The last day of my first internship was on Friday.  It’s nice to be done and heading to a new setting, but also strange that I’m a third of the way through my internships.  It was a great experience and I’m really glad I got to go to Harborview.  I think after that I can probably handle any kind of inpatient rehab.  Harborview was recently rated the #2 rehab hospital in the country, second only to Craig Hospital down in (strangely enough) Craig, Colorado.  So I’m pretty certain I got about the best experience I could.

Today also marked my return to cycling.  I’ve got plenty of time on my hands over the next month, so I’m going to really dive back in after a few days of working into it.  I started on the trainer today just to be sure I was in a controlled environment and didn’t overdo it.  I have a tendency to do that.  I also need to grab my track bike back from Randy at some point.  Get that baby on the rollers and see what I can do for my spin.

Lastly, for anybody around Seattle, I’m free for the next month, excepting this Thursday until next Monday. Send me an email or give me a ring if you’re up for anything.

Edit:  Apparently I was misinformed as to the location of Craig Hospital.  Eastern’s list of internships listed it as being in Craig, but it’s actually in Englewood.  Once I looked at a map of Colorado, that actually made a lot more sense, given the size of Craig and its proximity to, well, nothing.  My apologies to Craig Hospital.

Let me preface this post with a little info about Medicare.  Medicare?  Turkey vultures?  Huh?  Bear with me.  For those of you unaware, Medicare is both an insurance carrier (they hate paying for things) and a government program (they also hate paying for things).  As such, Medicare finds doubly ways to not pay for things.  One creative way they do so deals with therapy students of all disciplines.  Physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech, you name it.  I, as a student, am allowed to treat patients as long as there is a physical therapist in the building I can run to for help.  That’s the law.  Medicare recognizes this and has no provision disallowing students from treating their patients.  However, they do have a major problem with paying for any such care.  That’s right, folks.  The government believes I am skilled enough to treat people, but not skilled enough for them to have to pay for said treatment.  Sweet.  That means that for any Medicare patient I provide care for, a licensed therapist has to sit there and watch me, not doing anything else, in order for my facility to get reimbursed.  This typically isn’t a problem since Harborview has plenty of non-Medicare patients I can see solo.

Uh-oh, hold the phone.  That all changed two days ago.  Harborview’s internal compliance office recently decided that, in an institutionally-sized case of CYA, we would adopt the strictest compliance laws (Medicare) for all patients.  I can no longer see a patient without my instructor staring at my every move.  There are two other students on the rehab unit as well.  That means when we’re all working with patients in the gym, there are three licensed therapists who could be spending their time doing actual therapy who, instead, have to sit perched on stools, staring off into the distance.  A la what?  That’s right, turkey vultures.

Speaking of vultures, I almost died today.  I was helping a patient walk when I was hit with a violent case of coughing.  Seeing as I couldn’t simply drop what I was doing and get a drink of water, I had to just bear it.  And since I couldn’t just cough all over my patient, I held it in as much as I could until my eyes started watering and I felt like vomiting.  It’s pretty much the visceral reaction I’d expect from snorting a line of gnu shit.  It was quite strange and less than pleasant.  Moral of the story?  Don’t hold in your coughs.  Unless you’re into snorting gnu shit and the consequences thereof.

So, um, that post that just went up was supposed to go up sometime last week.  For some reason it was saved as a draft but not published.  In any case, it all still applies.  And photos are still up.  Now it just looks like they were put up before I said I’d put them up soon.  Sweet.

I’ve had a couple comments reminding me that I haven’t updated in forever, so I figured I’d toss something up.  My season obviously came to a close a couple months ago and I’ve been keeping decently busy since then.  After I got home from Colorado, I went backpacking up in the North Cascades for five days with Kelsey.  I’ve got pictures from that trip that I’ve apparently neglected to put on Flickr.  I’ll get that done shortly as well.  After that trip, my first internship started at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.  It’s been an awesome experience so far and it’s weird to think that it’ll be done in just two weeks.

As for biking, I’ve been off the bike basically since track season ended.  I rode the cross bike a couple times, thinking I’d get some races in, but I realized two things: A) I suck at cross, and B) I just don’t care.  My desire to be on a bike is completely nonexistent at this point.  The biggest contributor to this is how exhausting my season was this summer.  Driving 600 miles every weekend to race for less than an hour total gets wearing after three months.  When the season ended, I totally slumped and stopped caring.  Then my internship kicked in and started dominating my life, so it’s been tough to try to kick-start my training.  I plan on jumping back in once I’m done at Harborview, which is still in plenty of time to get good off-season miles in.  Hell, my season doesn’t even start until May.

In an case, since I wanted pretty much nothing to do with cycling and this blag is bike-centered (look at the title, for god’s sake) I pretty much had to put it on hiatus.  Look for more regular updates in the near future, though, as I’m starting to feel an itch to ride.

They’re up.  Check Flickr.

I rode for about twenty minutes between rain delays. That is all.

Actual racing for me resumes tomorrow at 8:00

Don’t buy them. Ever. Even when they’re 99 cents a pound. You’ll regret it.

Ignore the senseless comment left on my previous post. Twitter is a wonderful tool that lets me give y’all a quick update when I don’t have the time or energy to write a full blog post. Now that I’m back at home base, I can give a full rundown.

I headed to the track at 7:30 with Tela this morning so she could do her pursuit and I could prep for mine. As I mentioned, I rolled a 3:52, which is only two seconds slower than what I was aiming for. I went out a little hot, but ended up holding a steady pace for the final 2 k. The competition stepped up a bit this year, as that was only good enough for 44th. Out of 70! Jesus that’s a lot of people. I have a feeling a lot of them are just strong roadies whose teams sent them to grab some medals, being as there are only about 40 signed up for the points race.

After our races, Tela and I lounged around, trying to get a nap in on the concrete ground. I gotta say, the grass at Marymoor is much nicer. Eventually the Boursaws showed up and the evening session of kilo and 500 meter TTs rolled around. Them the downpour started. After an hour they decided to postpone the session until tomorrow. That actually is better for me, since I now only have one race per day and don’t have to ride for the sake of moving my legs tomorrow since I’m racing.

On a side note, the air here is very dry. My throat was absolutely raw after that effort this morning. Just a heads up if you ever come down here.

My plane just touched down in Colorado Springs and I’m sitting outside the airport in gorgeous weather waiting for my ride. I’m down here for collegiate track nationals, which kick off tomorrow with the 3 k pursuit.

Tela and I took the 6:00 flight out of Seattle and we’re going to meet the Boursaws at the track this evening. They were nice enough to drive our bikes down for us.

The weather is supposed to be iffy but if it holds like this racing will be great.

Stay tuned for updates as the races get under way.

The past couple weeks have been filled with activity. In preparation for my first internship at Harborview, I’ve packed up all my stuff and moved over to Seattle. However, since I don’t have much space at all over here, 90% of my belongings are currently in storage in Yakima. Why Yakima? It’s cheaper than Seattle and more central to any place I’ll be living post-graduation than Spokane. To top it all off, this weekend is filled with weddings and wedding-related functions. So I’m currently sitting in line for a ferry to take me across to the peninsula. I’m bringing my bike, though, so I can at least get a ride in tomorrow.

Speaking of cycling, being a Cat 2 isn’t as crazy hard as I initially expected. Last week I did fine for myself, snatching up some points in the tempo. Jimmy would certainly be proud of my scratch performance: even though I ended up dropped when the pace got super hot, I did something. Namely a suicide bridge to a break that had a decent gap and some strong legs. True to form, though, they all immediately sat up when I joined them. Awesome.

The line is starting to move so I need to wrap this up