexes and wants to make all of them part of one big "gated community." For years the largest complex has had fencing and gates but the gates were either left open or were broken and left open by all the in-out traffic generated by the largely university-aged residents. In effect, the fencing and gates were a cosmetic touch, not a functioning defense against the outside world and we could use the connection to avoid often heavy traffic on State Street and Dalrymple.

No more . . . or not for much longer. I've been noticing the appearance, slow and gradual, of fence and gate posts, over the last couple of months, at the lake side of the compound. At the same time I've noticed fencing being dismantled on the State Street entrance side. I finally noticed the disappearance of the statue of the (unknown to me) LSU football coach that guarded the entrance. Now there is merely an empty concrete plinth in the middle of the street.

This morning I had to dodge around a parked pickup truck and a back-hoe at the lake side of things. The back-hoe was surprisingly delicate as it removed the turf to the side of the road exposing the soil beneath. Seems the owners of the private road are considerate of their driving compatriots and are constructing a turn-around for all those drivers who will soon find themselves unexpectedly facing a gated road. I imagine they may also find themselves facing some equally surprised bicyclists.

Now . . .  who will weep for us as we find ourselves on two-wheels mixing it up with the four-wheeled impatient children in much-too-large vehicles texting their way to the bar? Hum? Who is going to wonder why, all of a sudden, there are all these bicyclists on State Street and Dalrymple?

<sigh>

. . . We now return to our regularly scheduled program already underway . . .

Sunny day, lazy day - Part the Second

It's WAY too warm for this time of year. I mean, the days have been so very beautiful lately with highs in the upper-60s or low-70s, mostly sunny skies, relatively low humidity, and light breezes but, let's face it, it's FEBRUARY! If it's this warm this early what's it going to be like in July?

I suppose it can't really get all that much worse in July and August. Hot and humid is hot and humid, period. It's just the thought of adding another month or two to the length of summer that gets to me.

Still, once I got to the levee and turned downriver I couldn't help but sigh with pleasure at the sunny, cool yet warm vista before me. There was little traffic on River Road to my left, I suspect due to the parade. The river on my right had very clearly come up but wasn't too high. If there was a breeze it seemed to be at my back and all was well.

Having mulled over a couple of different possible routes, each depending on where I wanted to stop or what I wanted to see, and my time constraint to get back before the streets were closed again for the night parade I headed to LSU / Highland Coffee / The Bicycle Shop. It's The Bicycle Shop that changed my plans.

I should know better than to go to the Shop when I don't have to be anywhere in particular. I did want to borrow a full-sized Allen wrench to swap out my regular bottle cages for the Kleen Kanteen-specific bottle cages but that shouldn't have taken long. As it turns out I finished swapping them out easily but then asked about a new steel frame touring bike Specialized is making. Two hours later I headed out.

Much later than anticipated and very close to being parade-blocked, I headed home but chose a route that would take me past the home of a couple of friends. If they were home I thought I'd stop for a few minutes to say hello then head to the house. If not, no big, I'd just head home.

As I rode past their house I saw them in the kitchen window waving. Seems they WERE home. My u-turn almost turned into a crash because of all the gravel in the road but I kept it together, finished the turn, and rode up their kitchen path to the door. Before long I'd agreed to stay for dinner (oh-so-delicious pot roast) and a couple of beers. No need to worry about the parade now!

By the time I left there was nothing going on downtown. The parade was over and the streets were uncannily clean. I hardly saw any beads along the route and that's noteworthy this time of year.

It was too late to do much of anything, much less laundry, so I just chilled and eventually headed to bed. There's always tomorrow, right?

Sunny day, lazy day - Part the First

I've picked up a new . . . um . . . obligation? duty? responsibility? . . . on Monday evenings this Spring Semester. I'll spare you the details (though I may attempt to describe this thing in a later posting), so let me just say I volunteered to be the embedded librarian in an undergraduate architecture class.

This embeddedness is part of a pilot program that is intended to provide an improved undergraduate learning experience that is, in turn, part of a larger desire to somehow take standardized-test-taking-rote-learning-drool-zombies and turn them into "critical thinkers." Uh-huh.

Foolish me, I actually believe there is hope in this approach. I realize that's a big change, like, oh say, turning a Bible thumping, talking-snake-believing, Young Earth upholding fanatic into a Scientific Materialist but, oddly enough, even that kind of transition takes place on occasion. As the old saw goes, "If only ONE student makes the transition I will have succeeded." Of course, we know that even one in one hundred is asking a great deal but Hope lives with Belief and so on I go.

The fact that I like to learn new things and have an abiding interest in architecture helps.

