Road Rash

When I was 14-years-old I biked home from high school. I only had an hour for lunch so when I biked home, I biked quickly. Each day I'd try to improve on the previous day's time. Tighten a turn here, cut through a parking lot there.

One day in November 1994 I was biking down the busiest street on my route home. Usually I cut across this street, but on this day I biked alongside it because traffic was too heavy to cross and I'd have to stop pedaling. Three cars were coming up behind me. My plan was to swing across the street after the third car and cruise home. The first and second cars passed me, then the third and then I veered to cut across traffic.

WHAM!

Actually that's inaccurate. Before I heard the cold limp thud of my bones hitting the fiberglass frame of the car, there was the familiar screech of locked rubber tires burning into the asphalt.

SCREECH! then WHAM!

After that my memories turn into photograph slides of my body flipping over the hood onto the roof and back onto the hood before being hurled in front of the car. My memories of this are in strobe. Something then nothing then something then nothing. My wrist slamming ontp the front grill. My back against the windshield glass. My foot bouncing off the passenger side mirror.

Something then nothing.

I got up unaware of my pain and unable to escape my embarrassment. Whatever doesn't kill me mortifies me with embarrassment. Whatever doesn't kill me usually provides at least one moment worth exaggerating through my retelling to friends.

What really happened:
After peeling myself off the blacktop and gathering my contorted bike, the lady that hit me exited her car and started bitching at me about what a reckless punk I was, which caused me to limp-step myself home as quickly as possible. I basically ran home from fear and embarrassment.

What I tell people happened:
I stoically lifted my bicycle while ignoring the careless and crazed woman who hit me. I willed my broken body home.

The ending to this story remains the same: as I ambled my busted bike home I passed a couple playing tennis near the scene of the SCREECH and WHAM. As they saw me pass, one of them asked, "Hey did someone just get hit by a car?"

Thinking back they had to know that someone had because that's not the kind of thing you casually ask someone out of the blue.

"Hey do you have genital warts?"
"Hey did your company recently file for bankruptcy?"
"Hey are those my pants you're wearing?"

All those questions fall into the non-casual category. So they asked me if someone just got hit by a car and in a moment of brief awesomeness and without looking at either tennis players, I replied, "Yeah. I did."

I recalled this story sitting bent forward bleeding in a ditch of a gravel road thankful that I'm not dead.

Aside from the normal reasons to be thankful for not being dead, I was immensely happy that I didn't happen to die in this Iowa dandelion ditch in which I found myself reminiscing. That would kill my mom. All her life, if there were two things she most feared about me, it was that I'd be dead in a ditch somewhere and that I'd be far from home when it happened.

Dying in an Iowa ditch would totally validate my mother's greatest fears. What son ever wants to do that?

I hadn't been on a bike in almost 13 years until last Saturday when my girlfriend Emily suggested we pass the time by biking to a popular ice cream shop. It sounded innocent enough.

Little kids rid bikes. Ice cream is soft and enjoyable for everyone. Council Bluffs, Iowa doesn't host the same kind of manic traffic that Chicago or even Omaha does. Why wouldn't a fella? What could go wrong?

The adages that once you learn to ride a bike, you never forget and if you fall off your bike, it is best to climb back on and continue pedaling are both misleading. It's true that one never forgets how to ride a bike, but the adage should also stipulate that a refresher course will most likely be required if you haven't ridden a bike in over a decade. A short few loop-the-loops around the driveway before careening downhill at 40 mph.

The second adage about climbing back on the bike and start pedaling... well, I did that and there should be an asterisk noting that before getting back on one's bike, one should pick out all the gravel chunks from one's hip, spray iodine on the road rash and let the blood coagulate a bit before continuing on one's bike ride.

I thought my will, stubbornness and desire for an Oreo shake would propel me up the remaining hills and through the swelling pain my ripped hips and bloody joints had caused. Even more than my desire for ice cream was my desire not to appear weak or foolish in front of my girlfriend's parents.

