Ouch! After I blogged about how well I was doing on my bike the other day, I had an acci­dent last night and won’t be cyc­ling for a few days!

I was about three quar­ters of way home, mak­ing good time after the week­end break. I’d reached a down­hill stretch and was going about 25 miles per hour when a car pulled out on me.

The uphill traffic was at a stand­still and he had been wait­ing to turn right into into it. He had nowhere to go, but decided to pull out any­way. Either he hadn’t see me or had mis­judged my speed — I think the former because had he seen me he would not have mis­taken just how fast I was approach­ing. He pulled out across my lane and then stopped! If he hadn’t stopped I would prob­ably have made it round the back of him. But because he had nowhere to go he had to stop.

I man­aged to yell a choice word or two (!) before I had to con­cen­trate on try­ing to stop before I hit him and stay upright. I man­aged to get into a side­ways slide which slowed me pretty fast, but then I must have hit a pothole or ridge. The next thing I knew I was sail­ing through the air with my legs some­where above my head. Not where they should be at all!

This was a first for me; I’ve fallen off my bike sev­eral times before but I’ve never flipped over the top. Thank­fully I had the where­withal — and the time — to choose to stretch out and roll side­ways when I hit the ground. I’m really glad I didn’t hit my head at all. That’s the most scary thing about cyc­ling: even though I wear a hel­met, I don’t expect it to help in the worst of cir­cum­stances.
Sev­eral people stopped and offered help which was great. The guy who pulled out on me was nowhere to be seen. He’d driven off (pre­sum­ably up the wrong side of the road) and no one had been able to get his regis­tra­tion num­ber. I must thank the lady who gave me a pack of tis­sues, and the nearby secur­ity guard who let me use his first aid kit to clean myself up, and the three other people who stopped to check I was OK.

I had a deep graze on my left knee, a pain­ful bruise on my left hip and a twinge in my right wrist. Still, the bike was OK and I man­aged to cycle the rest of the way home.

By the time I got home though my wrist was quite pain­ful. I decided I needed it checked. Jan drove me up to the local A&E depart­ment but had to leave me there: Jamie needed pick­ing up from Brownies. It wasn’t too busy; I think I only waited about 10 minutes for my first con­sulta­tion then about 15 minutes to see a doc­tor. I had three X-Rays dur­ing which the radi­olo­gist man­aged to find the most pain­ful pos­i­tion for my wrist! I really whimpered like a baby! Luck­ily noth­ing was broken, though it did feel like it. They patched me up, fit­ted a tubu­lar band­age to sup­port my wrist, and sent me on my way. Steve picked me up and took me back home.

When I woke this morn­ing my knee and hip were both stiff and my right hand was pretty much unus­able. I decided to take a day or two off work. Right now, I’m glad I’m left handed — I can at least man­age some things though I’m reduced to peck­ing at the key­board with one hand ever-so-slow-ly.

I was lucky really, it could have been a lot worse. I don’t expect to be off my bike too long.

Update: 21/04/2005 I uploaded a quick photo of my wounded knee