I start Tuesday with a good 65 kilometer bicycle ride. I feel strong throughout and I'm up a gear for a majority of the ride. After a cold shower to cool down, I relax a bit and then ride the motorcycle down to the main Long Beach public library. Today I find five books in the first few minutes that tickle my fancy and so I'm in and out of the library in less than ten minutes. And later in the day I've read almost half of one of the books and two chapters of another. In between I make super progress on the crime predictive tool and even can generate an animation that shows how different reporting district's crime levels change over time.
Wednesday is a day off from working the legs and I spend time cleaning up the input for the crime predictive tool. I'm ready to start "feeding in" the effects of crime reduction in oone (or multiple) crime districts and see what happens to the rest of city. I lift weights at mid-morning and do a very lightweight set of weights for the benchpress at the end of the session to try and work around the left shoulder pain. I clean half of the hardwood floors, take another cold shower, and then clean the rest of the hardwood floors before the Long Beach Human Trafficking Task Force meeting starts at 11:30 am. The rest of the day is fairly slow and I finish off a couple of Netflix series that only had one or two episodes remaining.
Thursday is a bit of a slow day. I get out on the mountain bicycle to the old yacht club and back to home. Near noon I go to the CVS pharamacy and get a Covid omicron booster in my left arm and a flu vaccine in my right arm. I've set the timer on my phone for one hour so that I can put ice on both arms for a few minutes each hour (to pro-actively reduce any soreness). And then I just watch a bit of Netflix.
I start Friday with a good run/walk where nothing hurts. After getting cleane dup I go up to CSULA and help out a couple of teams organize their projects. And I introduce them to the Makerspace and a super CSULA staff machinist that can also help their projects out. I rush on home and watch FP2 for both MotoGP and Moto2.
Saturday starts with a road bicycle ride north on the Los Angeles river trail. Halfway up the trai a rider pulls alongside and says he's been chasing me and drafting off me since I entered the trail. I didn't hear anything and later he tells me that he just got his bike tuned up - that's why I don't hear anything behind me. We have a nice ride from there and split paths near the Whittier Narrows dam. I continue past the El Monte airport and then head for home. Three riders ctach me near the dam and then they start cranking along and so I follow them. They are fast and moving very well. Until I have to stop at the park to get more water. And then I ride on home from there. But I'm sure my legs will be tired and sore tomorrow. I do some quick grocery shopping and watch qualifying for the Moto3/Moto2/MotoGP classes from Aragon, Spain. And just relax after a hard ride. Road bike ride, pull Philippino rider, get pulled by fast riders, qualifying, grocery shopping
On Sunday morning I'm hungover from Saturday's fast ride, but take the mountain bicycle down to the old yacht club and back to home. I'm just to the pojnt where the MotoGP race is going to start and my retired schoolteacher neighbor calls me with a recently-recurring health problem and asks for my advice. We talk it over and suggest she pack up a backpack with laptop, charger, mobile, phone, charger, and books and call 911. The paramedics arrive and I walk over and lock up her house and wait for progress. In the meantime I watcha super-close MotoGP race from Aragon. Later my neighbor calls and it looks like she'll be admitted to the hospital for at least overnight, so she asks me to call her brother, cancel a Monday morning tax appointment, and cancel a Tuesday morning maid appointment. I take care of these things and we'll see what happens.
On Tuesday, though I've laid out all of my cycling kit to ride, I instead bandage up my heels, strap on the running shoes, and go for a god one hour run/walk. Today I feel strong throughout with no threats. After a shower I run some errands including buying some glucosamine chondroitin which I will try for my shoulders. And after taking care of somepaperwork I watch a very interesting and exciting Moto2 race from Aragon, Spain. The rest of the day is fairly slow as I can't quite get the motivation to work on any of the projects that are on my list.
After a good and relatively chilly night of sleep, I start out for a road bicycle ride at 6:17 am. I get in a ride of 65 kilometers and feel strong for most of the ride and then lose energy (mental or physical?) towards the end. I trim the roses and take the roses down by about a third height to try and promote some fall growth. And I help the nieghbors with their dead battery that is only reading 7 Volts and is going to die again soon. After a shower I ride the bicycle to the CVS pharmacy for band aids, chips, and wine and run into many neighbors and just say to them, "Do you need anything at the liquor store?" They all start laughing and one responds with "one of each". This is similar to my time at work when I would take a break from work and tell people that I'm going to the liquor store (in the middle of the day) and ask if they needed anything. Later I deal with some CSULA issues and questions and the have a slow day - the last week or two have taken a lot out of me and I don't no why. The heat? Double vaccines? Motivation?
