Updated with higher quality images at the bottom. — Kenny.

Get up.

Get up, Kenny.

Get up now.

As my mind clears I find myself sprawled on the asphalt. Not lying. Not sitting. My bike was a few feet away. Getting up was hard.

There’s shade over there. Shade is a good idea. I can check everything out in the shade. I can’t put much weight on my left arm.

My ride is over. I know that before I reached the shade. I can feel my shoulder swelling.

A moment ago I’d been 29 miles into a 45-mile ride. I was riding along at an easy 18 miles per hour. There was a loud bang, a violent jolt and everything went white. I could hear my helmet disintegrating. The foam and plastic and rubber were ground up by the road.

The flimsy plastic top, the aesthetic cover of the helmet, popped off. It is upside down, coming to rest close to the chunk of wood that I hadn’t seen in the road. I bounced and slid maybe 20-25 feet.

I have to call someone. I can’t fish out my phone from the back pocket of my jersey because my arm doesn’t want to cooperate. When I finally reach it I’m relieved to see my phone still works. I get my wife’s voicemail.

“Call me back, please.” Details aren’t especially important in a voicemail. Over the next four minutes I slowly get my things organized for the walk out. My wife calls.

“I need you to come pick me up. I’m at the state park we were in, but I have to walk my bike out.”

I’m sore, but in no immediate danger. It is hot, but I have water. I looked at the odometer. There were 27 miles on it when I entered the park; there are 29 miles on it now. I have to walk two miles. Everything is fine.

I test my cognition and recall — years, presidents, names, tree species. I’m fine. I’m lucky.

She soon calls me from the park entrance and wants to know where I am. But I’m not worthy of a good conversation. I’m hurting and mad at myself.

“I am walking” I say a little too forcefully, “my bike out.”

Soon it starts to rain, a cooling insult to a painful injury. A few minutes later I see The Yankee under an umbrella. I’m walking with my hand pinned to my waist.

I admitted I was hurt by saying “You’re going to have to put my bike on the rack. I can’t use my arm. I think we’re going to have to find a doctor.”

Back at the condo I can’t raise my hand above my head. I get cut out of my cycling jersey. I wipe off two hours of sweat. We clean up the road rash on my shoulder, arm, hip and knee.

I suggest we carry my helmet in case a doctor wants to see it. I can’t get that grinding sound out of my ears, but I had not looked at it.

In the hospital waiting room we took this picture of the back of my helmet:

Always wear a helmet, kids. Always.

Tomorrow: the medical tale.

UPDATE: Two weeks later, I decided to take some higher quality pictures.

This is the back of the helmet, as seen from above. So you’d be wearing this and facing the top of the frame. Note the chunk that the road just sheared off. Part of that is resting beside the helmet:

Again the back, this time from straight on. See how the upper left and center of the back was ground away? Note the small cracking at the base of the helmet’s back as well. See that crack on the left side? We’ll get to that next:

Here’s that left-side damage. Hardly a hairline crack:

This is a little farther up the side, but still on the left. As you’re wearing the helmet this crack would be directly over the left ear. The fracturing only stops at the air vent. Who knows how far it could have gone beyond that in a solid form, like a skull. From these pictures we can surmise that, without the helmet, the crown of my head over to my ear would have been heavily damaged:

Finally, looking up into the helmet. That’s one-piece, molded crash foam. Look how much it separated:

This entry was posted on Monday, July 9th, 2012 at 10:34 pm and is filed under collarbone, cycling, iPhone, Monday, photo. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.