Depression Glass

The other night I was on a ride and saw something I hadn't seen in quite some time: Depression Glass. I was riding around a retirement community so it made sense, but in the quiet of the evening with those blue, green, and clear vessels of various shapes and sizes I paused for a moment. 

 Growing up and delivering the Buffalo News from about 1999-2002 I had so many customers who were born in the 1910-1925 range. Many of them had stories to tell about life before the War, the early days of the neighborhood I grew up in, where many houses were built shortly after the WW2. The half of the Village we lived in was the 'new' side. With Cape Cod homes in 5 or so shapes and occasional outlier houses built after 1960. 

So around the turn of the Millennium I probably had 30% or so of my customers in that 75-90 age range. All of these folks had lived through the Depression and more than a few had these little reminders of that time in their windows. I now wonder if they kept them with fond memories of the past or if they were just more trinkets left over like so many things in their homes from a time long gone, little echoes.

 I would say I'm romanticizing the whole thing, painting a young and optimistic suburban life in my head but then I saw them in that window the other night. So they meant enough for those people to take them to their retirement home. Do they look at them and think of saving the coupons needed to trade in for the glass? Helping a parent out, a little chore?

 I really enjoyed my interactions with so many of the people on my route back then. I heard so many stories and perspectives. At 13 years old so many people would just tell me wild stuff. Opinions they probably wouldn't share with too many, but then again there were a lot of lonely people who had a spouse die years ago. So in an evening I could go from hearing a story about how a woman's brother and father died in the Pacific, and she knew it wasn't right but still didn't like 'Asian' people (Her words, the nuance of the Pacific theatre was either lost or She just didn't see a difference), to throwing snowballs at cars or whatever the flavor of mayhem was that season with my friends and I. 

 All of that makes me wonder: in a world with more and more stuff, things to buy, consume, be inundated with, I don't really think anything like the Depression Glass exists anymore. I'm not sure that's good, bad, or doesn't matter at all.

Wireless Phone Jacks and Internet Access

 My family was probably about average nationally as far as getting a computer and then internet, but around where I grew up we were behind. My parents weren't into computers or tech stuff, and we didn't have a lot of money or a need for a PC, so the first time we got one it was an old model from my dad's work they were getting rid of and he could take for free. 

It was one of those monitor on top of the box type that were so common in workplaces in the 90s. A sort of tan color. Boring, unable to offend anyone it seemed. It was put on an old desk in the alcove of my parent's room. No internet. I played some games I was able to get my hands on and load up. A Chex Quest game with an AOL 3.0 trial I had saved for many years in anticipation of this moment, the Amazon trail (on like 8 3.5 'floppy' disks) and some others I had come across. Chex Quest was actually a decent game built off of the 'Doom' Engine.

The computer had no sound card, a Pentium 1 that was able to muster 90mhz of processing power, Windows 95 and about 4mb of ram or so. I played a trial of the Catz video game (where you took care of a virtual cat, a fancy version of a Tamagotchi). We didn't have a cat so this had to do. I did have an external modem running
28.8kbps and used this in a modem to modem connection with my friend to play Bomberman, which was super awesome because we were playing each other from the other side of the block, and because Bomberman.

The U.S. Robotics modem we had. You had to switch it on.

My parents eventually caved to the pressure to get internet and the world expanded from there. This was around the time of Napster and Limewire. My dad was so worried about getting sued for downloading music I was more than banned from these programs. There was a lot in the news as the record companies were panicked and wanted to make an example of some people who downloaded music. My parents didn't understand or care that the targets of these lawsuits were downloading a lot over broadband connections, it wasn't worth the risk to them of course.

