A Hard Fall

This is one of those occasions when a picture is worth a thousand words.

I was totally taken down by a stick.  Out of the blue.  On a beautiful day.  On my first day out for the 2010 riding season.

I had a really hard fall.  Flat on my face. On very hard pavement.

Even though the picture says it all, I'm going to write those thousand words anyway.  I don't care if this is too detailed, too self pitying or too self indulgent. I write this for me since I don't think I can get past this thing without writing about it.  So here goes.

In less than an instant, I was profoundly unlucky and profoundly lucky.

How can that happen?  I can still barely get my head around it.

Here's what I know:  Saturday, March 6, was a beautiful, sunny day.  I'd been looking forward to dusting off my bike and getting out there for the first time since Thanksgiving morning.  My husband brought up my bike from the basement, then I spent the next hour getting myself and my bike ready.  It took longer than I expected to get out of my driveway.  Equipment and gear needed to be found, tires needed to be pumped, chain needed to be oiled and odometer needed to be reset for the year. And who can ever remember how to do that?

I consciously reminded myself to be on the lookout for potholes, sand and sticks given the wild weather we've had this wet winter season. Then I was off for an easy 11 mile loop.

I was feeling surprisingly strong despite being off my bike for exactly 100 days.  The roads were unexpectedly clear of debris. I even stopped to take a picture of my favorite roadside image:  a swamp.

I was less than two miles from home and going up the long, gradual hill that always challenges me at the end of my rides. A boy was biking up the same road as me on the opposite side. He was biking against traffic, I was biking with traffic and an oncoming car was approaching.  Given the timing, I thought it would be best to speed up and pass the boy so that the oncoming car wouldn't have to drive between two adjacent bikers on a relatively narrow and windy road.  Murphy's Law always seems to play out in these instances, where the road is completely clear. then traffic of all sorts comes out of nowhere and passes at exactly the same time.

So there I was. Clipped in, feeling strong, speeding up, facing forward in climb position.

The car approached. As the car passed, I heard a split second cracking noise.  My front tire locked instantly.  I went straight over the handlebars.  And in less than a second I was down.

It's hard to describe exactly how it felt to land face first on pavement while going 15 mph with absolutely no warning.

To say that it hurt is such a profound understatement, it's almost laughable. It was one of the most violent experiences I think anyone could ever encounter without dying.

I landed on my chin and mouth.  My top jaw went to the right; my bottom jaw went to the left.  There were missing and broken teeth, torn skin and blood.  Lots of it.  In the road, on my bike, on my florescent yellow riding jacket, on my unbroken sunglasses.  The pain was excruciating. I felt like the bottom half of my face was crushed in.

I rolled off my face and sat up in the road, stunned and disoriented. The first thing I noticed was how quiet it was.  I felt like I was in some alternate reality.  Then I looked over and saw the shocked boy stopped, staring at me, not sure whether to come over or flee.

Miraculously, I was able to stand up.  I dragged my bike out of the road, found my phone and manged to call my husband.  I remember screaming into the phone but he tells me I was relatively calm, coherent and provided all the necessary details.

I sat by the side of the road and waited for him to drive the 1.5 miles to get me.  Blood was still pouring off my face. The boy came over and handed me my thrown water bottle.  A car drove by as if nothing happened.  Another car stopped and asked if I was okay.  The woman driver turned into a side street to stay near me until my husband came.  The boy stood next to me looking like he was going into deeper shock with each passing second. I remember thanking him for his help, assuring him that my accident had nothing to do with him and then telling him he could head home.

My husband appeared and rushed over. I could barely speak but he said all the right things:  We can fix this. You'll be okay.  We're going to take you to the hospital.  We'll take care of you.

I didn't even see the stick in my front fork until he put the bike in the car.  Until that point I had no idea how I landed in the street.

We went to Lawrence General Hospital.  I was seen right away.  Examined, X rayed, stitched up and sent home four hours later to recover.  Shockingly, I broke no bones. Not my neck, not my jaw, not any of the bones in my right cheek, not even my bruised and swollen right wrist.  I was profoundly lucky.

Driving home I remember wondering if my life would be forever changed from this.  Did this happen at the exact halfway point of my life, now to send me off in a different direction than I would have ever gone before?  I guess I can save the philosophizing for another post.

So I've shared the picture and written the thousand words.  Maybe now that it's down in print I can finally put the details of my accident behind me and focus on my recovery.  Or more accurately, my recoveries - both physically and mentally.