Friday, September 18, 2009

Surviving being a patient

I want to preface my accident with this. A couple weeks ago, I was with my son in Moab, we went canyoneering and repelling, mountain climbing, rafted and kayaked and swam the Colorado River, 3 hours of horseback at the bottom of monument valley, hiked Hovenweep, climbed in the Abajo mountains, explored ancient ruins, even pilgrimaged to Four Corners, all in a weeks time, I did not get hurt. Granted for a guy crowding fifty, I had my opportunities, my fourteen year old son did fine of course. Mountain biking on the red rock, slick rock I crashed into a pricker bush, on the edge of a canyon cliff, but other than embarrassment and a few scrapes-no big deal.

So I come home and a feel later, have a nice dinner with my wife at a friends house, and he shows me his toys in his garage. One of them was a motorized scooter. Now I have only driven motorcycles a couple times in my life in college, and I figured this thing is more like a bicycle. How hard can it be?

I went around his driveway, as he lives in the country, and still not knowing what I was doing, thought I had it sort of figured out, I came back and told my wife to hope on and we took off, and that's about all I remember.

We were in gravel and these things don't do so well on gravel. I don't know if I was trying to turn, or hit a rock, but somehow ended up landing on the left side of my face. No helmet-everything we teach our children not to do- it was only his driveway,

2 comments:

David Schantz said...

Joseph,

This post was great, you might understand why I say that after reading my comment.I do hope your OK. I've been in my fair share of motorcycle and bicycle accidents. A case of road rash can be very painful. It doesn't matter if you laid on asphalt, concrete or gravel, it can tear you up.

Saint Joseph, Missouri is on the Tour Of Missouri bicycle race. That brought some top name international racing names into the area earlier this month. I used to ride a lot so this got my attention. I still have a couple of bicycles out in the garage, I haven't been on them in twenty years. My Wife has ask why I keep them in the past. With all this bicycle talk in our local news I decided I'm going to start riding again. Let me add Saint Joseph is like Duluth in some ways, hilly. Racing or mountain biking is out of the question after going this long without ridding. I got the old touring bike out and went for an eight block ride, down hill. I turned and started back home. I made it six blocks before I had to get off and push. When I turned into my alley I got back on, couldn't let the Wife see me pushing it. The next day I felt like a mugging victim. I haven't given up on the idea of getting back into ridding again, it's good exercise. I think I be hauling the bike down to a bike path on flat land to ride until I get back in shape.

God Bless America, God Save The Republic.

karen said...

I hope your Ok and how is your wife? I love to ride bikes. My son rides miles and miles . Not me I just ride around the neighborhood. Or used to . Now it is a stationary bike for me . But someday I am off again around the neighborhood. And good try David be careful.
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