Ted's ability to waste time...

The first of many long posts.

I’m not even sure where to begin…it’s been a rough few weeks…

As most of you know I was pasted by a car while out for a training ride on April 15.  My life has changed a lot since then and it has been suggested that I write about many things to help deal with the pain, anger, depression, and boredom…so here goes…

On that Thursday I got off work a bit early and headed back to Cheney to grab my stuff to head back to Pullman for the night before we headed to Walla Walla for what was to be a fun weekend of racing, food, and wine.  I’ve been living like a gypsy for months with half my life being in Cheney/Spokane (since I work in Spokane) and the other half in Pullman (since my permanent address has been there for years and Allison is still there finishing her M.S. off)…so I had become quite accustomed to driving from Spokane to Cheney and back to Pullman.  The plan was to get a quick ride in Cheney before I headed home and get all the bikes ready for the trip to Walla Walla on Friday.  Packing the car was going to be interesting since we were taking 3 people, 5 bikes, and a dog (we were shuttling Bibs there) so I wanted to get some of that done Thursday night. I also wanted to drink wine and eat cheese since I was going to “behave” in Walla Walla.  I expected to do well there this year.  (note:  “do well” for me is a top 20, after all…I’m a mid-pack cat 3 rider on a good day).

Digression #1

At the time, my 2010 cycling season was nothing to write home about but I didn’t care since Walla Walla was my first real goal.  I had raced quite a few times but, as usual, had no real results.  I went into almost every race already buried with tired legs…but my goal was Walla Walla so pack fodder was fine with me.  By some strange act of God I had shed weight in the winter and was lighter than I had been in nearly 15 years.  By some other strange act of God I had also increased my 20MP wattage by 20 watts over the previous year.  The weekend before Walla Walla I raced the Rhonde van Palouse (75 miles of pain), hopped in the car, drove 6 hours to the West side and raced the Olympic View Road Race (90 miles).  I did not have super fresh legs at OVRR yet was still able to help real in an incredibly strong break (how we caught those guys is beyond me, there was some serious horsepower in that break).  I felt very good about my fitness.  A couple rides on the TT bike were all I would need to recover for Walla Walla and I’d be ready to go…

The TDI was packed and ready to go.  I called Allison and she was going to head out for a ride in Pullman while I would do the same in Cheney.  In my few short months in Cheney I learned to really love the riding there.  I have raced those roads so many times in my life and now they were part of my regular training rides.  I decided on a quick ride out and back on Cheney-Plaza Road.  Less than 3 miles out of town it happened.  I found myself flying through the air.  I heard a horrible noise, saw my TT bike fly under me, and saw a car screeching ahead of me.

I thought to myself, “FUCK, this is it”.  I thought I was going to die.  I really did.

Digression #2

This is not my first time getting hit by a car while riding my bike.  If you ride your bike enough you will get hit and it won’t be your fault.  Sorry, it’s the truth.  It sucks.  My first time getting hit was when I was a wee lil’ kid and I’m pretty sure I was heading to Kevin Head’s house for a cub scout den meeting (I think).  I was grazed by someone.  No harm, no foul.  They stopped and we talked.  I knew who the guy was (I think he was in my older brother’s high school class).  That was so long ago can’t quite remember all the details.  The second time was in July of 1993.  That summer I left the suburbs of Chicago to live with my sister who had moved to Spokane the previous year.  It was a fun summer, I worked at Two Wheel Transit, rode my road bike a lot, and mountain biked a ton.  Coming back from a mountain bike ride a kid lost control of his car and hit two of us.  I shattered the guy’s windshield with my ass and then he hit a phone booth (remember those?) and I was thrown again.  The most serious injury was an avulsion fracture of left PCL.  In fact, that knee is very unstable to this day.  The most severe injury though was to my psyche.  I pretty much stopped riding on the road due to a fear of cars (which is kind of funny since I went back to school at NIU in DeKalb, IL…where there are not a lot of cars out in the farmlands).  I was young and an idiot.  I was not wearing a helmet.  I was lucky. (note: helmet wearing occurs at all times now, I learned something).

