Modern Vespa

Unexpected gift from a neighbour

Wow! That nice!
I made a sticker for our bike with bit vespish font but not actually that great.
this means something like "Vesplace"

Cherry blossom here now:

Rosso/cherry red and cherry blossom. Nice!

And, it looks like was actually in service - great!

More freebies, this time from Motovista aka https://scooterpartsco.com/ 😀

Evok Iron Drive 13.5g 21x17 rollers. Suggestion is that they're durable and shouldn't flat spot as quick as many others (malossi flat spot real quick when i tried them, these were also gifted by motovista).

4:00 AM, nurse just administered another 'happy pill'...(among other things), and I just found South Park on the room's TV.

That cheered me up, of course.

Yesterday afternoon, I spent four hours (or so I was told) having some new titanium parts in the lower back installed, while also re-arranging a few other things that were already there, just not positioned as precisely as they used to be. I will need to give it all a proper break-in over the coming weeks...and months, but I may expedite that healing stuff a bit so I can pile more miles on that shiny new RE 650 asap, even if it's not quite a perfect color match.

Greetings from the Black Hills Surgical Hospital here in sunny Rapid City, South Dakota....and remember, it's only three months until the next Sturgis Motorcycle Rally......

JBacklund, It sounds like the surgery was successful. Wishing you a speedy recovery so that you can get back on 2 wheels.

Wishing you a very speedy recovery!

I am hoping for a lasting recovery and you have the chance you get out of the hospital , pronto! I hate being in Hospitals. In my case, I arrived for early morning surgery on a Wednesday. When I woke up from that, they told me I would be there three more days and would be released only after I did all three of the requirements. Long story, short, they released me Thursday afternoon, gave me some pills for the trip and a prescription for pain/muscle relaxers. I threw that in the trash once I got home, they just slow you down.

Meanwhile , follow the doctors orders, once you get to start PT, do it every day and get better. Fusion takes about a year to happen fully for someone my age at the time(68). I hoping it happens faster for you.

The couple of times I have been in the hospital (kidney stone, surgery recovery) I was very happy to be there while I was in pain and not able to get around on my own. As soon as I felt better, however, it was "Get me out of here!"

The first time, I was sent home with 50 Vicodin, which I really did not like. I took two of them and tossed the rest.

I was ready to leave from the get go. Yeah, there was a lot of pain, but it was less than before the surgery.

Reminds me of my shoulder sprain...wasn't sleeping with the pain for a month before I saw someone. Gave me Tramadol. So instead of laying awake with pain, I lay awake feeling weird. To hell with that.

Anyway, hope the recovery goes well! Should only be the upswing from here!

I just realised my 2009 s150 turned 9000kms before I put it away for the winter.
At the same time it's also sad that I didn't put on most of them.......

The hospital kicked me out late yesterday afternoon, so it's cheery to be back in my own recliner in my own house

All that I could eat for two days was broth, jello, and...well, that's about it. I've since advanced to pudding and applesauce.

The bad news is that when I asked the surgeon when I could ride a motorcycle, he said three months, so that pretty much takes care of the summer, so scratch any cheery feelings on that part, but I have a feeling that I can get back to.riding a lot sooner than three months, and will just see how the healing goes.

It's strange being an invalid, using a walker and cane, being almost totally dependent on poor Trixie for even the simple things that I used to be able to do with little thought.

Pill bottles are all over the place, and include some serious narcotics like Oxycodone.

Anyway, now the mending starts, with that shiny new Royal Enfield 650 out there in the garage waiting for me to be able to ride it through the Black Hills again, even if just for a good coffee and muffin, and a bullshit session with 'the boys' down at the Pump House cafe.

This Reddit post made me spit out some of my coffee this am..

Paraprosdokian humor at its finest.

Awesome! I just lost a little coffee myself.

Dang. New word to my vocabulary.....

Emo Philips. The master.

All this talk about backs. Mine is feeling better today.

So, there's this situation here at work that is a back disaster. I have complained about it for four years now to three different safety coordinators, the most recent of which actually shot a video of me attempting to perform the task in a manner that wouldn't make your spine explode. This was nearly a year ago.

I've always had a healthy back. I work out and don't carry much extra weight. But about three weeks ago I hurt my back. Again. It's muscles and soft tissue, but it doesn't change the fact that it hurt and it sucks.

I finally took my manager out to the area and had HIM do the task they've been asking me to do. He agreed, apologized because they've talked about it in the past and then everyone gets busy and yaddah, yaddah ...

So I said, look. I am going to solve this problem for you right now. I am not moving these items around anymore. If I need something I am sending out an email to everyone and now it's your problem. Problem solved. I am NOT going to retire with a bad back, I am playing Russian Roulette with my back every time I have to do this and it stops today. I am tired of not doing things I want to do because my back is trashed.

So, today, for the first time in about three weeks my back feels pretty good. And it's going to stay that way. Skating season is almost here and I am not missing it because of their inability to provide a safe working environment.

seamus26, A good strategy. "See what's its like in my shoes." By the way, do the skates count as 3-wheelers?

Yes ... yes they do. I spent an extra $250 for ceramic bearings. Now I know if I'm not going faster it's not the skates. It's me.

"I've got a weak back"
"How long have you had it?"
"About a week back!" (Three Stooges)

OSHA rules used to specify 60 lbs. max for dead lifting. Yes Seamus, by all means ask for help, heck, demand help when you need it.

That's not all that bad, it was a year for me. But the surgeon did take out two discs and used 4 rods and a whole bunch of screws.

