My 23andMe Results, Tinnitus and a Rehab Casualty of Sorts

It's a breezy morning out on the deck but I'm mostly shielded from the west wind. Toby is chilling next to me. We've been getting in some nice walks with Charlie lately. We managed a total of 5.7 miles (9 km) one day recently (split up between two separate walks). That's a lot for a boy of nearly 14 years but he moves right along and sets the pace for us.

I received the results of my 23andMe DNA analysis. I'm half Finn! No surprise there, and also no surprise was the finding that I share 13.4% of my DNA with Emily in Montreal, Canada, which puts us at the higher end of 1st cousin/niece range. (There's a backstory to what I'm writing about and it can be found here.) Emily and I share 1001 cM of our DNA. If you enlarge the chart to the right (Thanks, Emily, for more fully sussing out these details.) you'll see that we again fall into the upper range for a half-niece relationship.

Unless our findings are some sort of freakish occurrence I'd say that my father is her actual grandfather rather than his brother as had been believed earlier on. Fascinating! The only way to know for sure would be to have one of our cousins' (our father's brother's children) DNA analyzed and we're hopeful that will happen. Regardless, we welcome Emily and her family into our family with open arms.

A friend recently posted a link to examples of Tinnitus on his Facebook page. Tinnitus has been the one lingering reminder of my bout with Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss from August of two years ago. Scroll down in the link above and find example #2: this is what I hear in my left ear 24/7. I'm not complaining. I'm thankful to have my hearing back and honestly, I'm able to block out the tinnitus to where it's only apparent if I'm in a very quiet place or if I happen to think about it. I had never seen a link with examples of tinnitus and thought it worthwhile to share here.

I had to call and cancel our room reservation for the race in Lutsen in a few weeks. I'm out. We'll be fully into the main-level rehab of our home then and our plans for someone to watch Toby and Charlie just fell through. The timing couldn't be worse and I didn't want to try and force this to make it happen. Being away for 4 days was a big chunk of time during all of this and I was stressing about it. There will be no repeat fat-tire class podium finish for me this year. I suppose there's still an outside chance that I'll drive up during the night (a 4+ hour trip) and arrive just before the race, get my race number, compete, and head for home but I'd prefer to be more rested. I'll see.

I had to take a week off my bikes after my fall two weeks ago. I slammed my left knee pretty hard into the trail and couldn't put much stress on it. What can't be appreciated in the video is that I was flat on the ground before the bike ever finished its summersault. What looks like a slow-motion fall happened quicker than it appeared. I'm good-to-go now!

Video from my ride a few days ago. C'mon along!



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