The Moment of Impact, or, what I remember from breaking my arms

 I haven't used this blog in a very long time.  I wonder what will happen if I start writing here again.  It is on a little-used google account, but it also says 36 people have looked at my posts in the last month.  I need to start writing again. Do I want to do it in a semi-public way?

On October 21st, 2021 I was riding my bike up the trail in Provo Canyon when a kid from Arkansas came down the other way on a rented E-bike. He was going way too fast for his skill level, and he was on the wrong side of the trail. I came around a corner onto the bridge at canyon glenn park, looked up just in time to see him come barreling through me. I remember the collision, but I do not remember impacting the ground. There was not a single scratch on my helmet, but when I looked at my left arm, I knew right away that it was broken. The radius snapped, and my wrist was forced into an awkward position by the dislocation of the bones. I rolled over on the ground and looked at the teen-aged kid and yelled, “what the hell were you doing?” and then the pain really kicked in. The thing is, I have vivid memories of some of what happened, but not of other things. I have created and retold the story countless times and I KNOW that is how it happened. But I wonder if it really did happen that way. I remember seeing blood on the ground from the scrape in my knee. I remember trying to pick up my phone so I could call for help, but I don’t remember if my phone was on the ground or still in my backpack. As I grasped the phone and felt the pain in my right thumb and I knew then that it was broken too. (When the nurse at the ER saw that both arms were out of commission, he said “You broke them both? Oh, man, I am so sorry. This is going to really suck.”–He was right, but the sinking feeling that gave me at the time was the first real clue as to how bad it was going to be.) Like I said, with the memory, I keep wondering if I have it right. Did I maybe swing a little wide into the oncoming biker’s path? Do I bear any responsibility? My fitness tracker–Strava–says I was doing about 10 mph just before the crash. That fits well with what would be normal for me at that point in the trail. I had just come around the rockfall, and I was just getting ready to make my final acceleration up the straightaway past the bridge–the same straightaway the kid had just come down–a good half-mile of downhill where you can finally get up to full speed if you want. All the damage on my bike (and my body) was on the left side. My wheel was taco-ed in that direction, with clear impact signs on the left side of the rim. So clearly my impulse was to move further right in the last split second before impact. Doesn’t that mean I was on the right and trying to move further to that side? A week or two ago, when I could finally drive agin, I went to the site of the accident. I couldn’t make the scene fit that moment. The fence was too far from where it had to be. The curve was too far back the other way. The kid had to have seen me coming for a while. I should have been able to see him. I had a split second. It felt so much longer. Long enough to have complex thoughts. I remember thinking-‘well I’ve not had an accident in 20 years. It is about time I got it over with now.’ Did I think that all in the split second, or did that thought come later? Did I also think ‘what is he doing on my side of the trail?’ I thought ‘there is no way for me to avoid this.’ I felt his soft, overweight, dough-like body impact with me, go through my location and send me –what? Flying over his head? Sideways into the fence? Just over my own handlebars? The fact that I don’t remember hitting the ground bothers me. That hole in my recollection calls the rest of it into question. The titanium plate in my arm and the six screws and the two scars all testify that to the reality–but in a way it all seems still unreal. Handke writes several scenes that all happen in an Augenblick in the moment of the jetzt. It is the only moment that exists for sure, and the fact that I cannot access that one ‘now’ among the several ‘nows’ that still feel present every time I look at my scars undermines the whole of the experience. I don’t know where to go with this. I don’t know that what I am writing right now is how I feel about it. November was a dark and horrible month of helplessness and frustration and anger. December was nearly as bad. In that moment right before impact–and this sounds so cliche to me–but time slowed way down and I remember so many things. I remember the state of my legs and my feet in the pedals. I remember his feet leaving the pedals. I remember the smell of the autumn air and the gold of the sunlight about an hour from setting. I remember the time–4:45 exactly–time to turn and head home. Just another 100 yards to the end of the park and then homeward and dinner and then an evening finishing the turning of a wood bowl on the lathe. All of it in that threshold instant. And then I’m on the ground wondering ‘what the hell!’ I want to remember the kid in overalls because he was from Arkansas, and certainly a redneck who should never be on a bike. But I don’t remember that. I want to trust my memories, but I can’t remember hitting the ground. Fortsetzung folgt.

Birthday miles

I had a birthday yesterday, so the cycling year has officially come to an end. As I have done the last three years, I did a birthday ride on Labor day where I have to ride my age. The ride was slow because I started at 5 am and it was really dark. But I did take a really nice picture of the sunrise with my smartphone.

I managed a little over 2500 miles this year to put me at 18,566 since I started keeping track in 2002. The circumference of the Earth is 24901.55, so I still have a couple of years to go (2.5 to 3 years actually) until I will have completed the virtual circumnavigation.

