How many accidents have you had?

[boy in a kilt]

Cycling-related accidents;

I was 8 years old and my friend and I were riding our Huffy's under the cable where a tennis net used to be. Didn't put my head down far enough so I tore my face open. Rode my bike home and walked in the front door with blood dripping down my face and shirt. Those scars have been completely covered by others.

I'm 17 years old, riding my mountain bike home from my new girlfriend's house. Pull a wheelie as a dog runs out. I put my left foot down just a little wrong. Damage: compound spiral fracture of left tibia. a plate and 11 screws to put my leg back together, plus a godawful amount of staples to close the whole thing up.

Few years later, I'm riding my bike from NOB Norfolk toward downtown. Pull up my front wheel to go over train tracks. The front QR isn't properly secured so I come down on the fork blades and go *** over tea kettle. 6 or 8 stitches in my chin

Last year, I was riding my bike to the store for beer and groceries. It'd been raining so I went a little wide as I pulled into the parking lot to make sure my front wheel wouldn't catch on the little lip between the driveway and the street. Made that ok, but went a little too wide. I grazed the curb with my front wheel and went down hard on my left side, re-breaking the ribs that had just finished healing from a few months before.

My favorite scar is on the inside of my right arm. I worked on small boats when I was in the Navy. One day I was climbing a jacobs ladder getting out of one and a broken piece of wire went through my coat and shirt. It tore a hole about an inch long in my skin. It took 4 or 5 stitches and now looks like a little spider. This one was done less than 48 hours after the face planting incident two paragraphs up.

[Tuckervill]

I'm recalling another bike accident on the Schwinn Flying Star. You know how the grips will get scooted in some and the end comes off? Both of mine were like that after a couple of summers. It was a warm spring day and I, the early riser, was out on my bike all by myself in the morning. I decided to try to jump up the curb like my brothers always did. Of course I was going to slow and didn't make it, and the impact tore the bars out of my hands. I slide forward off the seat as the end of the bar spun towards my chest, making a perfect circular cut around my pre-pubescent right nipple.

I was so hurt I needed to tell my mom, but she was having coffee and a cigarette at the kitchen table with a neighbor lady, and I was too embarrassed to show her.

Silly. It is one of those memories where you can still feel the sunshine and smell the air, these 35 years later.

Karen