So . . . with the class Monday evening, the screening of "Bicycle Dreams" Tuesday evening, a Bicycle Friendly Business visit Wednesday evening, two meetings on Thursday evening, and other like things eating my time, my laundry didn't get done for the past couple of weeks and I REALLY needed to do it.

Three loads take about three hours plus a little to wash and dry, assuming no other tenant is using the one washer and one drier in the complex . . .okay, so, the time won't vary depending on how many people in the complex want to do or, more accurately, NEED to do laundry at any given time. That only affects my ability to actually get access to the machines and DO my laundry.

I just couldn't bring myself to do the laundry Saturday. It was too nice a day and I really needed to slack off a little as well as needing to do laundry. The weather and sun won and I went for a ride after a leisurely morning at the Farmer's Market.

To leave the house I had to find a way around the street closures for the afternoon Mardi Gras parade. I just didn't want to head an extra mile east just to turn around and head back west so I could ride the levee to Farr Park. Instead, I opted for skirting the eastern edge of the route looking for opportunity.

The western edge of the route was River Road. That part of the route was closed tight given that the parade starts downriver on River Road then heads upriver to the Capitol. I didn't want to risk riding head first into the parade. Better to get ahead of it and then behind it, right?

Most intersections were either blocked entirely or had two or three motorcycle cops idling to one side. And then there was the barricade busting to get into the route and the parking lot trap at the Federal Building. I did get through but there were cops everywhere along the route. The open levee was a welcome sight.

End Part One of Sunny day, lazy day

No cars, no bikes

Sitting in a local Baton Rouge coffee house this evening enjoying a rambling post-meeting meeting chat (yes, there was a meeting following a meeting this afternoon / evening) my conversation partner said, "I was in New Orleans on my usual Saturday 50-mile ride with a friend . . . " when I interrupted.

"Man, the streets in New Orleans are pure crap! Except the ones that have been resurfaced recently."

"Yeah," says my friend, "New Orleans lucked out with Katrina."

Huh? Lucked out?? That's not the way I usually think of it. But then, I imagine you, diligent reader, don't think of it that way either so I need not go on.

Except for the conversation, which did continue . . .

"I mean," says he, "all that Submerged Roads money following the storm. They have bike lanes on St Charles . . . "

"What?!? St. Charles? They MUST have repaved St Charles!"

"Yeah, part of it so far but the rest of it is going to be paved . . . and St Claude and even Decatur . . ."

"You mean," says I, befuddled, "a REAL bike lane and not the fake one they put down for the protest?"

"Yes, a REAL bike lane. The city came back and put one in after the protest."

"Well, I'll be damned . . . "

And so it went for a bit. I drifted off into a memory of being in New Orleans a year or so ago when I had to ride from the Bywater to Felicity and Annunciation (a few blocks river-side of Magazine) to meet a friend then book it on down to a park on Carrollton at South Claiborne for the Bike Easy 2nd Line Ride.

The streets in the Bywater were comparatively smooth by New Orleans standards and exhibited a characteristic exaggerated humped aspect to help shed water into the gutters with their 2 to 3 inch drop off from the asphalt onto brick or cobblestone. Narrow but straight, they were easy to ride with clear sight-lines and interesting streetscapes to hold my attention between intersections.

The intersections required all my attention as the buildings were constructed out to the edge of the property line  leaving only the sidewalk between the building and the street. This makes for completely fucked up sightlines for drivers on the intersecting streets with their stop signs. Almost every car comes hurtling out of the side streets about half a car length before stopping (mostly) as the driver checks the cross street for traffic. A bicycle can alter course VERY quickly with what seems a small twitch of the handlebars, especially when motivated by drivers' potentially homicidal behavior.

Crossing into the Quarter heading upriver meant the streets were (mostly) smoother and (mostly) empty given the hour and the day. It really is pleasant riding through the Quarter (relatively) early in the day before the city starts moving in its hangover wrapped shuffle.

The CBD is not bad either but things decay pretty quickly, quite literally, on the other side of the Expressway / Crescent City Connection.

The street I was riding on as I neared Felicity was a torn up, patched up, pot holed piece of shit (so typical of New Orleans streets) that beat me up pretty badly. I turned off it onto another street to take me down a few blocks to a parallel - and hopefully much smoother - street but, to my horror, the street I turned onto was no smoother and its cross streets had their original cobblestone paving exposed. A nice touch for tourism, no doubt, but no delight on a bicycle.

Shaken AND stirred, I gathered up my friend and we headed up the newly resurfaced Magazine Street toward Audubon Park and Carrollton. What a delight! Light traffic, new street surface, pretty weather . . . very nice . . . until the new pavement ended and we were back on the ruinous surface of the old street.

