I played a few times last week, despite my wrists still not being up to speed following my bike crash 9 days ago.  Mostly my playing was going fine until yesterday, when I felt more discomfort than I had been experiencing prior.  One thing that changed is that the day before yesterday I started back doing some physical exercise – it had been a week since the accident and I’m really feeling the call of the karate training floor.  Of course I have to be out there teaching, vocationally, and while I can definitely take it as easy as I need to in those circumstances, it was when participating myself that it seems there’s a chance I didn’t take enough care of my wrists.  I also tried to go for a run yesterday, and found that my inner thigh muscle that has a slight pull from the crash is not ready for that either, so I aborted the run about two blocks in.  Unlike my wrists, fortunately, I don’t think my thigh is any worse for the wear.

I’m a person who only likes to slow down on my own terms, but healing is paramount, so I must force myself to take it easy.  There is no getting around the fact that the wrists took a severe beating; I’m quite sure that were it not for my karate conditioning they would have snapped like twigs.  This healing will just take some time.

So after about 15 minutes of playing yesterday I threw in the towel, having thrown in the towel on my run just a half hour before.  Discouraging.

I turned to the internet to get my violin fix, specifically to David Garrett, the German virtuoso on whom I’m developing such a crush that as I listened to a YouTube generated playlist I checked out his tour dates to see if he comes to Chicago.  Well, that was just further disappointment –  I missed him back in March at the magnificent Chicago Theatre, and no future dates are planned.

But if you’re feeling a little down perhaps Garrett will help you out too.  Here he is with what I can only guess from their auto-sing-a-long must be every German’s favorite song – it’s long been a part of my favorites list too – I do happen to be at least one-fourth German:

Thanks for reading.

Ryan