Last weekend I overcame a thirteen year fear. It is something that for years I have tried to tell myself I could get over but was never able to. For those who don’t know, in 1997 I was on vacation in The Cook Islands and on my second to last day there I crashed my motor scooter and landed on my head. The pavement was wet and I went into a roll, my shoulder took the brunt of the fall snapping my collarbone and did some sweet damage to my right knee.
We had done the cross Island hike to The Needle, the peak on the island of Raratonga, and because we each had our own scooter we left one at each end of the trail to make it easier to get back to the house where we were staying. We got lost on the hike and ended up scaling roots and rocks and were beat when we got to the bottom. Even had we not have gotten lost, it is still a full days worth of hiking. We were covered in mud and pretty pleased, it had been a really amazing day. We picked up the other scooter and as we were leaving for home it started to pour rain. I was not wearing a helmet.
At the time, Air New Zealand was the only airline with the rights to fly into Raratonga, leaving the Island a diamond in the rough in those days. I haven’t been in the travel industry for a good while now and could still probably sell a trip there just from talking about how awesome it is, lets just say Bali has NOTHING on it, not ONE thing. When I rented the scooter I rented it FIRST and DROVE to the license place, no lesson no nothing. My parents had been there the year before so my dad showed me the basics and I learned how to use it myself, and fast, they drive on the other side of the road there too.
My dad was in front of me and because of the rain I had my head dipped slightly as to not get water on my sunglasses, rendering me unable to see. He slowed down to hit a pot hole and I looked up too late, hit my front brakes and the bike slid out from underneath me so fast the next thing I remember is my head hitting the pavement. I remember the whole accident minus the sound, I have no memory of any sound and apparently I was swearing my ass off and freaking out at myself, calling myself stupid for crashing, how could I have let this happen… whatever it was relayed to me after and I was sort of embarrassed over how many f-bombs I had apparently dropped but not really I was after all in complete shock.
I was taken to hospital in what passes for an ambulance there – the back of a pickup truck with the universal red cross sign on it. Even with a piece of bone sticking up out of my arm and the fact that lifting it was agony it was according to them not broken, no x-rays, they cleaned up my road rash and sent me home.
(please note the OLD SCHOOL Nike Pegasus runners before they were discontinued but were thankfully brought back a few years ago now, they’ve always been my favourite shoe to run in)
I rode horses as a kid and had some pretty bad falls and throws and I ALWAYS got back up on the horse even though I was never a huge fan of riding, it was one of those things my parents must have thought would be good for me I guess, I never thought crashing that motor scooter would evoke so much fear in me that biking would simply exit my life completely, and roller blades FORGET about it! Unfortunately the image of my head hitting the pavement played over in my mind like a broken record, I can still see every moment of that crash like it was yesterday. No matter how hard I tried to block it out, it would not leave, still today it isn’t gone.
The more years that passed the less likely I thought it was that I would ever ride a bike again. When my parents moved to Bali my dad left me with his old mountain bike that I rode as a kid as one of my cross trainers for running. It sat in the living room, then it was in the bedroom, my mom even bought us both helmets, then it went down to storage and then Phaedra needed a bike so we lent it to her and once we lent it to her I started to feel really left out, not by her, but by myself. I’m not a pussy I’ve been hurt badly before, I define clumsy, but that has never stopped me before.
By the time she was finished with the bike I was determined to get back on it. I can’t afford to swim right now so that is out as a cross trainer and in order for me to be able to run injury free because I have injured myself so badly racing in the past I HAVE to cross train and the bike was my only FREE option.
Last weekend, thanks to the support and encouragement of Phaedra and Adam I got back on the bike; I DID IT!
I was a little wobbly at first, and it took a few tries to get the seat right as I gauged how comfortable I felt and what was going to work best for keeping my hips stretching out nicely with each turn of the pedals. It felt so amazing to be back out there, it felt like I can for serious get back to running, Yoga just is not enough to strengthen the damage I have done to my right I/T Band but with Yoga, cycling AND starting slow again with a run / walk / run program I should be running 44 minute 10ks again in NO TIME! YAY!
I’m seeing a few bizarre things and having some horrible bloody thoughts running through my head while I’m riding but I’ve been out for three rides already, all well over an hour and have managed to keep my fears in check.
So without further ado, ME back on the bike! Here I am on my first ride out.
My second ride, we went in the same direction but i picked up the pace.
I know, I know BARF city, but hey, we work hard at staying happy together and finding yet another activity to do together (with Adam on blades) is beyond awesome. Things have been extremely hard since January and having a free active thing that isn’t walking to get out and do is already proving to RULE. I can’t help it, I am pretty proud of myself.
I like this picture because it looks like I’m wearing a CAPE.
Third ride was around the Sea Wall with Phaedra and Adam. I was more nervous on this one than the first, parts of the wall are really narrow and ODDLY people on the Sea Wall are NOT as polite as the people are when you are riding along the wall that goes through False Creek. I have never found people on the Stanley Park Sea Wall polite in all of the years I have used it, but having ridden twice towards False Creek I had gotten it into my head that all of a sudden everyone was wearing polite pants. ON YOUR RIGHT, ON YOUR LEFT. Nope, people on the Sea Wall would rather just run you over, or pretend you aren’t there, nothing has changed.
