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It’s amazing how fragile the human body really is. For example, this past weekend I was hooking up my fishing boat to the hitch on my truck when I tripped. My body spun around and twisted in odd ways trying to keep from falling and in the process I pulled a muscle in the lower-right side of my rib cage.

It hurt. A lot.

It still hurts. A lot.

From what I’ve read and learned after talking with medically-trained friends of mine, there’s not a lot I can do about it to make it heal faster other than keep from making it worse. Ice and pain killers can ease the discomfort, somewhat. The problem is, it hurts doing just about everything other than blinking my eye. Breathing hurts, sitting hurts, let’s not even talk about coughing, hiccuping, sneezing, laughing, etc. I walk like I’m an arthritic 98-year old man.

Needless to say, I’m about to begin the longest dry spell of non-riding since I began traveling on two wheels back in October 2006. Until now the longest I went without riding was 19 days this past December during a period of record snow fall in our area. 23 inches of snow fell at my house and it took a very long time to melt off.

I’m not a happy camper, but from what I read it’s best not to get impatient and push things until I’m fully healed, otherwise I will extend my recovery time at the very least or cause permanent damage at the worst.