Hill County creek, August 26th

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I made a trip to a new creek in Hill County last Thursday. This is another Eagle Ford formation creek, though it is very close to Austin Chalk coverage. It was another creek that’s tough to hike in places. Even with my new, first time ever, prescription glasses on, I didn’t find a whole lot, but I did bring home a few interesting pieces.

Here are opposite direction views of the same outcrop in the creek. It has the blue gray clay you find so often in Eagle Ford outcrops. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.

Here’s my friend I met in the creek. I let this big guy swim on by before I waded across.

There were lots and lots of small ammonite imprints in rocks, like the one in the upper left part of this rock, but no surviving ammonite fossils that I found.

And there were lots and lots of shell fragments in rocks. These were bigger than most.

This rock looks like just another of those with lots of shell fragments.

But this side view of the same rock shows a hidden jewel I almost missed. That’s a Ptychodus tooth.

Shark teeth were few and far between in the creek, but here are a couple of pretty ones, though small, still in the matrix.

As I get more experience at fossil hunting, I’ve gotten better about not just picking up everything neat looking that I find. But I couldn’t resist this, one of the larger bison teeth I’ve run across.

There were lots of hard to identify fossils in the rocks. That looks like some kind of tooth on the left, but I have no idea what the others are. They all look too delicate to remove from the matrix, but I may do a bit of pick work to try and tell better what they are.

And finally, this bone. The first photo shows a view of each side of it. There is still a bit of rock attached. I didn’t remove any matrix from it; this is just the way I found it. The last photo shows a side view. I’ve posted these photos in The Fossil Forum. I’m hoping someone there can identify it.

July mileage and other musings

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I managed to make it through July with no health setback. Considering recent events, I’m considering that a big win. I ended up riding 325 miles in July. And there I am, talking about miles again. Tracking mileage, and working to make mileage goals, is a great way to keep yourself motivated to keep turning those pedals. But I’ve gotten some very strong reminders this month that mileage isn’t the most important thing to consider about my riding.

When I moved to Gun Barrel City in 2013, I had been riding over 7,000 miles a year (that’s averaging over 140 miles a week) for several years. With that move and my change in jobs, I knew that my mileage would have to become less. My lifestyle no longer allowed for that much riding. I also knew that, living out here in BFE, there would be few organized rides in my future; it would mostly be just solo rides. I settled on 100 miles a week as a realistic goal. At my 15 mph average on the bike, that would be 7 hours a week of riding. 7 hours a week is seen by many as the gold standard goal for aerobic exercise. And studies had shown that if your heart has diastolic dysfunction (which mine does), 400 minutes a week (just under 7 hours) of aerobic exercise was the amount that showed the best gains and maintenance for that condition. So 100 miles a week became my new goal.

But I knew all along that the day would come when I could no longer average 15 mph on the bike. Much sooner than I expected, that day has arrived. I’m still making improvements in my speed since I’ve gotten back on the bike, but the gains are very gradual now, and I have doubts that I’ll ever reach that 15 mph average again. I’m currently averaging just under 14 mph on the bike. With that average, 90 miles a week gets me the 7 hours of riding I think I need. Last month, I had ridden 100 miles three weeks in a row when I suddenly had unexplained pneumonia. I was forced to consider the possibility that I was overdoing it with my attempt at getting fit again. So for this month, I cut back to 90 miles a week. I’ve just been doing three 30 mile rides a week. If I do get faster on the bike again, I could always increase my mileage goal again.

But then another mileage complication came along. Two weeks ago, after completing my three rides for the week, I went fossil hunting, hiking along two new creeks. Both creeks were especially difficult hiking, and I realized when I got home that I had gotten as much of a workout from that hiking as I do from a 30 mile bike ride, if not more. And I was feeling like I had overdone it that week. So, from now on, any difficult fossil hunting hikes I make will be taken into consideration for my aerobic exercise hours that week. That’s another hit to my mileage goals. So, I’m thinking it’s time to move on from mileage goals. I need to do my best to get my seven hours of aerobic exercise every week that I can, and call it good.

