Singlespeed & Fixed Gear - Email From A Friend

I woke this morning to an email from a dear friend of more than 25 years. I thought I'd post it here for all to read:"

I sent you an e-mail but I was on heavy duty narcotics and I think I
f+cked it up. I broke 8 ribs in the front right and 4 in the back right side of
my tender extremely mortal body. Ribs hurt like a motherf+cker I bet you can
guess how I did it................yep as$ over appetite super wipe out well
actually I just fell over at about 22 miles an hour I don't know why I wrecked or
what happened but the first thing to hit was my right shoulder and head and as
I was wrecking I could feel ribs breaking my helmet is wrecked no brain
damage. Spent 3 nights in the hospital with a collapsed lung (partially collapsed)
they had me on a morphine drip like Tim O every 10 mins I could give myself a
little extra blast, like letting a lard ass guard chocolate. I made myself
sick on the stuff then they switched to dalautin then Demerol (all shot straight
into my veins every 3 to 4 hours) Bike is sorta messed up but can fix no
problem I gotta run to two doctors appointments can't wait to ride again, Chris


I called him to get the full story. Said he didn't know how he got down off the mountain but was very afraid of mountain lions.

There is nothing on earth like those moments captured between loss and impact. The cathartic hover we all remember where everything makes sense and nothing is opposed. Like being wrapped in a warm blanket. But the nakedness and brutality of contact takes it all away. I am glad your friend is well enough to tell of his experience.

he said the first 2 minutes after the impact seemed like it took 4 days to pass

understandable. I can still remember perfectly all that transpired on Milwaukee, Union, and Hubbard for me a year.5 ago as if it was 10 minutes ago. burned into memory like a sunspot on the eye.

the ER doc read the film and said it's nothing, go home and get some bed rest. Two days later he went to another doc who read the film and rushed him into surgery to wire his ribcage into place. Chris read the film and said a chimp could have recognized the broken ribs.

where did this accident take place?

in the mountains near Alta Dena, California, which is near Pasadena.

in the mountains near Alta Dena, California, which is near Pasadena.Mt. Wilson trail, most likely. Hope your friend's feeling a little better...

I was in a (somewhat) similar accident on my motorcycle. The 1/3 of a second between hearing the squeal of the truck's tires as it swerved into me and feeling my body hitting the ground seemed like an eternity. It's been almost a year. My body is almost healed, but that 1/3 of a second is seared into my brain...

Not really on a par, but I can remember exactly what I was thinking when I hit a curb and scraped myself up a few months ago: "Pick up your hands, they'll get cut to shreds" and they did :( But it's weird how your brain remembers traumatic things (but not always, the number of times you hear of people in big car wrecks and stuff saying they have no memory of it at all...).

Mayo, hope your friend is back riding ASAP :beer:

when i was 16, i was riding on the monon trail in indianapolis, and was jumped by a gang of junior high kids. they kicked my ass and stole a friends bike. nothing was broken, but i did get to go to the emergency room to get all stitched up. its actaully a moment that i enjoy having seared into my memory, very humbling. it also means im special, as ive never met anyone that was beat up by a gang of little kids, that takes class.

Mayo: Did he ever find out why this happened?

Is Tim O a friend or a character from a Tim O'Brien novel?

Tim O was a mutual friend of ours from high school that we watched die from AIDS. He had a morphine drip to help him with the pain. One night he had such a bad coughing spell that he broke two ribs. It was particularly hard because Tim was the first of our contemporaries to die. He came out at 28, was in the bath houses at 29 and was dead by 32. He was good people. Nobody didn't love Tim O. Such an F'ing waste.