Bruises and bike maintenance

The aftermath of my inability to stand on my own two feet has meant no riding this week. I have a couple of corking bruises, even by my standards (I do bruise very well it has to be said) the one on my leg is a stoater, it continues on round behind my leg which you can't quite see in the photo. Annoyingly the non-purple bit in the centre is what really hurts which means it will be hanging around for weeks, just as well I no longer wear skirts to work.

The bruises are just a minor irritation, my left hip pretty much seized up and feels very bruised indeed, I also have a very, very painful spot on my back, at the bottom of my ribs and about three centimetres to the left of my spine (I know). Even today it is still sending shooting pains if I prod it, however there is no bruising on my back as yet. I can't wear any sort of rucksack and surprisingly using the clutch whilst driving has been very painful.

Today, I seem to be getting normal movement back in my hip at last and driving isn't so painful. Planning on doing a road ride tomorrow to see how things are.

I've made good use of the week (and some of last week too) to learn some bike maintenance skills as mine have extended to changing the odd pair of brake pads and lubing the odd chain. All my bikes have something wrong with them, some serious and as Jez is away until the end of the month I kind of had no choice. It's costing me a small fortune in boring bike parts.

I've had to change the bottom brackets on the Spesh and the road bike, my original plan was to practice on the Spesh first then do the road bike but the Spesh had other ideas. Even using the old clamping the tool in a vice and using the whole frame as a lever failed to budge it. I poured a load of penetrating oil down the seat tube and left it overnight. Luckily the road bike one was easy to change.

As this was the Saturday and I borked my back on the Sunday there was no way I could twist enough to have another go so I borrowed an impact wrench from a guy at work who said he'd managed to get two stuck BB's out with it. It still took a bit of persuasion, I had to apply it for a solid 15 seconds but it did the job. What a racket it made but it was good fun, I had a brief look around the garage to see if I could find something else to attack with it but saw sense and packed it away. Impact Wrench: 3 BB's: 0!