And speaking of fossil hunting, I have added that to my blog. When I started this blog, I did it retroactively, putting together posts from a couple of years of posts in two cycling forums and a lung cancer support forum, and changing the blog dates on those posts to back when I had first posted them in the forums. I’m doing the same thing with my fossil hunting. I started fossil hunting in April of last year. I had taken a month off work at a time when so much was shut down because of COVID, and I was already working enough less hours that I decided it was time to add this hobby I had been fascinated with for many years. Up to now, the fossil hunting posts in this blog have been taken from posts I made in The Fossil Forum, and dated with the dates I posted them there. From now on, I will make separate posts here. I may make some posts here on days when I didn’t find anything of enough significance to bother posting in The Fossil Forum. And if I post in both, I’ll likely make the post here less technical. It’s a great hobby, and I’m having a blast with it.

The route for my last ride of the month on the 29th.

NSR – July 23rd

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I made a trip to the North Sulfur River yesterday. I was was trying out a new part of the river. The FM2990 bridge had been my favorite spot on the river to hunt, but things have changed. They are damming up the river to build a new lake, Lake Ralph Hall. This has closed the fossil park near Ladonia, so they built a new parking lot and made access a lot easier at the FM2990 bridge. With all the new fossil hunters going there, I knew I needed a new spot, so yesterday, I tried this spot further down the river, at the FM2675 bridge. I didn’t find much there, so I’m going to keep looking at new spots on the river.

Like further up the river, there were lots and lots of Egogyra Ponderosa oysters, including some beautiful large specimens. But they are very heavy to carry around in a backpack, and I already have plenty of them at home, so I resisted the temptation to pick up more. You expect to find large stuff at NSR, and after hiking quite a ways down the river without finding much at all, I decided that on the hike back, I needed to start looking for small stuff.

Here are the bones from the trip. Nothing I can identify, but cool all the same. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.

Where I hunted further up the river, there are lots and lots of baculites to be found. Here, all I could find were small broken pieces of baculites, like the two on the left in this photo. I thought the tiny ammonite on the right was cool, though.

I’ve always liked finding pieces of worm tubes like the ones in this photo. It can be really hard to spot them at NSR, though.

And finally, the teeth. Teeth always seem to be really hard to find at NSR, and when you do, they’re usually in rough shape, like these two in the bottom photo. And the top photo shows what you’re searching in to find them.

Ellis County creek – July 8th

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After nine months, I finally made it back to the Ellis County creek where I’ve found so many teeth. This is an Eagle Ford outcrop. The water level was much higher than I expected. It wasn’t quite up to the matrix that holds most of the fossils, but high enough to make wading across the creek dicey, plus I didn’t get to hunt most of the sand bars.

This is the biggest fish vert I’ve ever found. Most of the fish verts I’ve found in this creek aren’t in very good condition either, but this one is in really nice shape. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.

As usual for this creek, most of the Ptychodus teeth I found were pretty small, but I did find these two nicer ones.

These are still in the matrix. They are mosasaur verts. I’ve never found mosasaur verts in the creek before, and today I found two of them.

As usual for this creek, I brought home lots of interesting looking matrix to go through.

Here are the other teeth I found. As usual, there were more Ptychodus teeth than anything else. I’m sure there will be more from the matrix. I’ll add photos after I’ve gotten through the matrix.

This photo shows how close the water level was to the matrix holding fossils.

Update: July 10th. Matrix removed, here is what I brought home. I’m always amazed at the number of Ptychodus teeth in this creek.

The Hospital Again

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I ended up doing 12 rides for 380 miles in the month of June. That’s the most miles I’ve had in a month since last September, but the month ended the same way last month did, with me in the hospital and off the bike for days. It was pneumonia this time, found after I had a fever of 101.7 Saturday night. I’ll rest a few days then go back to riding.

Last Wednesday’s ride.

100 miles this week

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I took off on the F5 this morning and rode out to Big Rock Road, for 40 miles. That gives me 100 miles this week. For many years, I averaged 100+ miles a week, but between severe COVID in October, a heart attack in February, heart valve replacement in April, and a car crash in May, this was the first time in eight months that I’ve gotten 100 miles in a week. It felt good.

I’m still slow on the bike, but I’m seeing progress in improving. Today was the first time since I got back on the bike that I managed to do the entire ride without using the small chainring. It was also the first time I’ve averaged over 14 mph for the ride. I don’t know how close I’ll get to the level I was at last year, but I’ll take what improvements I can get.

I ended up with a total of 240 miles ridden in May. I had managed a couple of 80 mile weeks in a row, but a May 22nd car crash kept me off the bike for the rest of the month.

Today’s route.

