As Easy as Falling off a Bike

So in last week’s Gunsmoke File I made reference to a long ago bike crash, which I suspect has contributed to the unconventional curve my spine takes today. A number of my regular readers (well, two) asked for more details but in relating the tale, I realized there have been many number of bicycle accidents over the years and really, any one could have been the cause.

There were the inevitable prangs of childhood of course. Even in my formative years, testosterone played a big part in our two wheeled antics and you weren’t a real man unless you could create sparks from the pedal as it scraped the ground during sharp turns. Tumbles, slides, cartwheels and wipeouts are all part of being a kid, or at least they were back in the 19*0’s when I was a lad. Looking at the children riding around my neighborhood today with their helmets, and elbow pads and mattresses tied to their backs, one has to wonder if they’ve ever experiences an owie-boo-boo in their cosseted lives.

No, as a child, I bounced. It wasn’t until I resumed my cycling career as an adult that the falls started to take their toll. There weren’t all that many of them really, and only three particularly stand out. It’s just that as a grown up, the body is nowhere near as...springy as when you’re a child. Slamming down onto hard blacktop at high speed usually meant something had to give way. And it was rarely the blacktop.

Big crash number 1 was a comparatively simple deal cause through no fault of my own (no, really!) but a defective back wheel. Tooling along, minding my own business and not bothering a soul, the rim suddenly turned itself into a taco. Down I went with a splat, turning my left leg into a pizza and smacking my (un-helmeted) head down with a force that left me repeating the story for a month. ("No, I wasn’t in a fight, yes, it really was a bicycle accident, no there weren’t any witnesses" etc.) I was working retail at the time so showing up for work with a battered physiognomy didn’t go down too well.

So fortunately, the damage from my next big prang was contained to my shins which were covered up during work hours. I have to confess that alcohol may have played a small part in this particular accident, in the sense that I’d sunk a few over the course of the evening and this might have impaired my judgment somewhat. It was one of those long, warm summer evenings where it’s still light after 10pm and with which rain swept Britain is occasionally blessed – too nice to spend sitting in a bar in town. Nope, it’s a country pub for us boys but that left the perennial problem of who was to be the designated driver.

"Not to worry" piped up someone, "let’s go on our bikes". A capital idea that one, so we spent a wonderful evening riding from hostelry to hostelry, sampling the fine ales and breathtaking scenery for which our corner of northern England is rightfully famed.

Evening’s end came soon enough and we turned for home. We weren’t too far from town when someone realized that if we put our heads down, we could catch the chip shop before closing. A race then, and within a few minutes, we were spread out over a mile or more as we each gave it all we had. I was never known for my sprinting ability, but the others were feeling the effects of the beer more than I and soon I found myself well out in front. I could see the chippy a few hundred yards ahead and knew that if I could hold off the challengers just a little longer, the race would be mine. Down went my head and my legs pumped like pistons as I aimed for the finish line. My friend Pete came round the last corner not long behind me and just in time to see me hit the curb of the traffic island at a ninety degree angle and take off into space. I do recall a feeling of disgust that my brakes were of so little help but fastened securely as I was, into my toe clips, there was nothing I could do to retard my velocity. It took the pavement to do that, and a fine job it did too. It was several days before I could comfortably bend my legs.

However, when it comes to the big one, the real doozy, I’m afraid that to this day I have no idea what happened. A group of us were sailing down an endless hill one lazy Sunday afternoon when suddenly I found myself going down through my bicycle frame. Whether a wheel buckled again, or I hit a rock, or an invisible hand gave me a shove I’ll never know and as I was at the back of the line, nobody else saw it either. Even studying the mangled remains of my bike afterwards, it’s difficult to determine in just what direction I went. I do know that I cartwheeled, span and slid for about twenty yards, lowering the surface of the road bed some 1/2 an inch and taking my skin down to the bone in several places.

The emergency room nurse told me it was the worst injuries she’d seen on someone who hadn’t broken a bone and by the time I left some five hours later, I was bandaged almost from head to foot. It was three days before I could dress myself, a week ‘till I could shave and almost three before my hair got a proper wash. I was in constant pain and the source of horrified conversation amongst my entire social circle for weeks to come. That said; I still consider myself to have been very lucky that day.

You see, the crash took place a little ways past a slight dip in the road. I lay prone and bleeding, but completely invisible to any upcoming traffic. I was conscious enough to recognize the danger and after assuring them my neck and back were undamaged, begged my friends to carry me onto the verge. Only seconds after they laid me in the grass, some cretin of a boy-racer came screaming over the crest. I would guess he was doing about 90 along this winding country road, secure in his infallibility as a race driver.

If he’d come along the road thirty seconds earlier, he would certainly have killed the lot of us.

So uh, guardian angel – if you read The Gunsmoke Files...thanks.