Well, she can dance a Cajun rhythm, jump like a Willy’s in four wheel drive.
She’s a summer love in the spring, fall and winter. She can make happy any man alive.

(Warning: this gets kind of gruesome, reader beware.)

A few months ago I decided to buy a bike; I want to get fit, and as the spring turns to summer I need to find a faster way to get to campus.  I‘m organising a big glasshouse trial on campus, and will soon be at a point where I’ll need to check my plants daily, even on weekends.  It takes me about 25 min to walk to campus, and that just can’t happen once it’s over 90˚F/32˚C.  A bicycle would make the jaunt so much more tolerable.

I probably wouldn’t ride it much elsewhere; while the quiet neighbourhood streets are nice for cruising, I’m surrounded by fast and busy roads that are terrifyingly unsafe for cyclists.  For that matter, Australian motorists are not sympathetic towards their two-wheeled cousins.  I’m told it’s worse in WA than back east, but I’ve heard some scary stories and seen some unbelievable abuse of cyclists just outside on South Street.  Furthermore, the Transperth buses will not carry bikes, and the trains do not allow bikes on board during commute hours.  Not progressive, Perth…

I wanted a hybrid, or commuter bike, which is to say something between a mountain bike and a street racer.  It usually has narrower tires, and a lighter but relaxed frame for comfortable upright riding. I didn’t want a woman’s frame (they’re always too short) nor any pansy suspension, and was willing to shell out a few hundred dollars for something strong and durable.  I found a special online for a local store, a closeout on Kona’s 2009 Smoke: a sleek, butted chromoly frame (read: strong and shock-absorbent) with quality gears, including mudflaps and a bell, all for 600$AU, down from 750$AU.  I asked for an opinion from my good buddy Matt, who loves his bikes so much he’s sacrificed body parts to them.  He was enthusiastic, said it was just what I wanted, so I went into Fleet Cycles to test it out.

Being the end of the year, they were low on stock, and had only the 16” and 20” models left.  Both were outsized but otherwise satisfactory; I asked if there were a chance of ordering or acquiring the 18” somehow.  True to Australian-style Customer Service, the helpful clerk shrugged and said “Ehhh, maybe.  Not really.”  What about next-year’s model? “We won’t be carrying Kona’s next year.”

I shopped around town for a few more weeks, but couldn’t find anything else that satisfied me.  I changed tack and started calling around looking for Kona dealers.  There’s one left in the state, in Guildford, just east of Perth.  I called Des at Guildford Bicycles; he was also out of the model, but would happily order one for me from back east.  Des recognized my accent and asked where I was from.  “Northern California,” I said.

“Ah!  Where?”

“North of San Francisco.”

“…Where north of San Fran?”

“Sonoma County,”

“Ah!” he cried.  “I used to spend a lot of time around there in the 70’s.  Used to hitchhike up and down that Highway One, until the pot farmers got dangerous.  My sister lives in L.A.  Or the Lunatic Asylum, as I like to call it.”

This was my man.  I placed an order for the 18” Smoke, untested.  It felt right.

Two weeks later on Saturday 31st October, I borrowed a car from work and picked up the bike.  I took a ride around the parking lot, gave him my credit card, and the bike was mine.  Des gave me an owner’s manual, a vial of patch-up paint, and reminded me to bring the bike back in thirty days for a complimentary tune-up.   “Take the train,” he said.  “You don’t need a car.”  I hadn’t known the train stopped in Guildford.  “Will do,” said I.  I loaded the bike in the car and headed back to Kardinya.  Because of some social activities I didn’t have time to ride the bike that afternoon.

The next day I went out for our ritual weekend pancake breakfast with Daniel; after that I needed to go to campus, then was set to meet my friends Kate and Peter in Freo for dinner before a concert – Gomez at the Fly By Night.  I was really excited for the show, I love this band and have missed many an opportunity in the past to see them in San Francisco.  I drove the car and the bike to campus, did my chores, and headed home.  It’s a pretty, short ride, perhaps 1.5mi/2.5km, that goes from my building, around the vet school, past the horses in the paddocks and up Discovery Way.  This is the backside of campus, flanked by scrubby bush that’s often used for regional studies and practical field trips.  At the corner of campus I take the driveway that divides a partially developed retirement village and the Murdoch Sports Oval (even though we’ve got no teams; it’s used by a local high school and community teams, as well as a Frisbee gang.  Then I head up over the hill that divides Murdoch and Kardinya communities; just over the crest is my house.  It’s a really lovely walk in the spring, and heat and sun aside, it will be a nice ride as the year gets on.

It was a jubilantly warm day, and I was only wearing jeans, a tank top I normally sleep in, my tevas and sunglasses; in one pocket was my mobile phone and in the other was a hat I had taken for protection in the glasshouse.  The sun is really bright here and even though I’d put sunscreen on earlier, I could feel that solar tingle on my shoulder.  I was feeling really good, enjoying the bike – it rides really well.  As I was turning the last street corner, heading down the last slope towards my driveway, the hat stuffed in my pocket started to work its way out of my pocket; I reached down to shove it back into place.