Back on the bike

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I took off on the F5 this morning and rode out to FM2938 and back for a 20 mile ride. It was my first time on a bike since Marth 10th, and my first outdoor ride since October. I had taken time off the bike after my heart attack and didn’t ride again until February 20th. By early March my aortic heart valve had gotten really bad, plus my heart doctors were advising against riding until after it was replaced, so I quit riding after March 10th, until today. I ended up with just 65 miles ridden in February and 82 miles in March.

I am now eight days past aortic heart valve replacement. Today’s ride made it obvious that my fitness level is completely shot. Nothing to do but go to work on that.

Today’s route.

Declining Health

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After a promising recovery from COVID most of December, I had a serious setback near the end of the month, and the decline of my health continued and intensified in January and February. I did three rides totaling 70 miles that first full week of January, then managed only 40 miles the next week. My breathing worsened to the point I could only do 1500 on the spirometer, and I didn’t ride at all the next week. I had a slight improvement and did a couple of 15 mile rides that last week of January, but after that last ride, it was obvious that I couldn’t continue, so I stopped riding again. I ended up with 160 miles for the month.

My body wasn’t lying when it told me to stop. On February 4th, I had a heart attack. It wasn’t a major heart attack. The blockage was in an obtuse marginal artery, and a single stent fixed it. But the cardiac surgeon discovered, and an echocardiogram the next day confirmed, that I have severe aortic stenosis. The cardiac doctor said I need an aortic valve replacement right away. I had been diagnosed with moderate aortic stenosis three and a half years ago, and had no clue it had become this severe. I was, after all, still averaging 100 miles a week on the bike in October, before I got COVID.

The degree of aortic stenosis is measured by the pressure difference between the two sides of the valve. 25 to 40 is moderate. Anything over 40 is severe. Mine is 65. 80 is critical, so I’m closer to critical than moderate. Severe aortic stenosis can cause fluid buildup in the lungs, so it may be contributing to my lung issues. I won’t know how much until I get that valve replaced. Strenuous exercise is a big NO with severe aortic stenosis, so I’m going to remain limited in what I can do until I get that valve replacement. I didn’t even have a cardiac doctor, so now I’m waiting for a referral from the VA for a cardiac doctor, who will then refer me to to the specialist who will do the valve replacement.

While all this was going on, the VA has put me on some new inhalers, and they seem to be slowly helping. With all the dire weather stuff here, I hadn’t even checked my lungs with the spirometer lately, and was surprised to find yesterday that I can once again do 2500 on it. That’s a big improvement. I still have a lot of wheezing. I’m hoping that may improve soon too. I decided that with my improved lung function, I should try riding again, so today, I did a 10 mile ride on the Xstream. I kept things at a very easy pace, keeping my heart rate under 130. That’s probably as much effort as I should be putting out until I get my valve replacement.

I’m exhausted now. After just a 10 mile ride. It’s a pretty safe bet that I’ll never get back to the state of fitness I was enjoying last October. All I can do is be as active as my present health will allow, then see what I can do after recovering from valve replacement. I’m looking at a long road to recovery ahead.

2020 Miles

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2020 has mercifully come to an end. I ended up with 4,492 miles ridden for the year. It was the first year since 2004 that I rode less than 5,000 miles (I started riding in September, 2004). Until mid October, I was on a pace to get the usual 5,200 miles that I’ve ridden annually in recent years, but COVID19 had other plans. 1,305 of those miles were trainer virtual miles, with the remainder being actual on the road miles.

My recovery had been going fairly well, and I rode 80 miles the third week of December, but I had a major setback on December 24th. I inhaled a pill. In all my years on earth, I’d never done that before. It was a magnesium supplement tablet. I put it in my mouth and took a drink of water, thinking I’d swallowed it. But I hadn’t. When I took a breath of air, it sucked the tablet into my left lung. That day ended up being the worst day of coughing of my life. The next day, I was sore all over from so much coughing. I hacked up grit the entire day. And, I became short of breath and got a terrible wheeze. When I tried to ride the next day, I gave up after 10 miles, then took four days off the bike.

By this week, I noticed my shortness of breath was getting better. I’m stil wheezing, but it’s not as bad as it was. So I did 20 mile rides on Wednesday, Thursday, and today. I still haven’t gotten back to where I was before I inhaled that pill, but I’m improving. Here’s to hoping for a better 2021.

My last ride of the year.

Still recovering

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I did weekly updates on my recovery from COVID19 on Facebook, and I probably should have done them here too, so here they are:

Nov 13
10 miles on the bike this morning. It was my seventh consecutive day of riding. Reviewing the stats from the week’s rides confirmed what I already knew: I got slower each day. Either I’m getting worse, or am doing more than my body can recover from. I have downloaded a home pulmonary rehab exercise video. I’m going to use it, instead of riding, for now. We’ll see how I do.

