What a long tough road it’s been...

So, what’s the upshot?

A broken rib, a broken ankle, a bunch of stitches along my left eyebrow, scraped knees and a nice patch of road rash along the top of my forearm.

So, I dropped the bike sometime around three pm and I walked back into my door around 9:30. A long, long day is what I call it.

So in the last 48 hours I finished up my four month gig (officially numbering me among the vast multitude of the unemployed) and managed to really injure myself shortly afterward.

I’m upset but not as upset as you might think.

First off, I wasn’t going altogether fast when I dropped the scooter. However, since the thing weighs in the neighborhood of 350 lbs, dropping it is not at all a small matter. The curve I went into was a very sharp one and while I wasn’t going particularly fast, I did do what anyone riding a two wheeler (or any driver for that matter) should do which is try and make the turn ‘straighter.’

You do this by swinging out wide going into a turn, cutting across the lane to swing towards the inner part of the lane at the peak of the curve and then swinging back out. The curve in question is a 320° curve, you basically go into and then come back out going in almost the opposite direction.

So, everything is fine, I throttle down leading into the curve, swing wide, cut across the lane to the inside and prepare to swing back out when my rear tire runs over the double yellow line. The conditions are dry, it’s sunny out but I’m leaning as I take the curve and while the road has grab, the painted yellow line doesn’t. My rear tire tacks out far enough to drop me down on the pavement hard and I continue to slide on my side back out of the lane into the curb.

Most of the time when I ride, I’ll where a jacket or something. Today I happened to be wearing jeans and a t-shirt. I was wearing my boots though, my helmet and gloves but I real came down on the pavement quite solidly. Of course I had a 300 plus pound scooter on top of me.

So, left ankle broken and left rib broken. Stitches where the helmet jammed into the side of my eyebrow ridge so hard it tore a deep gash into the skin.

Now get this... it was right in front of the Trump National Golf Club. So the guy who mans the gate comes out and checks to see if I’m alright, he saw the whole thing, knows I wasn’t going that fast but also saw me come down hard.

As it was he turned out to be a fireman and offered to call the local ambulance corps. Probably a good idea but more than anything at that moment I was embarrassed about dropping the scooter. See, motorcycling (or scootering) is all about taking calculated risk. I took a series of risks today - I didn’t wear arm covering, I probably leaned in a little too much on the curve. Admittedly, I am getting more comfortable on the scooter and therein lies the problem because you can’t ever really get too comfortable.

So, whatever risk you take you have to pay a price. I took a risk and am willing to accept the price I paid. While I’m not happy about it, I’m an adult and actions do have consequences. Right now, all I’m thinking about is how I can rehab as quick as possible to get back out on the scooter again.

In the meantime, I’ll have to still file a claim bike fixed (I’m somewhat bummed I dropped my perfect scoot).

Back to our story though...

So, my leg really hurt and more than a couple of people saw that I had dropped the thing and stopped to ask if I was alright. Again, mainly my pride at the moment. I got the thing back up by myself – picture this now, I got a 300 lb piece of equipment that was lying on it’s side upright, with a broken rib and a broken ankle.

The guy came out more than once to check on me and I was just checking my wounds, getting my bearings and figuring out what I wanted to do next. He offered again to call the EMTs but I could only think of them flatbedding the scooter and then trying to figure out a way of getting back from the hospital so I decided the best thing to do was to drive the scooter home (which i did, although I think the front fork is out of whack) and then drive myself down to the hospital.

My neighbor happened to be backing out of his driveway when I pulled up and I just wanted to check in with him and when he saw me his mouth pretty much dropped. He helped me get the bike back into my garage and offered to drive me down to the ER but I just wanted to get a few things and then do it myself.

Which I did.

I got a couple of bottles of water, some things to read and paperwork I’ve been putting off doing basically because the thought of being stuck somewhere, waiting and not being able to use the time productively drives me a bit batty.

I then got in the car, drove myself down and walked into the emergency room.

Now, since I walked in - they didn’t really take much notice of me right away but apparently if I had let the guy call the EMTs not only would I have been taken to another hospital but they would have taken me to the trauma unit (yes Virginia, it was that bad).

So, after several hours which involved in no particular order a tetanus shot, a whole slew of x-rays, a cat scan and getting my leg put into a rather large splint (I have to get a cast put on Monday it seems) - I’m home.

This has perhaps underlined the disadvantages of living on my own and not really having or relying on other people. I have family but the truth is, I don’t have kids or any close brothers or sisters so whatever I do I have to kind of make it up. Not a problem a lot of the time except in instances like this.

I’ll have to work on that.

I’ve got some pretty powerful antibiotics and they gave me some serious pain medicine. I managed to fill the prescriptions they gave me because (lo and behold) the local pharmacy is actually 24 hours and a drive through to boot! The people there were also nice enough to get me some half and half I needed.

The great part of it all was being asked repeatedly by the medical staff how I got to the hospital after I dropped the scooter, when they heard the story (and given how banged up I was) they simply were dumbfounded - what can I say, I come from tough stock.