Of Blown Tires, Broken Bones, and New Jobs

My weekend started out fine.

I hadn't been on the bike in 3 weeks or so, and on Saturday morning Speedy and I went for an easy ride near our house, and it was great. My legs felt great, but my aero endurance was gone and my, um, nether regions had a rather rough reintroduction to the saddle. But it was a good ride. Until about 10 minutes left, and I went over something small and metal and had a blow-out flat in the rear tire, with a shredded tire and tube and a slightly scratched (but not severely damaged) rim. Oops. Fortunately, we were close to a shortcut home, and only had to walk ~0.5 mile back to the house. In our socks, wheeling the bikes.

From there, we were planning to go to Speedy's parents' house for the day, but as we were getting ready my phone rings. It's my mom, saying, "First, she's okay, but [Youngest Sister] is in the hospital; we think she broke her leg." She was playing rugby, and fell while her foot was planted. So I headed over to my parents', brought them dinner since they were in the ER all day, and ended up staying the night to help out because my sister was in a full-leg brace (not to mention a lot of pain). They went to see an ortho surgeon today, and it turns out that she broke her leg in 3 places, tore a stabilizing ligament, and dislocated her ankle. She's having surgery next week.

It definitely deserves mention that my sister is one of the toughest people I know. She walked off the field after getting hurt. With these terrible injuries to her leg. And wanted to stay and watch the game for a little while before heading to the ER (at that point, they didn't know how badly she was injured). Are you kidding? I'd have been curled up in the fetal position and crying like a baby if that had happened to me. She's unbelievable.

And today was my first day of my new job. I've only been working towards this for the last three years. Unfortunately, this is just orientation and is pretty slow, but I'm sure I'll be pretty freaking busy very soon.

Oh! I have a new coach. I'm quite sure she'll kick my ass from here to next Tuesday. I think I should be worried :)

Whew. What a weekend.