I’ve Got Two Legs From My Hips To The Ground, And…
When I move them, they walk around and
When I lift them, they climb the stairs and
When I shave them, they ain’t got hairs.
-From a Monty Python episode
Sadly, my legs aren’t lifting, walking around or climbing stairs very wonderfully these days. I was in a motorcycle accident that (although not nearly as dreadful as it could have been) left me scraped, bruised and limping. Someone’s vehicle leaked a six-inch wide, several-hundred-foot long slick of oil down the center of the lane we were riding in. A tiny squeeze of the brake, to slow down for a traffic signal that was turning from yellow to red, was all it took to twist the front wheel and dump the bike squarely on top of us.
We slid I don’t know how many feet; enough to first tear holes in my pants and sweater then chew up my exposed flesh. Fortunately no one ran over us from behind and, in fairly short order, two stellar human beings stopped and leapt out of their vehicles to see if we were okay. They kindly provided much-needed assistance by helping to lift the bike off us, since we were having limited luck doing so ourselves while splayed horizontally on the road.
At first, I thought my injuries were quite minor, but after the adrenalin wore off, the pain began and kept increasing. A week later, I’m still limping, and new bruises continue to appear in the areas where the bike laid on my lower leg for so long. My scabs are entering their itchy phase, but are still quite tender to the touch. My riding partner was not so lucky, inasmuch as his arm was scraped a lot more than mine, and became infected. He’s now taking antibiotics and pain meds and applying some sort of topical ointment that’s supposed to help, but is far from a magic cure.
Sigh….. It’s all so depressing. We’ve been riding together for 12 years, and have never even come close to having any sort of accident. It sucks that we’d encounter disaster in one of the safer driving situations — 25 mph on paved city streets.
Here’s a photo of my best bruise. Ever. I didn’t think anything could top all the injuries I received when I was growing up, from falling out of trees to being thrown off horses. But, this one’s a show stopper, for sure.
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