Crashed
Mountain biking, spirituality, Bible verses and gratitude.
I have gratitude for the man who raises his devils as sails, birthing ships of creative energy.
It’s hard to know what to do in times of material abundance. So I hike thirteen miles, sleep in a cabin, and then go mountain biking tired, to ruin a perfectly good hip. One mistake on the mountain and you’re fifty years older.
One of my rules is never ride tired. I was tired and forgot my rules.
I go off the jump and realize the crash is inevitable. I throw the bike and do what I can to not hit my head. My left leg breaks the fall.
“Holy shit are you ok?” an onlooker says.
I don’t respond. I crawl off the trail.
“Are you good? Do you need someone?”
“That fucking sucked," I choke out.
“What?”
“That fucking sucked.”
I really need a female in my life so I stop doing this shit.
“You saved it,” the man says.
“It doesn’t feel like I saved it.” It feels like I dangled from a crane by my left leg for nine hours.
I’m nauseous. I lay on my back in the dirt. I feel like I’m going to puke my lunch. A friend sees me and takes my bike for me. There’s nothing else he can do. Talking is not helping. I manage to get into my car and start the drive home.
Accelerating hurts. I’m going 10mph under the speed limit. I can feel every bump. I’m screaming. My teeth are chattering. I clench them. I clench my face muscles. I’m not happy. This is 9/10 pain. 10/10 would be blacked out.
I need to stop and charge the Tesla to get home. I get to the supercharger but trying to get out of the car is excruciating. There’s a woman in the passenger seat of the Model Y next to mine. I weigh the options and sigh. It must be done.
"Excuse me. Excuse me ma'am.” She turns. “Can you plug my car in?"
She looks at me like I’m crazy.
“What?”
“Can you plug my car in?”
Silence.
“I’m injured.”
“Oh, sure.”
She plugs it in. I let out a scream so she knows I’m not bullshitting. She leaves. I realize I need to get out to unplug it.
Back at the house, Manuel come out carries my backpack as I hobble.
“Do you want to go to the hospital? Do you have insurance?” he asks.
No and no, but I don’t say that. A hospital will make me more tense and I'm already maxed out on tenseness.
“Tomorrow,” I say.
What I need is three days of no movement. It’s all fun and games until you’re inadvertently not on your bike when you’re supposed to be on your bike.
I lay down on the couch and flash back to the crash. I missed a turn. I was thinking about why I missed the turn, then I hit the jump at the incorrect speed. I saw the crash was inevitable. I tried not to hit my head. I ditched the bike, fell nine feet, and smashed into packed dirt and rocks. My helmet didn’t even touch the ground, but my left hip is wrecked. Black and blue from butt to balls.
This is the price of wanting, needing, to do extreme things. It’s the price of my ideas. I often feel less than okay with regular-people activities. I move fast and break things. Now everything’s locked up. Now I’m writing — quite the roundabout way to get to the activity that I prayed to god to help me do.
Manuel heads out for a Catholic Halloween party. For some reason, I’m just not the kind of guy who does Catholic Halloween parties. Right now I kind of wish I was. Soon my hip will be untorn. A few months after that I’ll be back to doing random dangerous stuff, probably by myself. That’s the pattern. What changes it? People change at the precipice.
I reached out to a doctor and she calls me back. She’s telling me all the things I need to do. I start crying.
“Two Naproxen, twice a day. Tyelonol 500 mg as needed. Ice for 48 hours. Contusions and sprains take at least two weeks.”
As the tears flow, lyrics echo in my head. That’s what you get when you’re a gambling man.
“I’m nauseous,” I tell her. “I almost threw up my lunch after the crash.”
“That can happen with big injuries. What’s the pain level right now?”
“Right now it’s a six, before a nine.”
“You said 6 - 9?”
“Um, yes. I just took a second naproxen.”
“Did you take it with food?”
“I had some blueberries.”
“You’ll want to take it with more food so it doesn’t hurt your stomach. Would you like a prescription of Zopran for nausea?”
“I don’t know what that is. What I’d like is real pain medication but I don’t think that’s on the table.”
“We’re not allowed to prescribe that.”
I hobble across the kitchen. By the time I get to the other side, I’ve forgotten why I’m there. How the heck did I get as far as I did? That’s a double entendre.
