"Ed Seems to Be OK, but..."

I've been starting off a lot of conversations with that preamble lately, because when you tell someone that your husband was hit by a car on a recent bike ride, they tend to think the worst. If I'd gotten the news from a third party rather than from Ed himself, I certainly would have. As it is, we've both spent the last few days wondering how we managed to get so lucky.

On Saturday, I'd set my phone to vibrate and was monitoring it, something I don't usually do when
hanging around with friends. I was waiting for Ed to let me know he was on his way and expected to hear an update at any time. Finally, as expected, a buzz indicated a text from him. I did not, however, expect the text to inform me that he'd been hit by a car. He didn't answer when I called him, but called me himself a minute or two later. He said that he thought he was fine but that his bike had been damaged. The driver had stuck around, thank goodness, and there were plenty of people with him. To my surprise, he'd even accepted a ride home from one of them and insisted that I didn't need to come get him, despite my insistence that I was on the way. He had to hang up to give a statement to the police and be checked out by paramedics, but he called me back a few times when he had spare moments and I eventually got the full story.

It was clear and sunny at 1:00 P.M. on Saturday and Ed was riding south on 73rd St. in Niwot, a small town north of Boulder, and the end of a three-hour bike ride. Ahead, he saw a sedan stop at a stop sign at an upcoming intersection. Ed did not have a stop sign and so kept riding, figuring the driver saw him and would wait at the stop sign. He hadn't, and he didn't. After pausing at the sign, the car pulled onto 73rd, right in front of Ed, who slammed into the passenger side of the car, handlebars first. The lens of Ed's camera phone was broken in the crash, so he wasn't able to take any pictures (the police did), but he said he left a big dent in the side of the car from the first point of impact, then a smaller one next to it as his bike rotated around and hit that, too. He's not sure exactly how he fell--it happened too fast--but he ended up lying on the pavement on his back. (Technically Ed hit the car and not the other way around, but saying that makes it sound as though Ed was at fault, which he was not.)

For Christmas, I gave Ed a small camera that mounts under his bike seat. The idea is that if he's hit from behind or harassed by a motorist, which cyclists sometimes are, he'll have footage of the incident. Saturday was the first time since he received the camera that Ed didn't have it with him; it had been charging upstairs, and he considered going to get it but decided to just get going instead. The camera wouldn't have captured all the action in this accident, but Ed was sorry he didn't have it anyway. It would have recorded the 25-foot streak of rubber being laid out behind him as he braked, and a very long, drawn-out expletive that he apparently hollered as he hurtled toward the car.

It may have captured the following expletives, too, with which Ed colored the air as he lay on his back, waiting to determine what damage had been done. He'd passed a group of cyclists a few minutes before the accident, and they were on the scene almost immediately, as were several drivers who witnessed the crash. (One of these drove him home.) Ed said he was pretty sure someone had called 911 before he'd even hit the ground. He said he lay, swearing a blue streak, in the middle of a circle of concerned citizens all asking over and over if he was OK. He felt sure that if they'd stop asking him for a second and let him do a quick self-assessment that he would have the answer.

Eventually, he got to his feet. The driver, who'd been taking his son home from a Little League game, said he simply didn't see Ed (which is easy to do when you're not paying attention). He was, Ed says, apologetic and assumed all the fault for the accident. The police agreed. Everyone gave statements and Ed got some paperwork that he will use to obtain his own copy of the report. The driver was cited for failure to yield. Ed declined to be taken to the ER at the time. He's been talking with lawyers and insurance agents to understand how compensation will work. He needs to get a scan done to be sure that his back is OK--even though it feels fine just now, sometimes a back injury takes a while to manifest itself--and our local bike shop has declared his poor bike unsafe to ride, so he'll need a replacement. Fortunately for us, the driver's insurance will cover all of these expenses.

In addition to sympathy from Ed's fellow athletes around Boulder and beyond, stories about their own accidents have been flooding in. It's really amazing that so many people we know are still alive. More amazing still is that Ed's heroic bike seems to have absorbed the brunt of the impact. It's frame is cracked and the handlebars ended up at a wonky angle, having been wrenched sideways from the impact. I'll reserve full gratitude until his scan comes back clean, of course, but so far it seems as though he may walk away from this unscathed. It certainly helps that he was able to brake a bit before hitting the car, but he was still going about 21 MPH when he did.

The data from his GPS watch, which was not damaged in the accident, is quite interesting. The pin on the map shows where the crash happened. (He appears to finish the ride at the same place he started, but that's because he forgot to turn the watch off and it captured his car ride home.)

On the graph below the map, the yellow, pink, and green lines and dark gray section show speed, elevation, etc., which all come to a screeching halt at the moment of impact. The red line shows Ed's heart rate, which surges right after he hits the car when he must have been flooded with adrenaline. I think it's fascinating to see the crash mapped out like this.

There is no map of how this felt for both of us, however. Because I heard about the accident from Ed himself, I learned the news and was reassured about its implications simultaneously. Ed eventually did come to meet my friends and me that Saturday, and he was walking around and acting so normally that I was further comforted. Later, though, we split up when I went straight home and Ed went to collect Mischa from the kennel where we'd dropped her off to play for the day. I pulled up to an empty house and sat in the driveway for a moment, the gravity of the possible, and more likely, outcomes of the crash suddenly slamming into me. I always feel a little anxious when Ed is out on his bike, and this ride ended with the kind of news I've always worried I'd hear. It seemed to have turned out OK, but how easily it might not have. I could be pulling up to an empty house under very different circumstances. Ed and Mischa arrived a few minutes later, of course, but the feeling of unease remained, accompanied by a fierce surge of love. I try, as often as I can, to be aware of how lucky I am to have Ed in my life. His accident has been a loud reminder of how important that awareness is.