Poison Ivy continues; Kenosha Pass

The good news is my poison ivy rash I couldn't stop scratching is gone. The bad news is I'm left with angry-looking excoriated scabs everywhere that I can't stop scratching. One looked so nasty I actually went to a doctor; after all my years nagging Tery about paying for insurance she never uses, she insisted. "Call me if you have to get amputations and need a ride home," she offered. She takes such good care of me.

My doctor looked a little like character actor Bob Balaban. I explained my situation and he examined my leg through a tiny telescopic instrument. "I like your diagnosis," he concluded. I like that he doesn't mind a patient diagnosing themselves.

Poison something...ivy, oak, sumac. He warned that it could be on my pets and I should probably bathe them, just in case. "Well, they're cats," I told him. "I might end up looking worse than I do now." He laughed! A doctor with a sense of humor! Maybe he'll be my GP.

Despite how awful it looked, he didn't think it was infected. He prescribed me a cortisone cream and some pills to help with itching. I walked back out to the front office and experienced the pleasure of not having to pay a penny, enjoyed by insured patients for decades. Nice.

I was a tad disappointed though. This is my first visit to a doctor with a weight and an active lifestyle I'm proud of, and he didn't say a word. We only hear about it when we're doing something wrong, I guess.

~*~

Lair o' the Bear didn't happen. I canceled on Gerry because, given the appearance of my skin, I didn't think getting all dirty and sweaty was such a wise idea. Then he went on his own to scout it out for me, and decided I was too delicate a flower to risk it.

I tried tempting him with some suggestions from my book, "Bike with a View," a collection of easy and moderate trails written by what sounds like a middle-aged priest on a respirator. I guess he wasn't impressed, because I never heard back.

I thought he wanted to do something this past weekend, but it came and went without a word. So instead I went back to my Audubon Loop; it was supposed to be one of the hottest days of the season, and the leafy cool of the trail sounded preferable to sitting around in a puddle of sweat.

I'll admit, I had another ulterior motive -- I continued to be haunted by that damn skewer tool I left there nearly a month ago. The odds were microscopic that I would find it, but I didn't know how else to stop the damn dreams.

You see, Mr. Man at Adventure Cycling, despite seeming to know what he was doing, and despite my use of phrases like "highly specialized" and "special five-sided," ended up ordering me a plain old hex wrench, just like the dozens I already have at home. I also emailed the company directly, actually receiving a response promising to send me one, but they never did -- which is ruder than just ignoring me completely, if you ask me.

So my options are to either buy a whole new set of skewers with a tool, or go back to Audubon, which I was going to do eventually anyway.

Back on the trail. I rode directly to the spot as if I did it every day. It wasn't hard to find thanks to that great honking root that caused all the trouble. I searched determinedly for about fifteen minutes (using a stick to poke around, I'm not an idiot), but to no avail. Well, it was worth a shot. Hopefully now I can stop obsessing about it.

The trail was as enjoyable as ever (I didn't fall this time), but sadly now I'm starting to recognize landmarks and learn my way around it. I liked it better when every turn promised a fresh new adventure, aimless and lacking any plan or goal, sort of how I live my life. Still, it was cool and breezy and much nicer than sitting on the couch.

There weren't many people at all, surprising for a Sunday afternoon. I think the trail is a well-kept secret, and I'd like it to stay that way. However, I did pass one couple, a guy trying to coax his wife/girlfriend, who looked like a "Jersey Shore" reject, to catch up with him, while she whined in protest that there were "a million bees" between her and him. It was like watching an episode of "Wife Swap," when the wife is shipped hundreds of miles from home and forced to engage in activities diametrically opposed to what she'd rather be doing.

~*~

Then on Monday I decided to go alone to one of the spots from my book, Kenosha Pass, which is actually just a small portion of the ginormously long Colorado Trail (no animal names).

Just a taste

( ::Cut me off at Kenosha Pass:: )