So this obviously made me have to cover my tracks on the shared computer while I downloaded songs so slowly over out 28.8 connection. I want to say the average song took 5 minutes or so at the normal 128kbps mp3 quality you would commonly see on Limewire. Downloading songs from Blink 182 and the mis-attributed 'Half the Man I Used To Be' which was 'Creep' by Stone Temple Pilots but always under 'Nirvana'. We also had one phone line so the risk of having to disconnect of losing the connection if someone picked up the phone was high. I had to sneak the downloads, save them to a floppy (no CD burner yet), then get them onto another drive somehow. Remember, the computer had no sound and even if it did, the music would have raised suspicions. I then would hide or delete the program from the computer until next time. 

This brings me to the inspiration for this post. I bought a Texas Instruments (TI) laptop from a friend. It was about the same speed as the computer my parents had but it had sound and a 56k modem card. I was now free to tear around the internet as I pleased for better or for worse! Still limited by the internet connection and the phone jacks in the house I was determined to find a solution.

The Computer.

This came in the form of the wireless phone jack. Using the phone jack in my parents room, I could broadcast the signal over to my own and use the phone line late at night when there would be no risk of the phone being picked up, or anyone wanting the line. I wouldn't have known of it's existence but I saw one at the Rite Aid 4 blocks from our house. It wasn't cheap for me, about $60 if I recall, maybe on sale for $40. Still a weeks worth about of newspaper delivery. 

I bought the unit (I think very similar to this Phillips pictured). My recollection is that it did work but my parents were suspicious (rightly so this time) of the big white thing plugged into their wall under the phone in their room and I ended up returning it. My solution ended up being a long phone cord that I could plug into my laptop and they weren't interested in my computer so I was basically still able to download song indiscriminately. 

I also don't exactly remember how I listened to those songs off of the TI. It had no USB, and MP3 players were barely a thing. I think for abut two years I could only listen to those songs on tiny, tinny sounding laptop speakers, but that was amazing enough.

Newton's Apple

As I assume most of us do, I often find myself thinking and reflecting on life, experiences, things that make a time or place feel a certain way. I'm going to start using this as a place to record those thoughts, even if it's just me reading them.

Today some part of that past crept into my mind in the form of the Apple Emate Newton. We used these in middle school which for me was from 1998-2001. Starting in 6th grade, a teacher would roll a cart full of these durable, translucent plastic things into the room (I had first period math class, where they were most used in my case) and we used them to do things we could have otherwise done on paper. 

But they were novel. Heavy for their size and very sturdy feeling. They had a display that was lcd with a glowing backlight similar to my Timex Indiglo and a stylus that could be used to draw numbers and letters. You could draw a character and it would turn it into the number or letter you wrote out. Pretty interesting stuff for it's time. A favorite feature of us kids was to 'x' something out which made the x'd out thing explode on the little screen. They had the ability to talk to each other with an IR port as well, like a Gameboy Color. That must have been all the rage for simple data transfer in the late 90s, and it is still pretty cool.

We used a tip of the iceberg's worth of features on those Newtons but just interfacing with something like those contributed to us being able to use technology better as a whole that the generation before us. We definitely were right on the precipice of the tech we use today in the late 90s.

The novelty of things like these was so great back then. I remember being super interested in a type of texting walkie talkie. The idea of talking to a friend in another class covertly was incredible. I think they claimed a 500ft range! I never got one of them, but having a phone you could text on wasn't even a thought to us in 1998. A quick search tells me these were probably the Cybergear text messenger, if you're interested.

I couldn't find much on them.

Exactly as I remembered.

Post Surgery 8 Weeks- Jumping Into Riding and Suncoast

I don't take too many pictures. Every time I get on social media I realize this, although I don't think about it to much. Kelly takes enough pictures, (especially of the cat) for both of us. It only seems to be a problem when thinking about posting something here, occasionally on the social media. People dig pictures.

Finding my groove over the last 8 weeks hasn't been particularly bad or difficult. The weather has been ok and my recovery has been mostly as expected according to everything I had read. Some difficulty swallowing, liquid especially. But it seems to be getting gradually better, along with my habits changing to reflect how this thing works.