I don’t know what to do. I’m bored and alone. What focuses the mind is love, survival and delusions of grandeur. Right now I don’t wanna do that anymore. Here I am. Strung out on pure temptation. Never. Fucking. Settled. Always. Flailing. The opt-out trigger is a messy apartment and a handful of upset people. I never thought I’d say this, but I should stop acting on my ideas. I am a soup that spawns ideas. One after the other after the other.
How do I stop this? Catholic Halloween parties? Is socialization the punishment for my idea factory?
The lyrics are back again. When you’re raised in a bucket of rain, you either die or you learn to swim. The bucket is my mind, the rain is my mind, the swimmer is my mind.
I slowly get a pair of underwear on and sit on the deck to soak in the sunset. Fuck icing it. It’s fine. I hobble down the stairs to get the bloody sweaty clothes out of the car. Mistake. Now I’m at the bottom of the stairs. Can’t even not do anything for an hour.
I sigh.
“Why am I going to Peru?” I ask myself.
“To be with more women,” I reply.
“I guess that makes sense,” we agree.
It will almost certainly backfire for your entertainment.
When I was a youth I was subjected to government-sponsored examinations. Tests, they called them. I could figure out the answers by holding my breath. A decade later and I’m still holding my breath, I’m not sure why. Thoughts have been hijacking my breath for twenty years.
The boldest thing to do is sit and do nothing.
Gratitude
Going from screaming 9/10 pain and immobilization, to kind of being able to walk again, in 72 hours, has dunked my psyche in a well of gratitude.
Not being able to walk sucks and is terrifying. But being able to hobble around with a little pain is liberating because there’s gratitude for simplicity and I’m free of the pressures of doing, growing, and gaining. Accomplishing tasks like doing laundry, getting into the car, and going out to eat, are great successes.
“Contusions, sprains, and torn muscles and ligaments,” the first doctor said. The swelling made me think I might have something called a handlebar hernia. Now I’m at the hernia doctor. She examines my torso and says I don’t have an inguinal hernia. She recommends that I go to the ER for a full evaluation and CT scan. I pass. I have numbness and tingling; I can feel things moving around and fixing themselves. I’m grateful the lord can fix itself.
I used to have an illusion of aloneness. If I was truly alone, I’d be dead. We’re so totally on the same ship and when you see that, it’s hard to feel alone. Disconnectedness is illusion. Getting severely injured opened my eyes to the fact that there are people there for me. Even if some of them are getting paid, they are still there for you.
A few days after the accident, I get back in the car for the first time. Instead of activating my usual music, I am called to search for “Bible verses”. I bask in Bible verses as I drive around. For the last few years, I have disliked driving but now it’s tolerable — even spiritual. The words “spiritual” and “spirituality” have been co-opted. Spirituality is redrawing, or erasing altogether, the lines of separateness.
I can walk. I can look at someone else and feel gratitude that they can walk. I hope I don’t lose this. Does it really take ten bike wrecks to get here?
What do I value? I value my gratitude. My gratitude practice is traumatizing bike wrecks.
Beyond courage is faith and gratitude. God is the overlap of us and them — personified. The Bible is the most widely distributed book in the world. It got a big head start, but there are reasons why it sold five billion copies. When you see that “the lord” is what there is, the whole thing cracks wide open.
Proverbs 29:25 The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the lord is safe.
Deuteronomy 31:6 Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them. It is the lord your god who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.
Psalm 3:3 But you oh lord are a shield about me. My glory and the lifter of my head.
Psalm 118:5-9 Out of my distress I called on the lord. The lord answered me and set me free. The lord is on my side. I will not fear. What can man do to me? The lord is on my side as my helper. I shall look with triumph on those who hate me. It is better to take refuge in the lord than trust in man. It is better to take refuge in the lord than trust in princes.
Ephesians 6:10-20 Finally, be strong in the lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of god, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the whole armor of god. That you may be able to withstand the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith, which can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit.
A billion people built the life I now live.
Society works for me to write.
What there is — god, the dynamic of the universe — feeds, clothes, entertains, and heals me.
It's unfathomable, the pain, the grind, the blood, the sweat, the tears, the lifetimes.
Gratitude for employed souls. Often recognition escapes me.
Shall I not be grateful? Shall I not see how much was gifted to me?
Opportunities galore. Almost too much!
Opportunity — the water I swim in.
Opportunity — the water I drown in.
I am grateful for the man who raises his devils as sails to birth ships of creative energy.
Thanks for reading
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