A Year Later

July 11th, 2014.

A Friday.

I was about 9 minutes from home after an easy and relatively short ride.

The address on the ambulance report read 51804 Lilac.

From the seconds after the first drops of blood started to stain my chinstrap I wouldn't remember anything from the next 4.5 hours.

I'm pretty sure that my helmet and the three places where it broke apart to disperse the impact, saved my life. It was the second time a helmet proved its usefulness in three years.

No memory of Paramedics, Policeman, Cat-Scans, X-rays, or being stitched up. All these things were pieced together later or told to me by loved ones.

The first thing I remember is seeing my wife of twenty years at the foot of the hospital bed. She said that all of a sudden I looked different. I was smiling. I remember being very happy to see her, but I didn't quite know why yet.

The spontaneous crying, a side effect of a concussion, subsided over time. So too the forgetfulness or the gaps in processing information. I still can't find my watch that I put somewhere around Christmastime. My students didn't seem to notice, or were at least polite enough not to say anything, when I would just lose my train of thought during lessons. I knew.

The rehab on my shoulder returned me to almost 100%. I now refer to it as my $2000 shoulder. I can now reach above my head without assistance from my right arm or with pain. The scars remain, but if I don't shave for a couple of days, you'll never notice. I see 'em

At the widest, man and machine are only 44cm wide. I just need drivers to give me a few centimeters more I guess. I just needed a little more patience from the driver that seemingly was too inconvenienced by a 10 second delay to pass safely.

It took me a while to start riding regularly again. Every subsequent turn of the cranks sounded like madness.

I've been riding for 25 years and I was scared every-time I clipped in. The part of my DNA that liked to ride seemed mutated. Uncomfortable and anxious, I couldn't seem to ride a straight line.

I went for a ride today. It felt good. Fate can stick it.