Rod Serling presents... The Accident

A True Twilight Zone tale... by Kevin Cole © 1993

Several years ago, I dropped out of college, broke, with a 0.63 GPA, but a real knack for making computers do my bidding. After much pressure from others, I decided to return to the halls of higher learning, and give it a go once more. After 5 years part-time, I graduated suma cum. (B.S., American University, Washington, DC, 1992).

So, the next thing to do was to buy myself a graduation present. My graduation present was a trip across the U.S. on a bicycle. I had planned on a solo trip, leaving in the first part of May 1993, being on the road for three months, and ending up in Berkeley, CA or Eugene, OR. (See The Big Trip.) Things didn't quite work out that way, though.

I had not been on a bike in close to 20 years, but I had done a bit of unicycling. I had no idea about brakes, gears, and such. (I don't own a car nor do I ever intend to.) So, I spent a few months after graduation trying to do my homework on bikes and bike shops in the area. In July, 1992, I bought a "Mystic Blue" Miyata QuickCross from City Bikes (the best bike store in DC, in my opinion).

I started out by commuting back and forth to work on it. But that's only 8 miles round trip, and I needed to be working up to 70 miles a day. Two weeks after I bought it, I decided to ride out to Mt. Vernon, and back. That's a 42-mile round trip. I got up early on Saturday, and rode out there. Since I was used to unicycle speeds, I really was surprised when I arrived at Mt. Vernon in 1.5 hours. I thought I'd be home by noon.

Wrong.

I turned around to come home, and was on the bike trail which is not open to car traffic. Everything was fine, smooth sailing, nothing in my way. The next thing I know, there's a guy standing next to me saying "Let's see if we can move him onto the stretcher".

It's funny what you think of first, upon waking up like that. I think I said rather rapidly, "Where are my glasses? Where is my bike? Don't move my left elbow. It's broken." before leaving the land of the waking once more.

Then I started feeling the pain. I could tell that my right side was pretty ripped up, but I wasn't worried about that. I told the ambulance attendents not to move my left arm, because I knew what broken bones felt like and that it was broken. They were really pretty good about that. I remember we started chatting and one of the attendents told me that I was lucky I'd been wearing a helmet. I said "Don't tell me, let me guess... Deadman's Curve, right? Heh-heh." He responded, "Don't laugh. That's what we call it." I figured he was joking. I don't remember what happened for a little while after that. I ended up at Mt. Vernon Hospital, where they shot me full of Demerol (a strong painkiller) and told me I had a concussion, multiple lacerations covering the right side of my body, and I'd need stitches under my right eye. They sent me down the hall to take a shower and wash the grime out of the wounds. They didn't tell me that I was stoned off my ass on Demerol. I got down to the showers, and practically melted into a puddle on the floor. I managed to get back out of the shower, where the doctor who was attending to me found me and starts screaming at everyone "What IDIOT sent him to the showers UNATTENDED with a butt full of Demerol!?!?" She got me into a wheelchair, because I was so stoned I couldn't stand up. GOOD PAINKILLERS! (*grin*) Unfortunately, due to drugs, a shower, or shock, I suddenly feel like my body has turned to ice. I'm freezing in the middle of July.

At one point, while I'm in a corridor, lying on a gurney, waiting for a CAT scan, a man comes by and asks me if I was wearing a helmet. I said, "Yup. The ambulance attendent said it was the only thing that stood between me and death." He told me he was waiting for his little girl who had been in a biking accident, and then he called to his two sons and told them to take a good look at me. He explained to me that his boys didn't like wearing helmets because they looked stupid and they were too hot to wear in the summer. I repeated what the ambulance guy had told me. They asked me what happened, and I said "I don't know. I cannot remember. But it was off of the road, so you can do a lot of damage, without a car hitting you."

The CAT scan showed a concussion. My entire right arm and leg were bandaged, and I had stitches under the right eye. Unfortunately, the x-ray did not show any break in the left arm. I went home, with more painkillers, which they said were pretty strong, but I woke up in the middle of the night still stoned but in real pain. I went into emergency the next day and said "I don't care what the fuck the x-rays show! This damn arm is broken somewhere!" That was Sunday and Group Health told me that they didn't have an orthopedic specialist on weekends. They gave me a cast, but told me to make an appointment to see the specialist Monday. Well, Mary Jo, (the woman that I was with for the past 8 years) sat up worrying about me all night, because it was obvious to her that whatever pills they were giving me weren't doing the trick. She had to get on the phone and fight with the orthopedic dept, because they didn't want to fit me into their schedule for three weeks.

