Why Me?

When you drive as many miles as I do in a year, it is not unusual to have been involved in a lot of accidents over a lifetime of 63 years. Most of them have my fault and I consider myself lucky to have survived without serious injury. There have been one or two pretty spectacular non vehicle accidents that I walked, or limped, away from.

A couple of bike wrecks that come to mind were serious failure of judgment and a serious right to the point of going to the hospital. The first was the time I rode my bike down a slope out on a frozen pond. Yes, the small tires of a race bike do not have any traction and the down slope caused me to hit the ice with a lot more force. The only thing that saved me broken bones was the heavy coat, two sweaters and a sweatshirt I was wearing. In case you don't know, ice is one hard surface and thank god it was frozen thick so I didn't drown trying to regain my senses. The second spectacular bike accident was the rodeo bike accident. I had a paper route and there was this yard with a great down hill slope with a great jumping ramp right at the end. The only bad part was the wooden fence at the end that required precision turning or as I proved a mighty crash. As I hit the fence full tilt, somehow I was thrown over the fence and my foot got caught in the frame of the bike. Somehow instead of breaking my neck or my leg, the trapping of my foot stopped the momentum and I was caught with one foot in the air and one foot hanging until the owner came out and helped me escape. He said he was about to call an ambulance but decided to see if I was alive first. I was the victim of a bad joke gone right. Later that year a good friend tried the same move using a motorcycle and a ramp for shopping carts and was killed.

On the way home from the fair in 1961, I was in a brand new Plymouth and the owner tried to pull out and pass a line of cars backed up behind some old truck. I was in the back seat and I could see that the line of cars was long and a car coming the other direction had just popped over a small hill. I think I would have tried to slow down but he tried to speed up. Bad choice and he made a spectacular braking effort back into our lane and the momentum of the are caused it to continue way out in the field. I know the car rolled many times sideways and I don't think it went endo. Back then no one wore seat belts but that car just held us all inside. No one was killed but we were all bent a little.

I could go on for many paragraphs but I'll stop here with the words that we are all pretty lucky to survive the dumb things in our lives that could have killed us.

Better get ready to visit with my sisters and brother.

MUD