What happened next I’ve only pieced together over the last few days.  I remember the bike picked up speed, and started to wobble.  I grabbed the right brake lever, but being a new bike it caught quickly and stopped the wheel.  I remember the sudden, horrific realization that I had pulled the front, not the rear brake.  The next thing I can remember was that my face was skidding on the pavement.

The explanation is this – I pulled, as any cyclist is taught to do, on what I thought was the rear brake – engaging the front brake at speed will flip a bicyclist (and motorcyclists) off the bike.  However, brake levers are oriented according to which side of the road motorists drive on.  It’s so that a cyclist can signal with the appropriate hand and rear-break safely with the other.  In the U.S., the cyclist would signal cars on their left, so the rear brake is situated on the right handlebar.  In Australia, it’s the other way around.

This would have been a good thing to know.  I didn’t officially know this as a policy, but I had noticed before that the brakes seemed backward.  In this moment of panic I didn’t think, I braked instinctively, and my beautiful new bike kicked me off.

I don’t think I passed out.  I rolled over and noticed my right arm felt funny; my eyes were stinging and my face wet.  I tried to stand up and couldn’t – I looked down at my arm and it… it wasn’t there.  I had this sudden, dissociated sensation:  I knew I was looking at my arm, or where it should be, but it wasn’t there.   Somehow, I stood up.  Ah, there it is, hanging off my shoulder, but this dizzy, displaced sensation told me something wasn’t right.

Blood poured down my face.  Quickly, my shirt was soaked, and my jeans and underwear were pulled down past my right hip, which was bloodied and grotty.  I looked around, wondering if anyone had seen me; no one came out of doors.  The street was quiet.  Should I call for help? Go home, I told myself.  Awkwardly, I hitched my pants up – decency is a strong instinct – picked up my phone and hat, which had scattered out of my pockets, grabbed my sunglasses which also must have fallen off, picked up the bike and walked myself the rest of the couple hundred feet/100m to my front door, my arm dangling strangely.  I live in a small apartment complex, and while I don’t know my neighbours well, I know their routines well enough.  The couple across the way with the six-month-old baby was home, their front door open.  I must look awful, I thought.  I considered knocking on their door but didn’t.  I was, I don’t know, embarrassed. I knew Daniel should be home any minute, so I set the bike down, and set about to washing my face and arm at the spigot next to the front door.  Huge, gelatinous clots of blood washed off.  This is bad, I thought.  I checked my arm again; it was bleeding badly from the backside.  I could sort of flex the muscles on my own, but when I bent the arm to fold it up against my stomach it made a series of crunchy, grinding noises.  This is really bad…

I called Daniel on my mobile and asked where he was; he was just leaving work in South Perth, and was straight on his way home.  I told him I thought I needed to get to the emergency room, I’d fallen off my bike and something was wrong.  I hung up and stood still.  By now my pants were red, my shirt drenched, and although my head didn’t seem to be bleeding so badly, I could still feel the warmth on my face.

I need a towel, I thought.  I knew it would take Daniel about half an hour to get home, probably about as long as an ambulance would, and I couldn’t stand in the driveway bleeding like a horror film.  I took off my shoes, rinsed my feet in the tap, and kicked off what excess fluid I could.  I opened the door, dashed inside as gracefully as I could over Daniel’s white Berber carpet to the bathroom.  In the mirror I could see a deep long gash over my right eye, a huge scrape down my right cheek, and my right shoulder was burned raw, with bits of gravel embedded.  This is so bad… I wrapped my arm in one of my towels and set about wiping off my face, hip and shoulder with a washcloth.  The smell of blood was overpowering.

I remembered that I was due to meet Kate and Pete for the concert; I had the tickets.  I probably wouldn’t make it (this is where the nonsensical thinking really begins) but I didn’t want them to miss it on my behalf.

After a few minutes, once I was convinced I was sufficiently dry to move again, I dashed into my room, grabbed the tickets from my desk and headed out the door. I put the tickets under a flower pot.  I desperately wanted to sit down but there was nowhere to sit, and I knew I’d have a hard time getting back up from the ground.  I paced the carport for another ten minutes before Daniel pulled in.  I suggested he get some blankets, I was still badly bleeding and the towel around my arm was nearly soaked.  He grabbed some from inside the house, helped me get in his car, and we set off for the Fremantle Hospital.  There is another hospital nearby, St. John of God, which is closer – just on the far side of campus – but it’s private, and I’m not sure how my student’s overseas health care feels about private vs. public services.

Daniel made the 6mi/10km drive to the hospital quickly; for the first time in probably 45 minutes I was able to catch my breath; before my arm hadn’t hurt much, it just felt so odd and far away; now it was seizing and aching, grinding with every pothole and bump in the road.  It was probably five o’clock when Daniel walked me into the emergency room lobby; a nurse with a shocked, serious expression came from behind the admitting window.  Dan handed me off to her and ran out to park his car.  She sat me down and set about asking me questions, moving her gaze back and forth from my eyes to my injuries.  She was taking notes on a small steno pad.   She started talking about admitting me to the emergency room.  Oh, no, I realized; I’m going into hospital. This day started off so beautifully and is ending so… not.

Light out singin’, I’ll walk you in the morning sunshine
Sunshine, daydream.