Why they warn you not to drink alcohol while you are taking muscle relaxants

I arrived in Cleveland last night to visit a colleague I admire. She has a lovely home and family. We had a great family meal with her 14 y/o and 10 y/o daughters each having a friend over and a drop-in resident for dinner. Young energy is wonderful to observe and be a part of.

Today was a spectacular day here sunny skies and scattered clouds, mid 80’s and humidity below 40%. It does not get much better than that.

We drove to Peninusula OH which is in the southern part of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park and rode south to just north of Akron. The ride in the park was mostly shaded and beautiful:

I didn’t see any geese today but there was this heron:

On the way back, as we were crossing a street and reentering the trail, I evidently lost focus and bumped into one of the barriers to keep cars from going on the trails. I wish I had a slow motion video because I think it was a pretty graceful fall. I landed on my back and did not hit my head and knew my neck was fine. I felt a bit of a sensation in my lower back that concerned me initially. I could tell pretty quickly that I had not broken a arm or a leg. I rolled over and waited a bit for the shock/anger at myself/embarrassment to wear off. I stood up slowly and checked out the bike which was my biggest concern. It looked fine. I spent a couple of minutes stretching my back and as I had good range of motion and limited pain I thought I was fine to ride the rest of the way back to the car and I was. While I could feel the scrape on my ankle while I was riding, this evening I noted the bruise on my foot.

When we got back to Peninsula, we had lunch before driving the 30 minutes back. After a shower, I took a muscle relaxant, a non-steroidal, used a heating pad and had a nap. When I woke up pain was no worse and perhaps a bit better. I went for a short walk to loosen up and had a gin and tonic before dinner. I quickly noted I was feeling far too good for the amount of alcohol I had consumed. As I had no responsibilities and was not going to drive I continued to drink my G and T. I felt wonderful but there is no way I should have been driving, operating heavy machinery or even using the knife in the kitchen. The warning on the label is a correct.

We had dinner outside. The buzz from the G/T slowly receded and it was the end of a wonderful day.

Hopefully, I will not be too sore in the morning. We are going to try to do a shorter ride around the neighborhood and get a pedicure before I take off for Columbus around 1 PM.