I used a walker for three days. After that I could get around ok, but I never really got the hang of using it right, to be honest. And like I mentioned before, I did not take any pills. I was afraid of getting too loppy and falling down. That and they bind you up something fierce, if you get my drift.

After heart surgery, I took gabapentin for a while. It was effective, but then I started smelling things that were not there, and seeing people who were long dead. They weren't malevolent, just sort of watching over me. I really didn't like those side effects.

My friend had a similar experience with it, too, except that he was being beset by demons, and was found in a corner on the floor in his hospital room.

Not realizing just what it was, I quit cold turkey. That was the worst week of my life. Towards the end of the week, it dawned on me that I was having withdrawal symptoms, checked online, and discovered what I should have known all along. No one had warned me, just prescribed it.

I'll have to be in pretty dire straights before I take that again!

YMMV.

Oh, yes, there's some "binding" going on, due to a liquid diet AND the drugs.

But today I got cleared for some Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup or Vegetable Beef, etc, so that's a welcome development.

That's pretty scary, but it seems in my case it's worse than that, I have been beset by a multitude of call center bastards with heavy India accents trying to sell me extended warranties, supplemental health insurance, and worst of all considering my circumstances...death benefits.

Sir David 🎂 x 100

Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!

Chris from CLE

I don't understand that either. I was on normal food at the hospital and no restrictions at all at home.

Until a nurse told me a day after the surgery that while they're 'in there', I had no idea that they move your intestines about to some degree while dicking around with spine and nerve stuff, and it causes them to sort of shut down for a period after surgery, so the trick is to get everything running again post-op.

They feed you a liquid diet of IV's, apple juice, and soup broth, then wonder why nothing 'solid' is happening down there. Well...Duh! Get me a sammich then.

Oh, of course, the drugs tend to delay normal gut activity as well.

Yes but…

One of the aspects of my job that I've always loved has been producing unusual pieces for people. They'll have a vision of what they want, and will create a file, then I'll have to produce it in a way that fits their vision.

I have a current customer who has done this three times.

The first time she wanted boxes printed with solid colors and specific words on them. That was easy - we printed it on adhesive vinyl and wrapped plain boxes.

The second time she wanted tall free-standing foamcore signs. The tallest was 8' tall x 4' wide, while the others were 6' x 3' and 4' x 3'. Again, that was fairly easy, although we had to come up with feet for the boards so that they'd stand.

This time she wanted a finished piece that had a main panel that was 6' tall x 12' wide, with two accent panels attached - one that was 7' tall and extended past the left edge by 1 foot, and the other 3' tall that extended past the right edge by 2 feet. And they couldn't rest on feet like the other items, she wanted them flush to the floor.

The actual design wasn't that much of an issue - I printed the two accent pieces on a single 4' x 8' sheet of foamcore, then cut them out with a 6" extension to be able to attach them to the back of the main board. And the main board was simply going to be split into three panels, each panel being 4' x 6'. I had to come up with a solution to stand them up, and also a way to place them next to each other without a line/seam showing.

I ended up printing large easels on coroplast, and we used double-sided tape to affix them to the backs of the main panels. We printed just the outside frame of the main panels, leaving the center blank. We used small pieces of foam core and double-sided tape to "lock" the three panels together into one 6'x12' sheet. I then printed the center portion on scrimless vinyl banner material (the same vinyl that is used in retractable/pop-up banners). We used the same double-sided tape to affix it to the boards.

In the end, there were a couple of minor flaws, but no one will notice them, and the customer loves it.

I had to have a piece of titanium added to my cervical spine a few years back and it surprised the heck out of me to find out that they come in through the front and move things out of the way to work on the spine.

Rather stupid one: Got 5000km on screen, so, bought a cheap 0.99e ice-cream from Lidl and went to museum-bridge eat it...

Complicated day yesterday. Our cat hadn't been urinating, and just when we decided we needed to be alarmed, he peed. And then stopped again. It seemed there was a real risk he'd not make it. We'd just buried our thin as a rail geriatric feline a week ago and didn't want to follow that with our major fur-buddy....

Meanwhile, we had graduation to attend out of town for our son. Dual majors in Chemical Engineering and Chemistry, and after 5 years, a big deal. Decided at last minute to forfeit the hotel room and return overnight to give the cat the medication that hopefully would save him...or at least his kidneys.

Graduation was amazing. UW-Madison had roughly 40,000 students and is pretty overwhelming. I remember it being too intimidating (and expensive) to consider for myself back in the day. Crowded as heck, filled the football stadium. Sitting on bleachers for 3 hours seemed almost bearable. James Patterson was the speaker, and even though I barely knew him (not a fiction reader), he was great. Had a second event where the kids actually walked. Another couple of hours. I'd been of the impression that the idealism of my youth had been lost and that there was too much of a focus on material benefits of education, but you couldn't tell from the speeches. Exhorting kids to use their education to make a better world, to serve humanity. Yeah, I know it won't be everyone (one of our kids friends is already working for Exxon in North Dakota starting at 6 figures), but still....

It's been a rocky path for our kid...neurodiverse, trans, strong personality, but he's truly a great human being, and has driven himself to accomplish his degrees, managed relationships well, and gives so much to be proud of. He'll be off to Montreal in fall for graduate school and potentially stay for now.

So, sore butt and all, we returned home in good spirits, but worried about what we'd find at home with Ely. There was actually urine in two littler boxes, and he was happy to see us. Yayy! Pretty much an unblemished day.