Nov17
It’s now been two weeks since I was released from the hospital. I’ve had no gain in lung function at all so far. I’m getting used to slow walking. If I stand up and walk at my normal pace, I’m out of breath by the time I get across the room. But after three weeks, my sinuses have almost quit bleeding, so I guess that’s progress. Baby steps….

Nov 22
Tuesday will mark three weeks since I got out of the hospital, and I’m finally seeing the first hint of lung function improvement. For those of you who’ve never used one, an incentive spirometer is for measuring the volume of air you can breathe into your lungs. From the beginning of my hospital stay, I’d only been able to hit 1500 ml on the spirometer. On my bad days, I could only do 1200. The last couple of days, I’ve been hitting 2000. That’s still a pretty pathetic reading for someone my size, but it’s a gain, the start of what I hope will be a lot more gains.

Dec 1
Today marks four weeks since I was released from the hospital. I’m doing 2250 on the spirometer now. Looking at the chart, that’s not much below normal for someone my age and height. But I still have shortness of breath, so it’s obviously not just a volume thing. It’s likely a lung tissue damage thing, too. I’m going to keep on patiently working to get stronger. I’ve started riding again, doing ten miles on the bike yesterday. I just picked a nice flat route on Rouvy. I don’t think I could pedal myself up much of a hill right now, either on a real road or on Rouvy. I had been doing my pulmonary rehab exercises pretty much every day (though I did take off the two days I went fishing last week), but I’ll probably just do them on the days I don’t ride now.
I was semi-retired when I got sick, still working a few hours most weeks. I’d like to get back to work, but I don’t think I’m ready just yet. Maybe in a week or two.

Dec 8
Today makes five weeks since I got out of the hospital. I am now doing 2500 ml on the spirometer. By the chart, that’s normal for someone my age and height, but I can tell I would have been doing more than that before I got sick. I rode the bike 10 miles last Monday, 15 miles on Wednesday, and 16 miles on Friday. Saturday night, I went out and danced my arse off. I even managed to do every line dance without getting too out of breath. So, while I’m nowhere near my peak cycling fitness level, I do seem to at least be functional now. I think I’m going to go back to work next week.

And those were my Facebook updates. It’s now December 19th. I ended up not working this week. The only job I had scheduled postponed until after New Year’s. I’ll turn 70 in April, so I guess if I end up just retiring, that wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen. I have stopped doing the pulmonary rehab exercises and am now just riding and doing my core exercises. It seemed like I was no longer gaining anything from pulmonary rehab.

I’m doing 20 mile rides now. I’ve ramped up my distance and effort slowly. Severe cases of COVID19 have caused heart damage very often, and that was scary to me, especially since the most frequent damage is diastolic dysfunction, and I had already been diagnosed with moderate diastolic dysfuntion. But I haven’t seen any evidence of new heart damage in my case yet. Up until this week, I limited my heart rate to under 140 on my rides, and I’m still limiting it to under 150.

Truth be told, that’s really not any different than my normal winter riding. I always ease up effort and distance in the winter. I treat it like a recovery period, and start ramping up my effort again in the spring. And I ended up with over a 16 mph average on the bike on two of my rides this week. That’s very good for me, even on a flat route, when I’m only putting out an easy to moderate effort, even in past years. That’s very encouraging. It means that, for easy to moderate winter efforts, I’m getting the same results I have for years. Of course, if I really put out a high intensity effort, either on or off the bike, I have really bad shortness of breath in short order, a reminder that I’m not nearly fully recovered. But, I’ll take encouraging news where I find it.

In past years, I’ve tried to hit peak fitness in August, in time for the Hotter ‘N Hell Hundred. But I’ll turn 70 before the next one. If you’re past 70, should you still be on the road mixing it up with 10,000+ other cyclists in a 100 mile event? I’m not sure I’m ready to answer that one. And that’s ignoring the fact that I don’t know if I’ll ever even be fit enough to complete another 100 mile bike ride. But, I’ll worry about all that at a later date. Right now, I’m reasonably pleased with my progress. I rode 80 miles this week. I was pretty tired the last half of today’s 20 miles, but just being able to ride 80 miles in a week shows a real improvement in my endurance, which hasn’t been good at all since I got sick. I’ll keep working on that.

Yesterday’s Rouvy route.