I pulled a bike trip like this last summer in San Fran. I took a plane out there and bought a bike at the shadiest stolen bike store I could find and maxed on the city for like a week. The bike was some 80s no-name road bike that was built out of like lead or something because it was SO HEAVY. I had to gerry-rig the deraileur and the brakes were shady at times, especially on the downhills, but the thing was solid and smooth and despite the weight, I could tear up the uphills with prejudice.
It was a great time except for the loss of exposed bone that occurred at about 2 am on a nasty downhill when I got blasted by some drunk dude. Like I said, the brakes on the bike were a little loosie-goosie at times, but that's not exactly why I got ploughed. This fuckin dude broadsided me on the downhill. I remember getting up and dusting myself off and thinking "phew, I'm OK!" and then I felt in my mouth and my front teeth were broken as hell. that's when I gave the eternal let-down groan of the descending "Ughhhhhhhhh!" I thought I made it through unscathed, but i didn't!
Damn to misery!
well it wasn't that bad. I got new teeth within 2 weeks. Two root canals and reconstruction on 3 teeth and a total of about 12 hours under the dentist's knife and my shit looks as good as new.
Here's what the damage looked like shortly after the ER discharge:
After the impact, I lost the bike for a while. I eventually found it in the middle of the road behind me where cars were driving around it. I don't remember it being as fucked up as it really was when I demanded that the Ambulance guys bring the bike in the ambulance to the hospital. I don't even remember it registering that the bike was fucked up. The only thing I was thinking was, "There is no way in hell this bike leaves my presence until I get to the damn hospital."
The hospital itself was a horribly surreal experience. At some point in the ambulance I fell asleep, and i woke up in a very brightly lit hospital room with dudes in smocks trying to cut, CUT, with scissors, my pants off. Naturally i had a fuckin row about it and i had to basically kick the dude off my leg and get them to step back so i could demonstrate to them that I CAN TAKE MY OWN FUCKING PANTS OFF! So I took my pants off and sat there all fucking shamefully naked as they put the smock on me, again like I couldn't do it myself. Then they left me alone again and I fell asleep. It was now about 4:00 am.
I woke up again later and I was in the hallway and I had a condom catheter on. Immediately when I realized there was a tube attached to my dick, I just thought, "wait a minute, what the hell? which one of you motherfuckers was touching my dick?!" Needless to say I pulled that shit off and tried to get up off the gurney, but then I realized that I was attached to more cords. I had an IV drip in, which I was thankful for because I knew IV's to be good for you when you're fucked up. Much better than the condom cathater, which was only demoralizing because some fucking stranger has actually touched your dick under the assumption that you cant even control your own pissing.
Well, just to prove that I COULD piss, I pulled the IV out of my arm, not out of the skin, but I detached the line from the needle, and I kinked it like you'd kink a garden hose and I stuck it in between the gurney bars and some plastic attachment or something so it wouldn't spray IV juice everywhere. This was mostly to prove that I wasn't the kind of person that goes mad ripping shit off themselves and running naked out of the Insano Ward when they wake up with like all kinds of sinister looking cords attached to them. I needed my actions to seem clear and rational in nature. Also I needed to know where the hell my clothes were, because I had ganj in my pants pockets and I didn't know if the cops or nurses had got a holda my shit. I didn't want to face any surprise misdemeanor charges when I got outta there, as in: "Well, mr. so-and-so here are your discharge papers and the number of the Tooth Specialist and your Posession Ticket and BUI. Have a nice convalescence." That situation I wished to avoid if at all possible.
I went up to the nurses station, where they were just standing there and drinking coffee and shit. The one nurse just about jumped out of her skin when she saw me standing there, so I shot her what I thought would be a light-hearted, ice-breaker type question. "Uh, I gotta piss. Is there a bathroom?"
She was immediately like, "What happened to your catheter?"
"I took it off"
"What happened to the IV?"
Once again, rational, "Oh, I just de-tached it. I kinked the line so it wouldn't spill. It's ok."
She looked pissed. I could tell she didn't think my shit was cute at all. She said some shit about why not to fuck with my IV and went on about how they could have stuck the catheter halfway up my cock and then I'd have a real fun time tryna pull that thing out. Then she handed me a fucking cup, a cup, and told me to piss in it. Right there. It was like some kind of weird animal-hell.
Turns out that my clothes were just in a pile in this one room and they hadn't been messed with, so I pissed in the cup and went back over to the gurney and stuck the IV line back in my arm. It was now like 5:30 am
When I got discharged from the ER, I was like, "Where's my bike? I'm gonna ride back to the hostel." The nurse was like "Ah, no, you're not." and I was like "yes, I am." and then she showed me the bike and I was like, "Fuck. You're right." They had it in the freight elevator lobby in the ER ward. The fuckin thing was twisted up like a pretzel.
The bike looked like this after being run over:
Well the dude drove off, as in leaving the scene of a crime, as in HIT AND RUN, so the state of California footed the hospital bill, which turned out to be like fucking $15,000!!!! If i could capitalize numbers, I would. it was fucking outrageous, but I guess I got lucky being hit by a hit&run driver. If I just crashed my bike drunkenly by myself I would be in massive amounts of debt, and probably looking to split from the country with all my cash or some shit to get out of it.
Hopefully, this N.O. trip will be just as raw. Minus the bloodshed. We'll see.
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