SWEET CHARIOT

I guess its time I talk about my most recent - and final - motorcycle accident. No, I’m not communicating from beyond, despite the writing quality; I'm just hyporeflexed, which is almost the same thing, comin' for to carry me home.

Yes, I nearly caught the Sweet Chariot last December, while my body chased its bike a ways down the mountain over ice, roadside and some other stuff. The bike was still as trusty as gravity, but turns out I wasn't. I, who grew up much of the year on ice and snow; sledded, tobogganed, bicycled, drove and hung around on ice like a summer sidewalk with never a single accident - thanks to fine-tuned reflexes - reflexes that I continued to count on throughout life, heedless of the encroaching press of time...

Thus it was that on that crisp sunny winter morning I blithely launched my wheeled self from our driveway onto the pure white snow-powdered road - piece a' cake, been there a million times, successfully too - even up here, for the past 17 winters, without the slightest thought of not being able to remember what happened 10 seconds later...

In the aftermath, it wasn't the residual head, shoulder, knee, thigh pain that hurt the most when I finally regained the ability to hurt; the deepest blow was that my Benedict Arnold reflexes, which for all my life had pirouetted me over football field, up/down mountainside, basketball court, down the streets where you live, had departed my person without saying "Do NOT go riding on the ice today or anymore, Bob; I retired on Saturday."

For retire it did, without notice. As forensically determined from the impact pattern on said body parts, at the moment of greatest preventive need I had no reflexive reaction whatsoever; there was statistically no difference between my decycled body and a 190 lb. sack of bleached white flour. I realized, after the fact, that for all these years I have been counting on my teenage balancing skills when freewheeling over any surface - particularly snow-covered ice - and instantly compensating for any slippage by shifting shoulders, hips or legs, sticking a leg out for 3-point support if needed, and never hitting the ground, except after hitting that pole a few years ago.

I rode that way all my life and was still riding that way at the age of 72, setting myself up for a lesson it's about time I learned. Learning requires survival, though, so I'm truly fortunate to be able to say: I think I'll walk the rest of the way...

REMAINING IN MOTION

You can ask any person of my acquaintance and they will tell you that I have always strictly adhered to the law of gravity (except when in love), and am a close follower of inertia (both the at-rest and in-motion aspects, particularly the former).

My physical orthodoxy was demonstrated to the max a few nights ago when, as I was on my way home after a long day of work in the office in the big city, curving up the mountain road on my motorbike in that deeper kind of darkness that follows a long day in an office in a big city - plus I'd spent an hour after that at the bookstore because there was a discount sale on English language books, so my head was full of tome-ish stuff, as was my backpack, and the air was full of even darker darkness than my usual return time - a concrete telephone pole took advantage of these conditions to leave its usual location and surprise me. Reality often does this. I clearly remember being surprised at the sight of an immovable object only a meter ahead, gleaming in my headlight, in the microsecond before I faithfully displayed my strict adherence to physical laws and further lowered my opinion of telephone poles.


No doubt there are a lot of people who deeply appreciate telephone poles, since there’s no disputing taste, but personally I never could stand the eyesores, even less so now that for me they're headsores, backsores, shouldersores and ribsores. Always right in the way, all that ugliness strung out over the everyscape just so we can chat at a distance and see after dark, watch reality on tv and so forth.

I'm not being a curmudgeon here, or a grouch, grump or even a fogey, all of which you do best when you're older, so I meet the age requirement; fact is, I disliked telephone poles even when I was young, because they were almost as everywhere then, and they were just as ugly, the old ones splintery and smelling of creosote (they used wood when I was a kid; remember wood?). They ruined the scenery just as they do now, standing right in the middle of the picture, elbows sticking out in rank disapproval of these pointless esthetic yearnings of ours.

Anyway, in said strict accordance with the laws of gravity, inertia and centrifugality I traversed the appropriate mathematical arc through the pure mountain air while the motorcycle continued to unite with the pole. Following my brief calculus demonstration I found myself flat on my back there in the mountain darkness, the motorcycle headlight illuminating my sprawled body as it gasped for air, like being pinned there in the dark by the eye of god on a solitary mountain road with that What is the meaning of life question hovering there at the basis, what is reality after all - one is never so alone, yet so integrated withal, as at such moments - so after lying there on the road not thinking at all of Jack Kerouac while relearning to breathe and restructuring an appropriate degree of accepted reality, working various joints this way and that to determine the extent of my integrity, I at last was able to stand up, hobble over to and hop onto the still running motorbike, which now wouldn't turn right or very far left, and managed to drive it upmountain the rest of the way home, which to my good fortune was straight ahead. I'd have a hell of a left-body Charlie horse tomorrow (landed mainly on my left shoulder).

Which, 4 days later, is still the case. Plus a couple of cracked ribs and a subluxated collar bone, all taped up and strapped together. At least I can type, once my right hand lifts my left hand onto the keyboard.