My focus has shifted to riding, trying to get used to big rides, resting enough but pushing that edge to hasten gainz bro. It makes me feel old- I bought my first CD as Suncoast:

My friends and I decided we were to go hang at the mall like adults, or something. Someone had the idea to start the evening at the Olive Garden. Real fancy like. Post dinner, fueled by chicken parm and endless breadsticks we pointed our (banned) laser pointers towards the mall across the parking lot and followed to get into whatever kids do at the mall.

Going to the mall unsupervised at 13 was a pretty good time. Plenty of other kids in your age range and if your money is green they treat you (almost) the same as an adult.

But what is interesting at the mall for 13 year old kids? The weird karate(?) studio that sold janky katanas for one. I never grew out of toys so KB of course, Pokemon cards wherever they might be found, and the Suncoast store. So. Many. CDs. "Parental Advisory: Explicit Content". If there was ever a question if lawmakers are out of touch, this should be it. Maybe it's just because they're subject to public opinion, but that label is certainly not a deterrent, you had to have the label.

People who drink diet pop are the same who buy edited cds. I can hear their thoughts now: "It's just like the real thing, but it will make me healthier" as they watch 'Real Housewives' and eat the Little Debra Zebra Cakes.

Anyway, that's how I bought the Marshall Mathers LP in 2000. Pretty sick, like pointing a laser pointer at the back of the mall guard's head.

Linx Procedure and Experiences 2 weeks post.

In my previous post, I described my time with the Bravo device and barium swallow. About a week after the results, I went in for surgery to get the Linx device 'installed'.

I was first case of the day, which was great to get the surgery over as early as possible for me! It's a laparoscopic surgery. I had 5 holes in my abdomen. 4 probably had 5mm trocars, and one bigger, 12mm (probably). the surgeon and team inflate ones abdomen to make some room, then place the trocars, and the whole surgery is done through those holes! Pretty wild. It took the team about 1.5 hours to get everything done, and the Linx placed.

I was told that some tissue is trimmed around the diaphragm to see if there is any significant gap where the esophagus passes through the diaphragm, or any other anomalies can be seen, then the esophagus is sized, and the Linx is appropriately sized.

An overnight stay in the hospital is normal, I was eating soft foods and drinking soon after to ensure everything worked properly and get the ball rolling. The surgery left me with a good deal of pain, and I needed some pain relief through the night. It wasn't a terrible stay. My friends and Kelly hung out at different times, and the nurses took good care of me through the night.

The next morning the my doctor. (Dr. Garwood) came to check in on me and I was set to go. I was prescribed some codeine, ibuprofen, anti-nausea, and a laxative. They were all liquid. i ended up just using the ibuprofen.

The following week was full of a good bit of pain. I went back to work 4 days post surgery. Eating every two hours or so was probably the biggest challenge with food and drink aggravating my esophagus as it struggled to get things going properly. Two weeks in, I am a bit better off, have learned how to ease into eating and drinking. Once things are going well, I can actually drink and eat alost normally. There is still some pain and fatigue, but I am already riding my bike more and think the Linx is suppressing acid/bile reflux. Every day seems a bit better.

Chris

Bravo?

A large part of reactivating this was to share my Eosinophilic Esophagitis (EOE) story. Everyone is an expert with the advent of the internet of course, but I've been reading any proper studies and reports I can find about EOE since it started affecting my life so much. Because of the pain I struggle with, I believe my EOE to be caused in part by acid infiltration in the esophagus. There are studies to support this so it's more than just a hunch. I have been largely avoiding foods that I think are triggers for my EOE, but even on a strict elimination diet the pain persisted, and seemed to be caused by 'classic' gerd foods, and foods with a low chance of being allergenic to me.

It also happens that a friend and customer at the shop is a surgeon who does a procedure with a device called Linx which I had found as a solution to reflux that isn't controlled well by drugs or diet (potentially me). It took some time, switching insurance for 2020, but I've undergone a series of tests to vet me for this procedure.