Last year I was unable to escape this fate after I went golfing with her father and brother. I shot almost every ball into the sand traps or off the goddamned course and spent the entire afternoon wanting to crawl into the 18th hole and never come out. This year, I had golfed well. I felt I had escaped another weekend of shame. I should have known that riding a contraption I haven't been on in over a decade was a table setting for a bad meal.

Emily's mom offered us both helmets, which we declined because, y'know... why would we need helmets? We spent 10 minutes changing clothes, adjusting seats, adding air to tires, mapping our route and convincing both Mr. and Mrs. Girlfriend's Parents that we'd be fine. If you spend more than 20 seconds convincing someone that you'll be fine, I've found that you probably won't be.

We set out, starting atop the windy sub-divided hill and it only got windier as we descended it going 20 mph, then 25, then 30.

I wondered whether I should brake and whether my right-hand brake was for the front or rear tire. I wondered if I did brake, should I pull both brakes simultaneously? Should I pull them hard or ease on them?

35 mph.

I wondered if I created the sudden growing wind or if I was caught up in Mother Nature. I zipped past a road sign that said the speed limit was 35 mph and wondered if bicycles were held accountable to this too. Don't bikes always run red lights and stop signs? Yes was the answer. They do, but was it legal for all those bikes to do that? I wondered if the gravel was going to make it hard to steer.

40 mph.

I wondered how my girlfriend was doing. She was in front of me and seemed to be gliding along with ease, probably using her brakes. More wind and an oncoming car. Danger followed by panic. Gravel. Wind. Speed. The car passed me, then I passed a traffic sign indicating a winding road ahead. The oncoming car created a tailwind that added to the cyclone powering my bike down the hill. I started losing my balance. I corrected it. Shit. I've over corrected it. I tried to straighten out. Faster downhill. Panic. More overcorrection. Faster downhill.

I'm done. I'm airborne and separated from my bike. Flashback to 1994. My back against the windshield glass.

I'm already out of control by the time I decide to brace for impact. I hear the bike skid on the ground and I know what's next.

Flashback 14 years. WHAM!

What's next is generally a series of curse words; a shorthand of my agony. It's clear before I stop rolling that I'm hurt, but I won't know how hurt until I, at least, stop rolling.

They give you ice cream for missing tonsils and stubbed toes. What do they give for this and how ironic would it be if it too were ice cream?

What I should have thought was, "Oh God, am I okay?" What I actually thought was, "Oh God, I hope no one saw me beef it just now." I would really rather not show up on YouTube. When Emily stopped her bike, turned around and found me, I was huddled in a ditch thinking about getting hit by a car as a high school freshman.

I felt like Ralphie at the end of "A Christmas Story." Everyone warned him that he'd shoot his eye out if he got that bb gun. He got the gun and within minutes shot the glasses off his head. I was warned to wear a helmet and to take it easy. I ignored all that and now I feel as if someone lit my back on fire.

Emily wanted to go back. We had only been riding a few minutes. I had visions of her parents standing in the same spots they were standing when we left. Her mom still with the hose. Her dad still with pruning sheers. Everything the same, except for me. I'd return much worse than I'd left. The only reason we'd be back so soon is if something bad had happened. No ice cream. I couldn't go back to the house without having had ice cream.

It would be like last year's golf outing. I cannot present myself as a lame or a liability. I'm not weak or fragile or in need of special consideration and I'll be damned if Emily's parents are going to see me that way. I'm inpatient and therefore occasionally careless, but I didn't really want them seeing me like that either.

I replaced the chain on my bike, used toilet paper that Emily retrieved from a nearby port-o-potty to sop up the blood bubbling from my elbow and employed that second adage about climbing back on the bike. We were getting that damn ice cream. This was not a wise decision, but it is a decision I would probabaly make again in a similar situation. When we reached the shop, a few patrons looked at me as if I had traveled underground to get there. It must have been a humorous sight to see some dude cut and bloody sipping Oreo shake through a straw like nothing was wrong.

One has to have priorities. Survival is my first priority. Tending wounds is a distant third after saving face and perhaps even getting ice cream.