Scott Nydam

Day one of the Sierra Challenge started off a lot like the day before: I slept in to 8am. The problem with this is that the Challenge itinerary was to have me at the trail head in Mono Village, on the west side of Twin Lakes, at 5am. The added dilemma was that, after I woke, I still had 2 more hours to drive before I got there.

The original thought behind this whole revitalized blogging campaign is that I want to write about how I have been “through the trenches” this past year, and that I have come out again, sharp, clean-cut, and once again sprightly.  But, as you can see from the paragraph above (and I am sure the stories to follow) I doubt that will happen on any level entirely successful.

I am now sitting at a table outside my room at El Mono Motel adjacent to Latte Da coffee shop along Hwy 395 in Lee Vining. I’m not so much “roughing it” as planned, but . .. not much else, as far as planning, is going as planned.  This, perhaps, is the one good decision I’ve made in the past 24 hours. Here’s what I mean:

I drove south from Lake Tahoe where I bivouacked in the back of the truck. Stopping off at Sorenson’s Cafe in the little Sierra town Hope Valley, I made my way toward Twin Lakes to find the trail head and get a (late) start. The days are long and the weather promising; I could still move fast and cross much of the terrain I was hoping to; I could get out before dusk; and I could cook a good dinner on the tail gate of my Tacoma with my propane Coleman stove that has been disgracefully under-utilized since becoming a full-time road cyclist and confined to the bike + indoor comforts, having few propane adventures between. My parents gave me the Coleman stove for Christmas the winter of ‘06 when I moved out of my cottage in Eldorado Springs, CO to begin my personal low-income and low-GDP-contribution lifestyle as an amateur cyclist (in the true sense of the term) for the Rio Grande/Sports Garage Cycling Team out of the front range Rockies.  It was the only Christmas gift I listed when my mother sent out the annual inquiry for seasonal “needs”; it was the only thing that I concerned myself with having. .. I needed a place to cook food while I was out on long, epic days of training/racing on the frontier, homeless-jobless Wild West.

So, there I was this morning, driving toward  Twin Lakes equipped with a retrofit motif left behind years ago when I moved to Santa Rosa to race for BMC.  I guess that’s “what you do when you’re not racing your bike”, you make old dreams come true.  Or, you put yourself in a place where you can make new ones.

I was listening to seminar given by Eckhart Tolle who wrote the books The Power of Now and The New Earth, the latter being the only one that I have read; a book that takes a certain pallet to read, and one that breaks down and dissects the incessant thinking that we humans, in this culture we know, are trapped into. If the book happens to come up on conversation, I tell people I know to give it a shot.  Even if I didn’t know ya, I’d tell you to give it a shot. But, I would also tell you to keep in mind that I sent out 5 copies to a few of my close friends or brothers who I  thought would at least raise an eyebrow at it, and I haven’t really gotten much word back [note: skip the first 25 pages and start from there].  My traumatic brain injuries and symptoms thereof caused me to take into consideration a multitude of things going on in the mind, or not going on, for that matter. In fact, it forced me to. My experience in daily life and relationships had become different. .. so, the number one thing my Neuropsych doctor told me to do was to “put my feet up” so to speak: meditate and calm the thinking (or my scrambled attempt at thinking) while the brain re-wired itself (re-wire is a bad metaphor, by the way. Every neuron is like an island with a synaptic water-based gap between itself and the next, i.e there’s no continuous wire). While having to deal with symptoms, the outcome of the events put a lock down on my racing, sending life in a new different direction; placing my name on a wait list for those hoping to receive a new “hobby” (as the Stanford Neurology Dept scientifically referred to my career), a new way to fill my day, my life.. . a new objective. You can perhaps see that I have had a lot to think about.

What did/does cycling do to my life?

The thing Tolle was talking about this morning was closely related to the reasons my Neuropsych doctor eventually started encouraging me to ride my bike again: it’s like meditation. Tolle talks about the two basic, separate things going on in one’s mind, thinking and awareness. Thoughts are thoughts (dugh), and if all we did was think, we’d think ourselves into oblivion. But there is also this human capability of awareness.  We can think, but we can also be aware of ourselves and our thinking. Though it’s difficult to articulate into words, awareness is (or can be) a highway of indelible information; it effects us on an inextricably deep level. More specific, I believe it’s the foundation of one’s relationship with the bike. That’s how and why you can tell when your saddle is 2mm to low, or one need to make a cleat adjustment, or “something just doesn’t feel right”, or “I feel good” etc. Thoughts about riding the bike are only bi-products of the primary experience of  awareness.

Never mind.

Where was I?