The first was esophageal mamnometry, a copper snake that is fed down your nose and past your epiglottis into your stomach, then one swallows gulps of water and the snake senses the peristalsis to give a read on your overall muscular contractions. This can find many things but in me wasn't super conclusive, but not bad data either. The next was a test for reflux. There are two ways to do this test as I understand. There is a snake type probe that also goes through the nose and into the stomach, it's much smaller in diameter than the mamnometry probe, but stays in for 24 hours. I tried this but couldn't tolerate it well. The second method is a little probe called Bravo. It's stuck onto the esophagus and wirelessly speaks to a receiver unit kept on your person. This was a great solution, especially as I really needed to get another endoscopy (EGD) to see what things looked like in there and test the amount of eosinophils in my lower esophagus. Last time it was checked back in 2018 was also when my esophagus was dilated and the count was more than 100 per field (pretty high). Normal is less than 10 and really closer to zero than 10. I had been taking some compounded oral Budesonide which is one of the proven ways to lower counts, but was still having pain.

As I write this I still have the Bravo device in (it falls off after a few days) and tomorrow I will return the transmitter so data can be retrieved. I am also waiting for the biopsies to come back with eos counts. If the counts are still high this doesn't necessarily mean that I am not a candidate for the Linx, but if the counts are low it suggests that something other than EOE is causing my pain, which is my preference to be more sure that the Linx will help. That, and reflux-y data from the Bravo. A slight problem is that in the few days with the Bravo my pain hasn't been bad even though I'm really trying to mimic pain inducing behavior. We'll see.

Tomorrow I am also getting a Barium swallow test to make sure the muscular contractions in my esophagus are enough to open the Linx, which is essentially a magnetic candy necklace-looking thing that is put around the esophagus.

I have some great adventures that I have been pushing back and back as this condition has been limiting me so getting the ball rolling has been exciting. More about that next time.

Reactivated

I forgot this existed. I stopped doing this years ago because part of me felt it was too narcissistic, I couldn't say what I really felt how I wanted, or maybe because I just wasn't into it.

The last real posting here was 2011- a few things have changed since then. For new readers, I raced a lot (see the schedule a few posts back) in 2011. After getting burned out mentally and financially 2012 and beyond was full of ups and downs. Riding for fun, actually getting faster through riding on my own terms, and choosing races I really enjoyed. Strava became a thing, and fitted my riding style of going for big rides and trying to go fast on the climbs.

For about a decade I experienced some gi issues. Food getting stuck in my esophagus from time to time, pain at different times that I couldn't necessarily correlate to certain foods. It didn't really seem that big of a deal, I missed some events due to it. Weddings, rides, etc. But it wasn't that frequently. In winter of 2018 it got really bad and I had to get my esophagus dilated so food didn't get stuck in my esophagus. I found out I have a condition called Eosinophilic Esophagitis (EOE). It's basically where one's esophagus is allergic to certain foods and becomes inflamed/creates scar tissue over time with exposure.

So life became interesting all of a sudden. I didn't race my bike once in 2019, a first for me since 2000. Kind of weird. being dogged by weird pain at odd times and most of the time really took the wind out of my sails. Seeing different specialists, trying to pay for medicine that didn't help of I couldn't really afford to try, then becoming desperate and going for it. It's not totally debilitating but it can be bad at times and really sapped my motivation to get going, which is difficult for me to summon as it is.

Life is good too, Kelly and I were able to buy a house in late 2018, we run the shop, Rocktown Bicycles together and have great friends and customers we love to see and work with, and generally have it good. I have been able to get the EOE under control more or less and am still pursuing solutions in that department.

I have some new and big goals for 2020. After feeling like I lost a good year of my life I want to turn this into motivation on the bike. Being 32 also feels like some pressure is on to stay in shape. I will be posting whatever I want, more EOE stuff, bike stuff, car stuff, toy stuff. Sometimes it will be cross posted to the Rocktown blog if it's bike stuff.