Monday I go in, and the specialist, who seemed pissed off because I was ruining their schedule, says "No break. Don't bike for 6 weeks. Come back and see me in 5 weeks." Five weeks go by, and they take more x-rays. The new x-rays show a break that has been healing unattended for 5 weeks... The break was a radial break at the elbow, and since I my elbow was permanently locked in (more of an L-bone), they couldn't get the arm in a position to see the break right.

But the bike was fine and that's the important thing right? (*grin*) Most of me healed really quickly, but I've got a bad feeling that this elbow may never be right. It's been since July 18, 1992 and it still doesn't straighten all the way, and sometimes hurts.

Now, for the truely bizarre part about all this: Get into your favorite "Twilight Zone" mood. This is extracted from a journal that I had started keeping.


(Sept 2, 1992)
I went for final X-rays for the arm. Now that I can open it most of the way, the X-ray technician could position the arm to somewhere more reasonable. As a result, he was able to get a much better shot at the elbow, and the new X-ray clearly showed the break. Considering that it was six weeks after the accident, I wonder how bad it was originally, since it was still clearly broken. The doc said I still shouldn't be riding, but I protested, saying that they had told me 6 weeks before, and now they were talking about several months. So she just said "Well, be careful. Pamper it. Avoid shocks and jars to that arm."

So, Monday I go out riding for the first time in 6 weeks. (De-de-de-de, de-de-de-de. Enter Rod Serling.) On the way home, I stopped by a news stand to pick up a TV Guide, which is kind of unusual for me. I can't really say what inspired me to do that. I came out of the store, and there's a woman standing there with her 2-year-old son in her arms. He just stares at me and the bike. Finally she said "Oh, he loves bikes. We take him out on our bikes all the time." I informed her that this was the first ride since my accident. Well as I gave her a few more details, her eyes got real big, and she asked for the time and place of the accident. When I told her, she said "Wait right here" and ran into an Indian restaurant next to the news stand. A few seconds later she comes out with another woman whom she introduces as her sister. This newcomer looks at me and asks "Are you Kevin Cole?"

"Neat trick", said I.
"I'm the one you almost hit."
"Say what?"

De-de-de-de-de-de-de-de. She then proceeded to fill me in on the missing details. She and her husband had gone out bike riding for her birthday. I was coming down a stretch of the Mt. Vernon Trail that is so dangerous, that there is a sign telling bikers to dismount and walk their bikes. Unfortunately, the sign is poorly placed and few people ever see it. She saw me coming around the bend at warp 9 and pulled off the trail. She said I could have continued around the curve, but that I must not have realized it. I apparently was watching the trail and only noticed her at the last minute. I must have thought we'd collide anyway, and I hit the brakes. She said it was awful to watch. The bike and I went flying and my head was the first thing to hit the ground. She screamed for her husband, who thought I was ok, but she told him I was unconscious. He flagged down a car, and went to make a call to the local hospital. She's not sure how long I was out. She said it had seemed like an eternity, but it was definitely more than 5 minutes. While Dan (the birtday girl's husband) was returning, another guy stopped with a car phone and tried to rouse me enough to give him a phone number. That brought back a memory for me. I remember feeling like someone was trying to wake me up but I wanted to sleep. And I remember thinking that it was important to try to remember a phone number. Katie (the birthday girl) said it had taken me a long time to get that phone number out, and it turned out to be my own number, which was no good because all he got was an answering machine.

Dan and Katie were riding without helmets. The next day they went and bought some. Katie and the ambulance technician both say that helmet saved my life. I feel so useful. Maybe I'll become a helmet poster child or make a living as a crash dummy national helmet spokesman. ;-)

Anyway, she tried to call me the next day, but found out there were six Kevin Cole's in directory assistance's database. She thought she remembered the first three digits of the phone number (and she was right), but that only narrowed it down to three possibilities, and she felt awkward about calling three strangers to ask about the accident.

This news stand where we met was 21 miles from the accident site. Neither she nor her sister live near the news stand. We wouldn't have recognized each other on the street, because I have no memory of the event, and I was a bloody mess in a helmet for most of the time she saw me. If I hadn't decided to disregard my doctors orders, if I hadn't stopped for a TV Guide, if she hadn't happened to be in town eating lunch at an Indian restaurant, and I hadn't started talking to a woman with a kid who was facinated with bikes, we wouldn't have met. I still get goose-bumps when I think about it. Truely weird!


By the way, the ambulance attendent was not joking. Several weeks after the accident, I called the Fort Hunt Park Police for a copy of the accident report. (They were the ones who had kept my bike safe.) The report said "Car 37 was dispatched to the Mount Vernon Trail in the area of Deadman's Curve..."

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