I made it to Mono Village and pulled up to the entrance to the RV nation campground. The campground “host” jumped out of his seat as I pulled up and got out my truck. “No stopping! You’ll block traffic,” he exclaimed.  I looked behind me and saw no cars, so I gently said, “I have one quick question.”

“Okay, one quick question” he replied.

“Where’s the trail head for Horse Creek?” I asked.  Click, the door to the truck closed behind me.

You see, I’m a Volkswagen man. VWs are idiot-proof, you need a key in order to lock the drivers side door. . .. but a Toyota, on the other hand, you can jump out to ask a quick question to someone standing at a campground booth and, low and behold, quicker than you shake a stick at, lock yourself out of your truck with the engine still running.

I ran over to the passenger side, began prying the cab window open and bash! I shattered the entire window.

I’m now windowless and theft-vulnerable anywhere I park and abandon my truck for hours while I’m on trail or where ever. That’s what led me to El Mono Motel. I piled all my stuff in a little hotel room, safe and sound, so I can hike and climb conscience-free. I have a date with a repair shop in Carson City on Monday, 2pm. What day is it?

I took the opportunity from the motel to grab just my day pack and drive up into the Park and do research on the remnants of a previous micro, self-induced epic earlier in July. This episode was relatively benign, and not really worth mentioning, except it fits so nicely in the theme for today. Nearly a month ago, I took a trek up to the Young Lakes above Tuolumne Meadow in Yosemite National Park to climb Mount Conness. Staying overnight in the high country meant that I had to put anything scented, appetizing, and bear-desirable into the bear proof boxes provided at the trail head. Upon doing so I thought to myself, “Shoot, I should probably write myself a note not to forget that thing,”  which was a tub full of semi-expensive back country culinary equipment and a weeks worth of dehydrated food.  Sure enough, a couple days later returning home from the trip, driving somewhere near Petaluma, I realized I had forgotten it.

“Oh, Scott. Everybody does that sort of thing. You can’t blame that on your TBI.”

The good news is that the tub, full of gear, was still there when I went to retrieve it today, 3 1/2 weeks later.  A very friendly Ranger helped me out. So stoked, I grabbed a few Snickers bars and stashed the tub again and got dressed for an afternoon blast toward the Cathedral Traverse. I was all dressed and SPF’d for the afternoon sun. One last thing, as I was standing there in my flip flops, “Where are my trekking shoes?”

The challenge in talking with neurologists about brain injury is that we know more about the bottom of the sea than we do about the function of the brain. There is little known in comparison to other body parts. The brain and its capacity to function remains largely a mystery. If you brake a bone, or have a knee problem, Western medicine can take an Xray, or a scope, and they can give you precise feed back. With TBI it’s not so simple. The most you can do is a get a basic idea of what has happened, and then work with a general idea of what to do or not to do based on general ideas of what has happened with other people in the past. An MRI or a CT scan can detect a bleed or a hemorrhage, and then you can later undergo a neuro-psychological examination, and then they can give you a general idea of how well your brain functions in comparison to other people with generally similar socio-economic and generally similar educational backgrounds. They cannot, though, give you an exact reading on where you’re at and/or where you should be. Every TBI is different, and all individuals, due to age or genetics, experience a TBI differently.
In light of this obscurity, the old school neurological approach is to err on the side of caution. In recent months there has been attention drawn to “mild” and “moderate” traumatic brain injuries due to life complications suffered by many of the aging NFL veterans. Due to the fact that many sports, such as American football, encourage athletes to “tough it out”, recognition for TBIs are most often unaccounted for. Part of the difficulty in dealing with a head injury (especially mild to moderate cases) is that there is little account for it, and, quite simply, people don’t want to use their healthy brains to think or talk about it–just as people don’t want to talk about the topic of death, or, happy newlyweds don’t want to talk about the topic of divorce. Just like anything, there is a rift between those who know about the effects of brain injury and those who don’t; those who they have experienced or have had or seen someone else experience the aftermath of TBI and those who can’t or don’t consider it. There are nuanced yet significant effects of TBI. If a few wires within the walls of your house were cut, and you walked into the living room and sat in you favorite chair and reached to turn on the reading lamp above and nothing happened, it would probably change your “favorite” relationship. Yet, people would drive by; they’d see a few lights on in the house and think to themselves “They’re fine, everything looks normal. When’s Scott’s next race?” Ther majority of people who know little about TBI and have never had a friend or family member go through it. Until a few months ago I was one of those. In the process of trying to understand TBI, while simultaneously experiencing the onset of the symptoms, the stories and accounts told to me through this website and email were invaluable. (THANK YOU!)
The mind is a beautiful thing. . . and even with the few symptoms that I have had, resulting in incapability to experience things as I had in the past, I was made aware of the infinitesimal amount of things going on and through your brain, even in the most mundane experiences. This, rightly so, should be prized and taken care of. . . perhaps erring on the side of caution to protect.
This past summer, being told that my season was done and that I was then (and still so) within a dangerous window of time and that I should NOT do anything to put myself at risk of another head injury, I still rode my bike. I strapped on my Road ID and irrationally hoped that it would somehow protect me from hitting the ground or getting hit by a car–it DOES however make me safer (knock on wood) post-incident. This gave me the courage to go against the doctor’s orders. Though, I remember rolling out west of town on a narrow, twisty road thinking “Man, this is dangerous.” Then, the next thought, “When has this never been?”