100 miles in the desert

So here are some pictures of my century ride in Moab. I finally have a few minutes to blog about it. It was absolutely beautiful, and the hill wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be--either that or it has already faded from memory. The pace started out really slow, and since I didn't know what the climb was going to be like, and since I had felt realllllly awful all week, so I took it easy too. In all there was about 7000 feet of climbing. The weather could not have been better. For the climb the clouds were out and kept it cool. The sun came out later, but it never go too hot.










This guy you see here next to me is Steve. I caught up with him at about the half-way point as we came on to the Colorado river road. We were doing about the same pace, so we were able to take turns breaking the headwind for each other. The company made the ride a lot more pleasant and the guy, despite having 20 or 30 years on me, was an animal.








Moab was smaller than it was when I was growing up there. But as soon as I got some of that red dirt under my fingers, it felt like I had come home. I have always wanted to do a ride down the river road in Moab. I have also been thinking for the past few years that I wanted to have some sort of goal for my workouts instead of just riding for fun. The century in Moab was perfect because it gave me an excuse to achieve two goals in one: It was far enough out of reach to be a real challenge, but in a great location that let me return to where I grew up.

I was tired when I finished, but not as bad as I expected. My arms actually hurt more than my legs. Probably a combination of the achy flu I had and the breaking I had to do when coming down the switchbacks into Castle Valley. The only real excitement came ten miles from the end when my front tire blew out violently. It sounded like a gunshot. We were going to boot the hole with a power bar wrapper when the SAG wagon showed up with a new tire. So I went home with a brand-new tire worth $40, that I was going to have to replace soon anyway.



And just so you know, after the ride, we went to Arches where Dallin found what was according to him "the perfect spot" and told his mom to take a picture. Which she did.

my latest ride

This week, in getting ready for the Moab Century Tour, I tried to do a little extra mileage. I did three rides over 40 miles, including this one




and this one. Even though it shows only 37 miles, I went a couple of miles further toward New Harmony than this map shows.

Last week I also climbed to the summit of American Fork Canyon, which should imitate the climb on the Moab Century.
All total I have done over 150 miles this week and over 860 since returning from Berlin in June.

Space is really big

Yesterday I passed 11,000 miles on my bicycle since I began keeping track in September of 2002.

I awoke this morning to the news that science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke died yesterday at his home in Sri Lanka.

These two events are related.

That isn't to say I killed Clarke with my bike or anything like that, but his death this morning got me to thinking about the things I am trying to say in this blog entry. Clarke, of course, is the author of 2001: a Space Odyssey, the Rama series, and many other science fiction novels. Many of you may know that I am a huge space junkie. In my spare time and in my wasted time I like to visit space-related sites such as this one, or check up on the mars rovers here, or see cool space pics here. I am fascinated by space and the possibility of space travel--not in the Star Trek or Star Wars hyperspace sort of way--but in real, pragmatic ways of getting off this rock. I really hope that I live to see astronauts set foot on Mars. This was they kind of stories Arthur C. Clarke told. So I was sad when I heard about Clarke's death. I know he was 90 years old, so his demise is hardly unexpected, but I will miss his style. His books seldom featured complex or compelling characters, but the ideas were fantastic.

One of the things that interests me about space is that it is so big. I have another (dead) sci-fi author to thank for teaching me this: Douglas Adams. He once wrote in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space. " The profoundness of this statement is obscured even as it is emphasized by the humorous tone in which it is presented. Back to the bike.



I love my bike. It looks like this:



and I have had it since the spring of 2004. When I passed 11,000 miles yesterday, I was rather proud of myself. I know that real bikers travel much much further each year, but I have been averaging about 2000 miles each year commuting to and from the university. My son, always the one to keep my head from getting too big, said with a great deal of enthusiasm, "Dad, I can't wait till you hit a million miles."

Now I have to point out that my 11000 miles puts me nearly half way around the world from where I am now (somewhere in the outback of Australia, I believe), but because space is so incredibly big, I might as well be in my own back yard. So, at my average of 2000 miles a year, it will take me 50 more years to reach 100,000 miles, which is the point at which my bicycle odometer turns over. My wife thinks this is a reasonable goal. To reach my son's goal of 1,000,000 miles, I will have to ride 2000 miles a year for the next 500 years. Now, at its closest, Mars is approximately 34 million miles away. Which means that to get to Mars, our closest neighbor (not counting the moon, which is gravitationally tied to us), it will take me another 17,000 years--at the rate I am currently riding. This assumes that Mars will again be at its closest approach with us at that time.

Just to put things into perspective.