eclectic_boy

I hurt. About two hours ago I had an accident riding my bike.

I'd been out for about an hour, on one of those make-random-turns-discover-new-places journeys, and was heading home, trying to ascertain which way that was. I'd managed to retrace some of my steps, and was just then wondering how to figure out which cardinal direction I ought to be heading, looking at my shadow in front of me and deciding I was probably headed a little east of north just then. I was on a small residential road. I don't remember exactly what happened, the classic momentary amnesia that seems to blot out a lot of accidents, but I know I realized the bike was going to go down. I still was moving forward, but the bike was angled perhaps 20 degrees to starboard, not a good sign. There were no potholes or any other reason why the bike would suddenly be that way. There were also no cars nearby, thank everything!

I clamped down on the brakes to slow myself as quickly as possible before I went down, and I think I may have used my feet to friction-slow as well, but that was all of half a second's doing. I came off the bike, forward and to the right, and tumbled into the street.

My first thought, besides a melodramatic "I'm alive" was "hey, that was my head that just hit the pavement. Why didn't I feel it?" Also thank everything for bike helmets. I got up in two seconds, unsure whether traffic was coming and wanting to assess just how bad I hurt. The answer was, definitely winded and agitated, definitely feeling pain in my back from hitting the road, but probably nothing severe; I could walk and move everything. I dragged the bike to the side of the road, along with the book I had with me (irony bonus: it was The Darwin Awards.)

As I was dragging it, I saw someone in the doorway of the house I was in front of. Good sign. After I dropped the bike just off the road, the door closed. Bad sign. I rang the bell and a 13-ish boy answered, told me that nobody else was home and that he couldn't let me in, but he kindly got me a drink of water and let me sit on their front lawn while I rested a bit. Three minutes later mom came home, and I explained what had happened to her. In the meantime I had ascertained that the right side of my lower back, right above the hip, definitely hurt whenever I walked. She pointed out a scrape on my upper arm I hadn't even noticed (still haven't felt, in fact, though it's definitely there). She lent me their phone and I called jMr, who blessedly drove right over and took me home. I've taken aspirin and put ice on the bruise, am moving around every ten or twenty minutes and shifting my sitting position more frequently than that, have had a half-hour lie-down until I was sure I didn't want a nap, and am in the old wait-and-see period about whether I should call a doctor now, Monday, or never.

Lyme disease last month, lower-back trauma this month... the summer of '03 is turning out to be a dangerous place!

But I'm okay, which is the important thing. (Not that I'd refuse get-well-quick emails :^)