Riding with a sprained ankle

It has been a while since I posted. RUSA has entered and emerged from an insurance nightmare. I'm sure all the RBA's and ride organizers are now suitably paranoid about waivers. I suspect we will see more reluctance to embrace the risk of litigation considering there is no benefit other than helping our fellow randonneurs.

I sprained my ankle a couple of weeks ago and it's still too swollen to fit into my cycling shoes but fortunately I bought a pair of cheap Nashbar SPD sandals a couple of years ago and they are flexible enough to accommodate my foot.

I met Amber at the Anaheim Artic. She still had her Topeak MTX rack and panniers on her bike. This is a very cool rack bag that has side pockets that open into capacious panniers. We started pedaling, but I didn't know if I'd make it out of the parking lot, to the beach, or what. Fortunately the pain wasn't to bad so we got all the way to Seal Beach and I had an idea.

I have recently discovered a Danish mead but the restaurant I found it at wants $42 a bottle whereas Total Wine only charges $30. There's a Total Wine just off the San Gabriel bikeway (this shopping center would make a great control) so we rode there.

We tried eating at Charo's, a Peruvian restaurant, but the service was so slow they hadn't even taken our order after 20 minutes so we walked across to a PizzaRev which we had never heard of. We had a custom made pizza within 10 minutes of walking in. It was really good and we would definitely go back. There must be at least 20 places to eat in the Long Beach Town Center and you don't even have to ride on the road to get there - there's a bike path straight from the San Gabriel bike path into the shopping center.

PizzaRev - very good

After PizzaRev we headed over to Total Wine to see what meads they had in stock. I bought six bottles and we put them in Amber's panniers. They we very heavy so it's a good thing there were no hills on the way back. I can tell you that the MDX panniers can comfortably carry half a case of wine. I don't know why they don't put this in the documentation - it's a major selling point.

Six bottles of wine - perfect fit

We ended up with 66 miles and I gave Amber a bottle of wine. I hope she likes it. My foot hurt a bit the next day but it was totally worth it.