I went to both locations but was assigned to the one that, ultimately, they had to choose to shut down:

Justin had mentioned the location I did my post-op rehab after my ACL reconstruction in 2005 was shuttered when he last visited the S.A. International Airport (it was very close to the airport). Based on the source, they liquidated everything but their physical therapy business. I hope all the awesome physical therapists who worked on me in ‘05 are still there and doing well.

Damn recession…

::What’s your favorite thing about being sick?

Uhm, getting better? Not dying? Sleeping through the worst of it, if at all possible? Not feeling so bad I feel compelled to blog it, just in case, you know, I do die?

Pick one.(For the record, I’m feeling better. The crud has passed. My expensive knee is angry with me, but it’s fine… just being a curmudgeon.)

Anyway, the new bike is awesome and we’ll post some “glamour shots” of her soon, although she has already acquired some scrapes. How so? Because I bit the bullet when we bought her, and had “clipless pedals” installed (which are a misnomer, because you “clip in” and “clip out” to secure your feet to the pedals, literally becoming one with your bike.) Clipless pedals allow for more efficient energy transfer from your body to the bike, since you’re producing power on your upstroke as well as the down pedal stroke. As a newbie, though, I’m convinced that clipless pedals exist to make adults feel like they don’t know how to ride a bike!

Transitioning from a mountain bike to a road bike is a big change, itself, especially after a year out of the saddle; transitioning to a new road bike AND using clipless pedals for the first time ever? Pretty much a recipe for a fall, or at least some hair-raising moments. For me, it’s a recipe for a fall… probably a few falls, until I get the hang of things, but hopefully none as painful as today’s (except to my dignity.)

So, yeah, I fell on a downslope with both legs still clipped in and I couldn’t get unclipped until Justin came over and got the leg I wasn’t laying on top of clipped out. My right knee, elbow, forearm, shoulder and ankle are all screaming. Thankfully, I only drew blood on my knee, and the knee’s what’s going to be hollering for awhile, but as I posted on my Flickr details for the post-wipeout knee shot, after you’ve blown out your ACL and had knee surgery, you celebrate anytime you can stand up and bear weight on your knee/leg after a fall. I also always try to fall on my “good knee/leg”. It sounds silly, but my post-op (left) knee is my “expensive knee” and I unconsciously try to protect it in any situation where I might fall. I figure God probably made my knee stronger than even my 3-year’s-post-op other knee is, plus I know that revisions on ACL reconstructions have a slightly lower success rate than original repairs.

Anyway, I’m back on a bike and it’s a sweet ride and I will get the hang of this blasted clipping and unclipping #(!@#(~#$ soon enough, hopefully with no more blood-letting and only a few more bruises. Mostly, I’m looking forward to burning a big ol’ ton of fat calories!

We had our GPS units in tow so you can check out a full profile of our walk, including time, distance, speed, elevation and even weather at the time of our walk!

Later in the day, Justin mentioned he might want to go do a “quickie solo road ride,” and because I’m not very keen on him cycling on San Antonio’s roadways solo, I offered to join him. (I trust him to be safety-conscious. I do not, however, trust the drivers on the roadways, since they cannot even behave properly around other motorized vehicles, much less pedestrians and cyclists!)

After a brief discussion about where we might ride, we mutually decided the safest place for pregnant me would be Hollywood Park. Since Justin’s parents live in Hollywood Park, he called and invited them on the ride as well. Thankfully, I have one pair of bicycle shorts that should remain comfortable to wear for the foreseeable future, even though my abdomen’s starting to get noticably firmer/larger. I can’t use the “I’m just bloated,” excuse any longer!

Anyway, we met up with Justin’s parents and began the ride our nephew, Tanner, has named the “HP5″ (Hollywood Park 5 Mile) in honor of the MS150 Justin will be riding in October. Justin’s mom did terrific, completing all the hills she had to stop and rest for on previous rides, and Jack of course kept pace as always. I even got out of the saddle to give Justin a (short) run for his money up the hill by the swimming pool, but quickly realized my stamina is nil.

