Epilogue

The Barry Roubaix did not end for me at the 3:12:18 marker on the course. As I previously noted I was loopy to say the least for most of the ride home, and for the remainder of the evening. It was hard to "shut it down" for the night, and we ended up staying away until about midnight. It was then, in the dark quiet of my bedroom, when I closed my eyes that I first really felt them. There were at least three sharp edged crystals of sand wedged beneath my eyelid; two in the left, one in the right. It was hard not to rub my eyes, and I was not completely unable to resist the temptation. But I got out of bed and tried everything I could to clean my eyes. I used wet cotton swaps, toilet paper, and a squirt bottle with clean water to try and remove the foreign particles. Two of them moved out rather quickly, but a third, one of the ones in my left eye was not moving. I couldn't sleep as when I closed my eye, the particle was pushed down painfully over my cornea/iris. When it was open I couldn't really feel it.

After 15 minutes of wrestling with my eye, my girlfriend suggested that we go to the emergency room to flush my eyes. I, being the kind of guy that I am, suggested I run to the CVS on the corner and buy some saline eyedrops so instead of pouring water into my eyes, I could get something less irritating. So at midnight I got dressed back up and went to the CVS. I found the eye care aisle right away, and was pleasantly surprised to find an eye wash kit with sterile eye cup included. I checked out, went back home, and flushed my eye. I did not get the particle out, but I got it moved out from under the eye to between the lids. It was still too small to see, but it no longer caused pain to have my eyes closed. When I woke up in the morning the crystal had relocated to the corner of my eye. The world's sharpest eye gunk. There were sharp bits of sand in all four corners of my eyes. The Barry Roubaix does not wash out easily. It lingers.