part one: how it happened

I have the added bonus of living one block away from my crash site. Tonight, on a run for ice cream before South Park started, I wandered over for a moment to see exactly what I hit.

I'd had a really great night leading up to the accident. I'd spent the evening with some newfound friends, met them at a restaurant and had some magnificent pumpkin tortellini with sweet apple cream sauce. It got late, I strapped on the helmet and started cautiously making my way home.

One block from my house, I'm going maybe 12 mph - I decide to pull up onto the sidewalk and cut a corner through a parking lot of a recently closed Church's Chicken. The problem? The street had been recently resurfaced, and the small entrance bump for the parking lot was more of a sharp curb now, much larger than I expected. My front tire sailed into the air and landed askew. I struggled to keep my balance, and I rolled into a dirt bed for one of those sidewalk trees. The tire wedged, I went over the front slightly to the left. My arm hit first, broke both the ulna and the radial, followed by my face cracking and chipping three teeth, and finally skinning up my nose, right palm and left thigh. I laid on the concrete, stunned, feeling nothing but knowing something was terribly, terribly wrong. I heard the sounds of homeless people yelling.

Oh, SHIT! Did you see that!? Damn, whiteboy CRASHED!!

I lifted my head for a moment, saw blood trickle to the pavement and suddenly felt the granules of my broken teeth on my tongue. I started yelling for help, but all that came out was AAAAAAAAHH! AaaAaAAA!!!!!

Cracka, you alright?
No, I can't move, please call an ambulance.
What'd you do?
I think my arm's broken, I can't feel it... call the ambulance please!!
Ok, ok... hey, you got a dollar?
CALL THE FUCKING AMBULANCE NOW SHITFACE, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He called. Meanwhile, I must have had an audience because I heard at least 6 or 7 different voices around me discussing what had happened. About three minutes later a neighborhood patrol (just passing by, can you believe it??) pulled the crowd back and talked to me. Firemen showed up, ambulance, and at some point, I was loaded and taken to the hospital. At first they didn't believe my arm was broken... until I screamed when one tried to move it gently. I was rolled onto a board, immobilized, and off we went.