Introducing my biggest sponsor: Mass Health

 I'll admit, I'm rather impressed by how word manages to spread these day, but who knows, you may be living under an even larger slab of rock than I do and not heard.  It seems half way through June, early in the morning, a motorist near my house mistook me and my lights for just another section of road and proceeded to drive into the back of me and my bike.  I'm guessing this hurt, but honestly, and I suspect fortunately, I have no memory of the event, and it seems the next week or two, thus the "it seems" introduction to the prior sentence.  Because of this, any story I tell of the event is just hearsay gleaned from what others tell me.  Minds, in my opinion, are rather nifty collections of tissue.  They allow for successfully switching a rear shifter to the left, and, rather conveniently, forgetting the memories that might provide superior fuel for nightmares.  So right, I have no memory of being punted by a car, and I'm rather OK with that situation.

Impressive to me, I'm also rather OK with my current situation.  Sure, I'm writing this wearing a neck brace to protect the break between my c3 and c4 vertebrae.  And yes, I just had to look up if vertebrae is the correct plural for vertebra, but to be fully honest, I wouldn't have been fully sure of that one even without the Traumatic Brain Injury.  OK, those caps are mine, but really, a phrase like that seems worthy of at least a little augmentation, and my head did get a bit of excessive bumping.  But back to the neck brace, these days when people ask how I am, I've taken to pointing out that I'm wearing one of those, which isn't always a great sign until you consider that medical teams don't bother putting such contraptions on dead people.  Not to go all Pollyanna on everyone with my positive outlook, but the proverbial "things" could definitely be far worse.  No, I'm far from glad this happened, but I have managed to take the view that in addition to potentially being far worse, the accident also could have happened to someone less capable of surviving and maybe even recovering from the impact.  Aside from just making laundry duties interesting, being a mountain biker also has the advantage of developing a little extra upper body musculature as well as giving ample opportunity to practice crashing techniques.  So sure, I'm far from unhurt, but I also suspect my body may have been better prepared for the accident than an average one selected from the general population.  Then again, you needn't believe the guy with a Traumatic Brain Injury, and yes, I am learning to milk that title for all that it's worth.

So the accident, I guess I can't say that much about it because while I was there, and may even net a few scars from it, it seems my memory took a little vacation from remembering that time.  I have been told the motorist left the scene and the police continue to look for this person.  Fortunately, the owner of the yard where I landed was able to call in emergency crews who arrived in time to save me to subject you to reading this rambling post.  Oh, and yeah, pretty much everyone has given up any hope that my sense of humor will see any improvement from this accident.  But back to that motorist, his or her leaving the scene has sparked a lot of negative reactions from people I know.  I understand that, but also, a part of me has a guess as to what the motorist was, and possibly still is, experiencing.  Likely that subject is better attended by one or two or twelve focused posts, but for now, I'll just state that I am not feeling anger at someone for what I suspect was a mistake.

So anyhow, I'm going to keep this one short, and yes, part of this is just me using you as an audience for my mental recovery exercises, so, I guess, thank you.  The truth, at least from my now even more questionable perspective, is that I'm doing pretty OK.  As of three days ago, I even now have permission to walk around without a guardian.  Sure, that may sound pretty bad, but when I couldn't pull on my own shoes a couple weeks ago, trust me, it's pretty damn rad.  More or less, my outlook is pretty good, and even if I can't recover everything (and I may) that still leaves plenty of room for a rich, rewarding experience of living.  It even looks pretty solid that I'll get to ride a bike again once my back heals and I'm not considered a fall risk due to the head and neck injuries.  Sure, something not so great happened, but even that stuff can be an experience, and I've taken to seeing this as another (BIG) event in my life.  Thanks for reading and I'll try to subject the world to more of the same in the not so distant future.  Now go ride your bike; let's keeping working to make motorist always prepared for bikes.  Be safe.