Before I light into the obscure, I should probably put down some words about the unambiguous, the known, the irrefutable.
Over the past seven months, as I have slowly recovered from traumatic brain injuries (note: plural), as I have made my return to neurological “normalcy,” I have began to accept the irrefutable.
The irrefutable is this: I have well respected medical doctors who believe it would be unwise for me to return to racing.
The thing about this irrefutable belief is this: it applies to everyone. That is, if you wish to be safe and not crash on your bike, don’t ride it.
It’s very simple—or, no it’s not.
*At this point I would normally fall to the temptation to elaborate on the obscurity of my future, and the obscurity of what is exactly a good idea to do with it. But, I won’t. I’ll save it for the end, the gran obscuritas.
The irrefutable is this: I have a Team and management looking after me. Gavin Chilcott, Jim Ochowicz, and team Dr. Scott Major have gone to great lengths (at times greater than that my own) to put my in-the-grand-scheme-of-things interest and neurological-physical safety as the highest priority. Credit to my denial and to my somewhat blind desire to return to what I know I love, the Team has taken more serious than I the diagnosis and conviction of the doctors. Even then, with the uncertainty of my being granted clearance from the medical world, they have honored the terms of my contract and are committed toward helping me, not only on the right path toward full recovery, but also in finding the best testing and evaluation,.
Just after the New Year, and shortly before January team camp, I have an appointment with the University of Utah Orthopedic Center in Salt Lake City. There they have a Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R) department that specializes in traumatic brain injury (TBI) and “sports concussion management.” Their protocol for evaluation is that of the IMPACT program developed by the University of Pittsburgh used in evaluating NFL, NHL, and other professional athletes who have experienced TBI. The program helps athletes in their pursuit to “return to play.” The irrefutable thing that they will further diagnose is the fact that I have had, in my life time, five significant concussions. Four times they have resulted in a loss of consciousness. The last of these was not only a concussion but a contusion, a bleed to the right frontal lobe. These events place me in a category of high risk. The obstacle isn’t necessarily the tissue of the brain and its ability to repair itself. The tissue of the brain (provided you no longer injure it) has a good capacity to regenerate and heal. This has been referred to as “plasticity.” Rather, in my case, the concern has to do with the supportive casing that holds the tissue in place within the skull. The supportive casing does not repair as quickly, or so well, leaving the brain tissue more susceptible to injury in the process.
They (being the neurologists) say that TBIs have a cumulative effect. It could be assumed that the extent of my last injury (the contusion) was a cumulative result of all the head injuries prior to it. As I stand now, even without any further TBI, I am statistically a candidate for the early onset of not-so-positive-things-to-think-about like dementia, memory loss, or Alzheimer’s, to name a few.
More on the irrefutable: I love to ride my bike. It is a vehicle, for me, in more ways than just getting from one place to another. It is a metaphor, which comes from the Greek metapherein, “to transfer,” or akin to “transport;” something used, or regarded as being used, to represent something else: emblem; symbol.

“Covering 100 miles on foot was more than a lesson in survival, it was an education on the grace of living. Running is a solo sport, but it was no longer about me anymore; I became almost irrelevant. My struggles were not about a single runner trying to finish this unfathomable challenge but about the greater ability of a human being to persevere against unsurmountable odds. The many supporters who’d provided encouragement and strength along the way didn’t really care about me per se—hell, they didn’t even know who I was. What they cared about was that a person had taken the time to train, and sacrafice, and dedicate himself wholeheartedly to the pursuit of a dream. It was a powerful message; I was just the host. And proud to be. Upholding my end of the commitment meant crossing the finish line, and I was now going to make damn sure that happened. For all of us.”

–Dean Karnazes Ultra-Marathon Man: Confessions Of An All-Night Runner

Dean showing his documentary on running 50 marathon in 50 consecutive days in 50 different states

I think I may have found the giving tree, or maybe it’s the tree of life. The fern Tree.
Red Hill, Sonoma Coast.

A very cool video Oct 5 blog from father/son Bill/Liam Flanagan FatherSonTour
and
VeloNews.Comeback for Nydam