I hit the ground…hard.  I flew 15 feet from the road and landed on some rocks.  I did a quick check of my body.  I was, to my surprise, alive. I could move all extremities but I hurt like I never have hurt before in my life.  I grabbed my phone and called 911.  I knew my left leg was broken as well as my right wrist.  I saw huge flaps of skin torn away from both elbow and blood pouring out of them (the deputy who is working the case said something about the amount of blood that I left, also I am not going to talk about the driver of the car in this post since a lot of things are still pending…I will say that he stopped…which I was very happy about).  I was going into shock while on the phone with 911 and I knew it.  It’s strange feeling to be cognoscente enough to know that your body is shutting down to preserve itself.   I started to panic inside a bit because I found myself thinking of internal injuries (there is a bad pun there somewhere).  Once the first-responders got there I got off the phone with 911 and called Allison to interrupt her ride and tell her to head up since I’d be going to some hospital (her account can be seen over at her blog).  I called my parents too.  I then asked; scratch that, begged for drugs.  The pain was excruciating.  I have never been in that much pain in my life, getting hit by the car in 1993 was a cake walk…even my nasty crash at the Gig Harbor circuit race a few years earlier was maybe a splinter compared to this.

EMT dude to me: “You feeling okay?  You look a little grey”

My response “No, I’m not okay…I just got hit by a fucking car and I’m in a ton of fucking pain and in shock!”  I’ll always be honest with my responses…

The trip from Cheney to Spokane was excruciatingly long.  I knew every turn we were taking.  I knew it would be 20+ minutes…I just wanted to get there and get cleaned up and learn how bad it was.  I just laid there on the backboard with a neck-brace on.  The backboard was so comfortable compared to the jagged rocks I was laying on a short time earlier.  I was parched and hungry.  I started to think about how this pretty much ruined Walla WalIa, my job, the summer, everything.  I felt horrible about making A-bomb miss Walla Walla.  Her parents were going to come and watch.  We had a house rented so the dogs could come, restaurants were picked out and reserved…everything was fucked now.  Then I thought about work and how well my science was going and how that was done too (there are so very few peaks in science and so many valleys, I was ascending a great peak at the time of the accident).  My head was swimming with so many thoughts and none of them to positive.

EMT person says “you’re lucky to be alive, it could have been worse”.  I’ve heard this from so many people and everyone is right.  It could have, more likely *should have*, been worse since nothing good ever comes from getting hit from behind by a car that is going 55mph, but no, I’m not lucky.  Unless it’s bad luck we are talking about.  This is the problem with accidents.  People always want to put a positive spin on the situation (which I guess is a good thing), but rarely is an accident a good thing.  Shelve the word “lucky” when someone you know is in an accident.  It sucks.  I was in the ER for about 6 hours.  I had 24 x-rays taken.  It took almost an hour to clean up the one elbow.  There were rocks (not pebbles) visible in the x-ray.  I was in a lot of pain and was getting enough dilaudid to sedate a small army.  It never seemed to be enough.  The deputy came in and talked to me, but that’ll be a story for some other day.   I was still parched and hungry.  I spoke with a few friends and family members on the phone, joked around with the ER staff, and shed a few tears (from both the pain and the emotional toll it was taking on me).  The highlight of the evening was meeting a freshman girl from Gonzaga who was observing the action in the ER.  I had such a variety of injuries that I was a good specimen to observe.  As soon as the ER doc started cleaning my elbow the poor girl turned white and said “okay, I think my three hours are up).  That gave me a good chuckle.  Allison informed me later that she was pretty sure she saw bone in the elbow. Yuck.

I eventually got some food…around 1:00 a.m. which was about the same time I got into a room.   Barely slept.  The pain was bad and every hour or so I was woken up by a nurse or nurses assistant to check my vitals.  Every time I did fall asleep I dreamt of getting hit by the car.  Oh joy.  There I was; 2:00 a.m. lying in a hospital bed in a room alone, not knowing what was next, not fully comprehending what happened…

…it was an awful place to be yet I knew it would be okay.   It had to be right?