Riding for Roses

Spencer’s energy is up. His platelets are high enough. His white blood cell counts are still too low for school. It’s activity time! Need to get that boy to burn energy. Today was bike riding day. We hooked up the trail-a-bike to my mountain bike and headed out for a few laps of the neighborhood. We road out onto Boulder Lane, the main road into and through our development and rode to the southern intersection with RR-620, turned right and headed to the northern intersection of Boulder and 620 and then completed the lap. Repeat and return home. Spencer pedaled the whole way except when I told him not to – that included stops, sharp turns, and two little hills that are steep enough that I can’t keep the bike balanced when he is pedaling.

Spencer’s focus today was on balance (“no wobbling”) and endurance (“try to pedal as much as you can for the whole ride”). He did a fantastic job. He’s ready to ride his regular bike without training wheels if he would only believe in himself. Today was also his first ride with a new helmet. Losing his hair made the old helmet fit for a few months longer, but a couple of weeks ago I checked fit and the old one is just too tight. We went out and bought a nice bright red (“Allan Cook Signature Red”) “Bell Faction”http://www.bellbikehelmets.com/productDetail.asp?prodID=7 in a S/M. He picked it entirely himself when we shopping. I suspect (after looking at it when we got home) that it’s the rodent on the side that closed the deal. He probably thinks of it as Master Splinter from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle – his current favorite TV show in the whole universe.

We managed 7.2 miles in 40 minutes and 26 seconds. Awesome ride. Great afernoon. This is excellent preparation for the Ride for the Roses courses. I dug up the maps yesterday and the 25 mile course has two rest stops breaking the ride in to segments of 9, 6, and 11 miles (the “25 mile ride” is 26.4 miles) while the 40 mile ride has 9, 10, 12, and 11 mile segments (the “40 mile ride” is 43.4 miles). Next ride, we’ll do three laps of the neighborhood for about 10.6 miles of riding and over the next few months, we’ll work on doing more per week with a few longer rides.

Tomorrow Spencer has an oncologist visit. I’m 99% sure his red counts will be high enough. Based on yesterday and today, my bet is hemoglobin is over 10. We expect platelets to be over 100,000 based on recovery as of last week. We’re hoping white counts will be high enough to return to school, and I gave his teacher that news when she called to ask how he is.