skepticandtonic

Apparently MySpace isn’t dead. Who knew? I wanted to see if I could still get at some old blog entries. After many attempts to log in I finally got the correct email and password combination and was able to access the blog. Wow. My biking adventures series was some pretty amusing stuff. The posts about putting my cat Maizee to sleep after the pet food poison mess got me a little blurry-eyed.

So, for anyone who doesn’t know the story, or would just like to read again what I had to say after it, below is the first post after my unique bike accident. This has become my go-to story when the moment calls for an amusing one that’s tough to top. For anyone who doesn’t know me, I used to be quite a bike nut, commuting to work and home nearly every day for a while up until this incident. Yes, bike = bicycle, not motorcycle. And yes I got pissed when Matt Lauer of the Today Show was run off a bike path by a deer and wore that stupid arm sling on the show for weeks. I don’t think he even made contact with the animal and he stole my story. And then there was this more recently: http://youtu.be/S2oymHHyV1M  Yeah, been there, done that…

Enjoy.

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August 10, 2006

Adventures in Biking III: I’m not a fan of Brown Deer’s brown deer

Last night while biking home from work I hit a deer.

I’m not joking.  I seriously couldn’t make this shit up.  I HIT A DEER!

My buddy Stephan and I left work around 6pm.  We were about a mile from work and cruising at a decent clip of about 15mph down Dean Rd. in Brown Deer.  A deer bolted out of the brush on the left side of the road at full speed and I collided with it.  Again, I’m not making this up.

Stephan was biking slightly behind me and had enough time to react and hit his brakes hard.  The front brake stuck and he did an endo and almost went over his handlebars.  I didn’t get to react.  I hit my brakes, but it was too late.  I hit the deer and both the deer and I went airborne and landed in the ditch on the side of the road.  This was no small deer.  It was a buck with velvet antlers.  I didn’t get to count, but I’d estimate he was a six-pointer.  I had the wind knocked out of me laying in the ditch and was gasping for air as the deer scrambled to its feet and ran off.  When I caught my breath and tried to sit up Stephan yelled for me to just lay down.  I did and lay there realizing I hadn’t yet felt any pain and wondered what bones were broken.  A car coming up from behind us on the road had witnessed the incident and stopped.  A lady frantically ran out to see if everything was all right.  Realizing I was in one piece I sat up again and Stephan checked me out before letting me stand up.  We then went over to my bike and saw the the front end was pretty messed up.  My handlebars were bent and twisted and my brakes and shifter on the left side were a mess.  We fixed what we could to make the bike ridable and then just stopped and looked at each other and started laughing.  “Dude, you just hit a fuckin’ deer!”

Stephan recounted what he had witnessed of the accident.  It was all pretty much a blur to me.  I hit the deer pretty much in the neck and front shoulder and somehow was turned around 180 and rolled into the ditch.  I had to have flown in the air a bit to completely miss the gravel on the side of the road and land at the botton of the ditch.  He said I nearly landed on top of the downed deer.  When I got up I found grass stains on my shirt and gloves and deer fur on my left shoulder.  We checked for blood from the deer but found none.  Stephan commented that he was going to get me some deer whistles for my bike…

We got back on our bikes and pedaled home still in shock about what had just happened.  WTF!  I had seen deer on this route into work in the morning a few times, but they were mostly does with fawns and just crossing the road or whatever.  I had never seen a buck.

So , I made it home which was about another 9 miles.  My right knee had (I think) slammed against the frame of my bike in the crash and was pretty sore.  When I got home I sat down for a couple minutes contemplating what had just occured again.  As the adrenaline wore off, I started to stiffen up and get really sore on the left side of my upper body where the deer had hit me.  My left wrist was swolen and I soon realized I couldn’t lift my arm very high.  I got some ice on my knee.  I had a beer and made it to bed, but didn’t sleep very well.

This morning my movement in the left side of my body was more limited.  I had a hard time washing up in the shower with only my right hand.  I made it to work and had to tell the story a thousand times to people who didn’t want to believe it, but just ended up laughing and telling other people.  I was a celebrity at work.

As the day went on, my stiffness and soreness wasn’t getting any better, so i decided to call my doctor before it got unbearable.  I ended up going to see him at 4pm and he and the staff there were amazed by the story as well.  He checked me out thouroughly.  My sore ribs were fine, but he was concerned that I may have hairline fractures in my wrist and may have rotator cuff damage in my shoulder from the impact.  All this pain and stiffness on my left side was not from my fall into the ditch.  It was from the impact with which the deer hit me.  Doc sent me off to a clinic to get x-rays on my wrist and shoulder.  So, I have to call him tomorrow morning to get the results and see if I’m more messed up than I thought I was.  I hope they find nothing.  He told me to stay off the bike for 7-10 days.  That’s gonna be hard.  Yesterday after the accident, I really thought I may be able to ride in this morning, untill the stiffness set in.  I guess I’ll take it easy for a while…

WTF!

Yeah the incident with the punks messing with me before was disturbing, but this time it was fuckin’ nature trying to take me out!  I’m in too much pain to ride for a bit, but I can’t wait to get back on the bike already…  I’ll know tomorrow how bad it is.  I realize now it could have been a lot worse.  Yeah, it seems funny to me now, but I was seriously freaked out when it happened.  You’d be too.

Thanks for reading.

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For the record, I still have frequent problems with my left shoulder 5 years later. I went through a bunch of physical therapy and it was better for a while, but flares up here and there for a few months at a time. I know I’ll probably need some corrective surgery at some point, but who has time for that?