I’m in Lake Las Vegas for my first night of our Cinco de Mayo ride from San Diego to Utah. Given my love for the topography of Utah, it has always struck me that the universe wants me to pay a handsome price for getting to and from there. When I lived in New York, that involved a four hour flight back-and-forth. Now that I live in San Diego that price has to do with what it takes to get to the good stuff that Utah has to offer. I’ve been traveling to Las Vegas for a long time, given that my mother spent her final 30 years there and my sister Barbara and her family have lived there for close to 50 years. You would think that by now I would be used to the rigors of traversing the California highways and byways to get from here to there. But as much as I love the California countryside and the riding roads that we have in San Diego County, there is something about having to work your way around the many mountains and deserts that need to be navigated to get from here to there. And that’s specifically so to get from my hilltop to Las Vegas. The choice is basically to ride the slab, as we motorcyclist call it, and take Rt.15 from my front doorstep all the way to Sin City. Apple Maps probably shows that to be a 4 1/2 hour ride, but I know that I can name that tune in four hours in a car and yet if I pick bad timing, especially in my return from Las Vegas after some big weekend, it can take me more like six or seven hours. There are very few alternatives to that unless you’re prepared to spend a lot more time in the desert, specifically the Mojave desert.
We don’t ride motorcycles to ride the slab, so the trip from our hilltop to Utah for a motorcycle trip means picking a path through the Mojave. The guys I ride with generally want me to pick the routes and plan the trips so for this trip I figured we would go over the hill at Anza, drop down into Palm Desert backtrack on route 10 to go up into the Morongo Valley as far as Twentynine Palms and then head north to Amboy and then even further north right into the Mojave desert and the one place to stop, Kelso Depot, until coming out near Primm at the Nevada border.
I watched the weather all along that route for two weeks and it all looked fine right up until the day before departure. That’s when an unexpected rainstorm came in off the Pacific. They brought rain all night long on our hilltop ending precisely at 7 AM so that my 8 AM departure, while on wet roads, did not get me soaked at the start of my ride. The biggest impact of that rain was that it really brought a chill to the mountains between Aguanga and Anza. I was dressed warmly enough in every aspect, except my gloves, which was quite a fatal flaw since, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve been trying to fix a left hand and thumb problem from a four hour ride. I took a month ago. That day had been a chilly day. It got down to 54° and my riding partner suggested that my and problem was probably due to the cold. That didn’t stop me from assuming the worst and checking to see if I’d had a mild stroke. Since then, no one has suggested any cause for my hand disability and I have attack the problem with OT hand exercises every day and gotten back 95% of the functionality I feel I had lost. At least that’s where things stood at 8 AM this morning.
As the cold set in around Aguanga, I started feeling those tingling and weakening sensations in my left hand all over again. When we stopped for our morning break, I put on my heavy gloves and turned on my grip warmers, but the damage had already been done. Riding down into Palm Desert, my left hand felt like a weak kitten in a mitten. My thumb functionality has regressed halfway back to where it was after my first incident, but now the rest of my fingers have become involved with my left pinky now in a naturally bent position, unless I straighten it by hand. And my middle and ring finger are choosing to stay closely aligned with one another so that if I hold my hand up, I look like Dr. Spock from Star Trek, giving the live long and prosper salute to his fellow Vulcans. You are probably thinking that I have no business riding a motorcycle in this condition, but , strangely enough, it doesn’t really affect my riding ability other than making it difficult to operate my turn signals with my left thumb. What it does affect is various fine motor skill functionalities, such as trying to hold a fork while I cut my steak at dinner. I could not hold the fork in the normal polite manner that I was raised to, and had to hold it in my fist like a four year-old.
What I have for evidence so far about this hand problem of mine is that it is clearly caused by motorcycling, especially in colder weather. It was 54° when I had my first incident and now, with much worse repercussions, it happened when it was 42°. I also know that hand exercises help restore the functionality, and that there is no apparent neurological problem, at least not from the neck up. There may still be an issue with my nerve root at my shoulder, going into my spine or in the peripheral nerves on my arm, particularly between my elbow and my fingertips. I recently learned from Claude that taking an ACE inhibitor like Ramapril or simple ibuprofen can cause angioedema, which is a rapid swelling of the deeper layers of the skin and mucous membranes, particularly in the subcutaneous and submucosal tissues — essentially the layer just beneath the surface skin. Mechanically what happens is that fluid leaks from small blood vessels (capillaries and venules) into surrounding tissue due to increased vascular permeability. This causes localized, often asymmetric swelling that can appear suddenly….like in the lips. Hmmm. I have now stopped ibuprofen and may seek an alternative to Ramapril. That seems to connect to this hand issue somehow, but I’m not sure it solves it. I suspect I have some peripheral left forearm nerve damage and that’s that.
Right now I assume that means I need to keep my hands warmer, keep doing hand exercises and, God forbid, reconsider long motorcycle rides. I’m listening to James Clavell’s novel, King Rat, about the horrors of a Japanese POW camp. In it, a British officer toys with some gangrene in his hand as it creeps up his forearm and risks bigger and bigger amputation outcomes. My ride today reminded me that while I can do a lot with my palms, the lack of fingers and thumb is a serious infringement on my capabilities. I doubt I will face amputation, but I’d better get a meeting with a neurologist to check out my peripheral neuropathy. My guess is that those tests will confirm my suspicions but also tell me there’s nothing to be done for it. I suppose I can use Tramadol or another opioid….but probably not. I could use OT, but then I’m already doing that. I guess that leaves …..doing nothing, but writing about it often…