I managed to tune back in to the conversation at this point, picked up the thread of the conversation and said, "It mystifies me why a city like New Orleans, with the crappiest of streets and so much motor traffic, can have so many bicyclists while Baton Rouge, with relatively good streets, has so few."

Add to that the curiously post-Apocalyptic quality of Baton Rouge; post-Apocalyptic in the sense that the streets are curiously empty yet the buildings are intact, the lawns trimmed, the lights on. On a couple of occasions lately, while riding around Baton Rouge with out of state or foreign guests, I got this question, "Where are the cars? You couldn't ride in <their home city> without having to deal with traffic."

Strange indeed.

Stranger still is the view held by natives of the Red Stick that "you can't ride a bicycle IN Baton Rouge!" This is such a strongly held belief that an earlier version of the Adventure Cycling Association map with the spur from the Southern Tier into Baton Rouge used to have a text description saying something like, "The 24-mile spur into Baton Rouge takes riders to the airport in north Baton Rouge. Local bicyclists say you can't ride into downtown but you can rent a car at the airport and drive to New Orleans. [emphasis mine]"

Really? You can't ride into town? But it's okay to dump strangers on bicycles at the airport? Nice, especially since many of the riders coming into town are headed to New Orleans . . . on BICYCLES.  Great way to make sure they not only never come back to Baton Rouge but that they only stop long enough to get a candy bar, a Gatorade, and advice on the quickest way out of town, which is no mean feat from the airport.

So how is it that a place that has really bad infrastructure and lots of motor traffic can have a strong bicycle culture while a place with relatively good infrastructure and almost no motor traffic (IF you know where you're going) can have almost NO bicycle culture?

A Sermon from the Church of Two Wheels

Dear Friends,

And I do mean Dear Friends. Before we turn to today's lesson let us first turn to each other and express our love for each other regardless of the number of wheels we may roll upon. One, two, three, four, or more, we are all roadway users in the eyes of the Great Law Maker in the Sky. Wave with ALL fingers extended. Smile with your eyes. Embrace with true meaning.

Thank you, Friends.

Today's lesson comes from the Book of Intersections, Chapter One - Right of Way and the Righteous.

For it is written, "He who passes through an intersection without turning to the left or turning to the right but who passes forward unerringly shall be Righteous and be found pleasing in the eyes of the Great Law Maker in the Sky. For the one who passes forward unerringly shall be given the Right of Way and shall take it and be glad in it.

"And he who does NOT pass through an intersection moving forward unerringly but who wishes to turn across the path of the Righteous Forward Moving One shall wait patiently, making the Sign of Turning Thusly for all to see and to approve and to find Righteous. And in doing so He Who Turns Across the Path of the Forward Moving One will be seen as Righteous as well and will be found pleasing in the eyes of the Great Law Maker in the Sky.

"But Woe be unto the one who says unto himself, 'I will be nice unto my fellow roadway user and I shall let him pass across my path even though I have the Righteous Right of Way and I will wave broadly behind my shield and trust that he may see my gestures and trust in my goodness and know that I am not simply sitting in place playing with my telephone and not paying attention and he will know that I am Righteous and would never suddenly run forward to crush him under my many wheels.

"For the Great Law Maker in the Sky knoweth that crossing paths are fraught with danger and did Lay Down the Law for the good of all and many that they not be crushed nor broken nor left bloody. For it is Good that All Roadway Users know whereof they travel and when and how and not be subject to the many and sundry whims of chance and foolishness."

Can I get an AMEN Brothers and Sisters?

Thank you, Beloved! That was a mighty AMEN and pleasing to all.

It saddens me to tell you that even I, even this day, even now on the way to this glorious meeting of Roadway Users did find myself standing at an intersection in the dark, cold, and wet of this night signalling my left turn across the intersection. The light turned green and the driver across the way, headed toward me, sat still as a stone when the light turned green. There were no turn signals flashing; I could not see any gestures urging me to cross his path.

As I stood there continuing to signal my turn with more traffic building up behind me I thought, "My but it's cold (37 degrees) and, while it's not raining at the moment, it is very damp indeed."

Sad to say, Brothers and Sisters, I began to lose my composure and did start to bellow at my Fellow Roadway User to MOVE IT YOU HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY. Truth be told, Friends, I may have used the word "dickhead" or the like toward the end and if you may have been the one who believed they were doing me a favor, I beg your pardon, for I should not have called you "dickhead" or "douche bag" or "fucking idiot" or whatever it may have been I bellowed just before you finally moved across the intersection clearing the way for the rest of us to safely and sanely continue on our way.


Remember, Brothers and Sisters, the ways of the Great Law Maker in the Sky are NOT mysterious but rather are rational and sane and are borne on a desire to see us make our way safely in the world without mishap. Trust the Great Law Maker in the Sky and you will come to know the Clear Way Home.