In total, we rode 5.95 miles in 37 minutes and 10 seconds. All the stats from our bicycle ride are here: Hollywood Park 5-mile.

… and that rain that never came during the day? Well, now, here it is!

P.S. I tagged this entry with “Knee Health” as a reminder that even 1.75 years after ACL reconstruction, partial meniscectomy and meniscus repair, my left (post-op) knee still whines a little when I push it by walking, hiking or biking after an absence. It’s not painful, just a dull aching reminder that exercise really does do a body good. Blood flow increases, cartilage and tendons get massaged, muscles get warmed up and energy levels increase. It’s good mind- and body-altering stuff, and it’s legal and safe during pregnancy. You can’t beat that!

The first order of things this morning was to rake our front yard again. I did this no less than two weeks ago, and damned if our live oaks (Quercus virginiana) didn’t have a whole ‘nother yard’s worth of leaves to shed. I swear I looked up and surveyed the trees before killing my shoulders and wrists with the raking two weeks ago. A couple hours and five full trash bags later, I could again see our sad excuse for a front lawn. It’s trying to be green, but after all, “It’s not that easy being green.” Right now, our lawn’s just doing a really good impression of h-a-y.

One drudge-work task completed, another one begun: I had an ill-fated wildflower garden I created last year, along part of our backyard fenceline near our deck. Well, one of its two 5-foot runs was completely dead, so I harvested all the good topsoil from it and hauled the soil into the front yard to fill in various low spots and wear patches (thank you, neighborhood kiddos!) in the lawn. I could have sprung for some good lawn dressing, but this was readily available and free. REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE, Repeat.

After that, the fun stuff could finally begin. I planted most of the $67 of plants I bought at Rainbow Gardens (Bandera Rd. store) yesterday. The haul? Three varieties of salvia, including scarlet sage (Salvia coccinea); Mexican heather (Cuphea hyssopifolia) and cigar plants (Cuphea micropetala). I must admit there’s a wonderful synchronicity about loading up a bunch of plants into one’s hybrid vehicle.

As usual, this is just my first run to the garden center. I still need to buy some new coleus (Coleus blumei) to replace/augment my potted coleus that suffered a little too much during our overly-dry winter. My whiskey barrel in the backyard is three or four years old and is beginning to disassemble itself, slat by slat. I also need to replenish my red lava rock border in the backyard, since we’re on a slope and the rocks slowly migrate under our fence and into the greenbelt. And, if I had my act in gear, we’d be buying a Texas red oak (Quercus texana) to plant in the backyard, but the thought of digging a 4-foot-diameter hole in the rocky substrate of our backyard just isn’t compelling, yet. That, and the red oak needs to be clear of all structures (house, fence, etc.) by at least 25 feet and that may be a little problematic… I don’t really want it in the middle of my yard, after all. Anyway, there’s definitely more to come. I need a good deal of fresh soil to replenish my various empty pots and containers so I can plant the sweet peas (Lathyrus odoratus) Mom’s childhood tale inspired me to purchase a month or so ago — who knew sweet peas were fragrant, multi-colored flowering plants which make great cuttings and are ardent climbers? OK, maybe I’m the only one who didn’t know that. Sweet peas to me are what one finds on one’s plate at dinnertime.

Anyway, about six hours of work and I now have:

• Lush cigar plants planted underneath our youngest oak tree in the front yard, along with a single bluebonnet (Lupinus texensis) planted in a white ceramic pot I’ve been wanting to reuse (it came with my ill-fated Harry & David gardenias last year).
• Another red salvia to augment the scraggly one that’s near the driveway and sidewalk, looking rather pitiful until it was mated with the new saliva. Together, they look like one respectable plant!
• Two additional red salvias in my “main” garden bed beneath two large live oaks. There are already two mature (5+ years) salvias thriving here, but they’d grown leaving a couple openings that needed filling. Now that whole area is one gorgeous and fragrant salvia bed, still with small openings for some low-growing grass or flowers. I’ve never really managed to fill the whole bed with flowers that can make it through the winter and come back on their own in the springtime. I love the salvias because they die back but are among the first to resume flowering in Spring.
• Some starter salivas to spruce up my two strawberry pots. I wish I knew the name of the succulent I planted last year in my smaller strawberry pot — it’s doing quite well and has long, slender aloe vera type leaves (without any sharp edges/spines) and now these dime-sized orange and yellow flowers at the tip of long, delicate stalks. I’ll have to post a photo.
• I finally dug out a two foot long, one foot wide rock that’s been protruding from our lawn for, well, forever. One less obstacle to worry about when mowing, yay!
• 12 Mexican heather starters in a flat, awaiting planting below our front window. Usually, my Mexican heathers come back with a vengence but this year only one of the 15 or so plants is showing any signs of life. I really think we got so little rainfall, they died. We certainly never got cold enough this winter to have killed their roots.
• The fountain grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides) Mom bought me a couple days ago is now planted, although it may be a temporary home. I put it in the ailing whiskey barrel, and will need to replant it if I do opt to replace the barrel this year. Like the Mexican heather that normally over-winters just fine, my established fountain grass died off this winter. It was absolutely dead when I shoveled it out of the whiskey barrel today to make a home for the new fountain grass.
• Still unpotted:
  - A starter Mexican fan palm (Washingtonia robusta) that, like the fountain grass, Mom bought me. I thought I had the perfect large pot for it, but I realized it’s got a 2-foot-long and growing crack around the diameter of the pot.
  - The Mexican heathers I mentioned above. That’ll be an hour or two of work right there, since I need to till the soil and remove all the dead heathers that were there before. The good news is our dwarf Burford holly (lex cornuta ‘Burfordii Nana’) hedge has never looked so healthy and full; apparently, it took to the pruning I did quite well!

I’m still debating what to do with a thriving 40+ pound (pot and plant) orange-flowering aloe vera plant we have on the front porch. I got it from my mom over two year’s ago — someone had given it to her just with the plant and root ball, and she’d left it on her porch in that condition — and it kept growing. She offered it to me and it stayed that way until I, too, realized it was continuing to grow. I planted it in a 20 or so gallon pot and it’s now overgrown that, although it shows no ill effects. It’s actually putting out its second flower stalks of 2006 — it put 3.5+ foot tall flower stalks out in mid-January due to our mild winter, and I thought that would be all she wrote, but now it’s on to Round #2. Anyway, it needs to either be planted in the ground so it can get really big, or I need to find an even bigger pot for it, but anything bigger than what it’s already in means I won’t be able to move it into the garage during our occasional freezing temperatures.

Needless to say, I’m sore. My post-op knee is raging, as is my right wrist, elbow, shoulder and lower back. I have a Thermacare wrap on the small of my back, and another one up over my shoulderblades. Meanwhile, my knee’s awaiting the Elastogel wrap which is currently in the freezer getting chilled enough for reuse. No pain, no ga..garden, as they say!

Can you tell I love gardening? I’m only a green thumb with the things I know I cannot kill. Hand me something fiddly, like a gardenia or a violet, and I’ll kill it in short order. But Texas xeriscaping — plants that can handle our droughts and full sun? Bring ‘em on!

That is all!

(TOLD you it was anti-climactic! )

Addendum: Justin and I hiked 4.6 miles at Government Canyon State Natural Area. We were going to ride 8-10 miles, but my ongoing wrist/arm/shoulder pain made that prospect less-than-appealing. The route we hiked (Lytle’s Loop) will be terrific on our bikes, though!

No photos for this trip. I left the camera gear at home, since carrying 19lbs. of camera gear would have really killed my arm, and Justin left his gear in solidarity. Knee feels terrific post-hike; what a difference a year makes!

Now even Humana has their heads in the sand, saying we have nothing billed on our Humana card (DUH! It’s a new plan year, and my surgery was in Feburary *2005*) and that the surgical center “has no record of receiving any payment.” Bull-shit!

I need to remember not to try and wrap up loose ends like this at midnight to 1 AM. It’s so very hard to pitch a fit when you need to be quiet so you don’t wake up your spouse!

I hate medical billing departments.