It's Better in Wyoming.

That's what the sign above the bundles of camp wood at the Glendo gas station said, when dad and I stopped there after our weekend camping up at Esterbrook. Tonight I met a girl who's getting married up there next weekend. Small world, since I'd never really heard of it until this spring.

That's what it cost me to fill up my tank, at the gas station today, for the new motorcycle. I actually think I might've overfilled--it was pretty far up the neck of the tank. Tomorrow I probably need to fill the pickup, which will cost me about 10 times as much. In completely unrelated news, I started the new job with BCA today, my summer internship writing grants. I spent most of the morning learning about IRS 990 forms, which was actually pretty fascinating. As fascinating as tax forms can be, I guess.

Now, a week after the big damage, I'm gonna say that the ankle feels like it's about 81%. In other words, not a whole lot of progress. The amount of blood that seeped all the way down to my toes and a third of the way up my calf may ( may! ) indicate that something is damaged worse than I first guessed. Swelling's been down the last two days. There's a weird spot at the back of my foot that continuously burns, just above the heel bone I'd say. Behind the talus and above the calcaneus , to be more precise. And a spot at the front of the talus, too, that burns a bit. According to one site, getting a massage early on increases the swelling and bleeding. I wonder about a week afterward, though. Seems like a massage could work out a lot of the blood that's hanging around down at my toes. In more-or-less unrelated news, I walked around most of yesterday at the Woodchoppers Jamboree in Wyoming's twin cities, Riverside and Encampment. In the morning: much...

I'm gonna say that my ankle feels like it's back to 80%. I'm not really sure how you measure a thing like that, but essentially it feels a lot better than I expected it to, two days after the big rollover. And it feels a lot better than it looks, too: In somewhat related news, UPS says they delivered my cleats by the back door today, but there's no package there. Hmmm. It's not like I'm exactly ready to start trying on cleats, but it'd be nice to know where they are when I am ready. Hmmm.

Last Friday, before heading off to Greeley/Boulder/Denver for the weekend, I took the XT out for its first real mission: some errands to the post office and bank and to pick up some groceries. Now that I've got the rack and crate mounted, it's a mean machine. Look, here's the bike with my groceries: If you look closely, you'll see a hott! spray-paint job on that wire crate. Gray! And I found a sweet helmet to match! Gray! By the way, if you're shopping for motorcycle gear in the Denver area, I'd recommend Performance Cycle . After shopping unsuccessfully for soccer cleats at a half-dozen stores on Friday--and being disappointed by unimpressive customer service at each of them--the guy at Performance Cycle was great. Friendly and helpful and not condescending even though he was a high-performance crotch-rocket guy and I was a guy excited to have just u-bolted a milk crate to my otherwise stock dual-sport. Good customer service is hard to beat.

I wasn't really bragging to Deb yesterday, but I was feeling pretty smug that I rarely get sprained ankles. I think, through several seasons of basketball, soccer, and more lately raquetball and skiing, I twisted an ankle less than a dozen times. What goes around, comes around. I'm not gonna say that spraining my ankle is karmic payback for feeling so smug. It feels a bit that way, though. Guess which one is the sprained ankle? On a tangentially related note, I think these are the first pictures I've even taken of my toes. I've got some ugly feets.