On Friday I'm out the door before 6am to go run/Walk. It is chilly this morning, which feels good after the nasty hot weather that we had the expected next week of hot weather. I get in sixty minutes of a run/walk and feel good afterwards. I qucikly trim the roses, grab a shower, stuff a muffin down my throat, and ride on ip to CSULA. Today there are no students that come and ask for help though I do get roped into teaching a seminar on practical finite element analysis for the students. I rush on home for lunch and watch FP1 from Motegi, Japan. FP1 unusually taking place on Friday afternoon because the FIM wants to give the teams a few extra hours to make sure their freight arrived from Spain to Japan.
i wake up on Saturday morning watning to do a long ride north on The Ls Angeles river trail. Instead I south and plan for the 65 kilometer loop ride. Before I get to the pier I pick a rider who just arrived from Australia last night and he follows me and Istart pointing out the good places to ride and the points of interest. We turn north on the San Gabriel river trail at 20mph when disaster strikes.
Noth of Pacific Coast Highway I note a fair fumber of Velo Alegro rides coming south back to their starting point. All of the riders stay on their side of the trail. Straggling behind is a last Velo Alegro rider. He'rs riding a bit erratically so the Austrailan rider (behind me) and I squeeze as far to the right as we can. The struggling rider either doesn't pay attention or is paying attention and pushing hard to pass slower riders to catch back to the fast Velo Alegro riders, because soon he's in my bicycle lane. His left shoulder and nodyside must hit my left shoulder and body side and soon I'm falling down the gravel on the right side of the San Gabriel river trail. When my right shoulder hits the gravel I lose consciousness and do not regain it until I am being gurneyed into an ambulance. The other ride must have also been pushed to his right where there is no gravel but many large rocks.
In the emergency room I'm staring up at the white lights and ceiling. I'm in a neck brace, my right hip hurts like hell, my right shoulder area hurts, and there's blood everywhere. Many people ask me to tell the story of what happened and I repeat the same story each time.
In the next emergency room bay over, I hear a gruff voiced man. Many people come in to ask him what he remembers and he always responds with, "Get me out of here. I didn't have a bicycle accident". A couple hours later the man's wife arrives and in a consoling voice says, "John, you had a bicycle accident". And he responds vigorously with "I did not have a bicycle accident". After some time, the wife asks John,"Do you remember what we did last night?" This is met with silence and the lady finally says, "Dont you remember that we went fishing yesterday in Big Bear?" He does not remember. Later I hear more commotion and the man, raising his voice each time, requests, "Get these restraints off my writs. I did not have a bicycle accident". I've put withthis yelling and sh#% for an hour and I tell my nurse that she can have the man's wife come over and talk with ne and I'll explain what I experienced. Eventually the mans's wife comes over and I tell her what I remember. And I add, "not to place blame or anything but just so you can understand what happened". She eventually comes to talk with me two more times and takes my name and phone number. Later I hear the man is being transferred to the Intensive Care Unit with a fair amount of brain bleeding.
Eight hours later I get transferred to the ICU. I have a fractured right pelvis, a fractured right scapula, a broken right fourth rib, bleeding in the lungs, and bleeding in the brain. They have been watching the bleeding in my brain but it has stopped so I finally get to go to ICU temporarily before I can get to a regular room. I manage to fall asleep to the story that no surgery will be required and every bodypart hurting
Sunday is a pretty long day or doctors, nurses, and staff getting information from me. And I'm on a pure liquid diet in case they have to operate. I get a second CT scan and it shows the brain bleeding staying steady at 4.3 millimeters. Derick, my former riding partner, comes down to visit. His girlfriend lives in Signal Hill so it was on the way for him. We have a great visit and later a staff member named Richard Lo visits. I guess that he is from Hong Kong and he's surprised that I got it. Thus Derrick and Richard have some common ground to talk about. Later it comes out that Derrick's former supervisor, a Mr Eric Hartman, is a cycling partner of Richard Lo. And the three of use stare dumbfound and then keep laughing at the coincidence
In the afternoon Ruby visits and they make the decision that they do not have to operate and will move me to a regular room shortly. Later, Joseph and Lisa arrive after visiting hours and cannot personally get in to see me. But they are able to leave a backpack for me with phone charger, laptop and charger, clothes, hygiene items, and etc - after I've talked their way into into finding my secret house key hidden in the garage so that they can go into my house and retrieve the items for delivery to me.
Monday I start physical therapy for independent living - get out of bed, stand up, walk, etc. It hurts a bit to do but not as much as I expected. And I hope Tuesday hurts even less. There are many visitors on Monday and some catch me as I am doing exercises (outside of the physical therapy sessions) to improve range of motion. I want and need to push things along to get out of the hospital. The visitors include doctors, nurses, social workers, a chaplain, and other staff members. It turns out one of the nurses knows my Philippino cycling neighbor across the street and texts him so that he can get hold of me.