Not With A Whimper But With A Bang

19 May – The chirpy demeanour that I originally encountered wasn’t so chirpy although the raspberry pancakes may have improved the situation somewhat (it may have).  One of the first tasks of the day was to collect my new helmet from Cheeky and then took it off to Sydenham for Saffy Brian’s sewer sprint event – a general collection of increasingly silly events starting out with a series of standing sprints through the sewers with the finish line just before a low hanging bridge which meant no skid braking until the very end unless you wanted to take your head off (or your name was Shifty [who is a very small courier BTW]).  Crapped out on those due to a bad start and also lost out betting on the various other contestants although did gain a modicum of a comeback with the trolley race (???) winning the first qualifier but then dumping my passenger after hitting a submerged bump on the second.  Decided it was probably best to leave before things got to silly but in hindsight (which is always 20-20) staying may have been a far more sensible decision.  Rode home with no issue and got my stuff together for a journey over the bridge to McMahons where a D&M awaited me.  Journey through city was relatively pleasant but once I hit the bridge I started to mentally prepare myself for what awaited but nothing could have prepared me for what did happen – came to the descent ramp at the North Sydney side and decided to ride down (which I’ve done hundreds of times before with no issue although admittedly not on Frangelica) and by the time I hit the third stage I realised my back wheel was lifting but there wasn’t much I could do about it and suddenly I found myself being launched over the handlebars and flying into the bottom of the steps with a sickening crunch of handlebars, shoulder and helmet.  The shock was pretty significant, as one would expect, but after my latest run of bike related incidents it was almost a bit too much to bear.  Found myself in a bit of a delirium which was not helped by the fact that the very nice man who rescued me was named Ron and in my frazzled state I was convinced that he was someone who he wasn’t.  Was picked up very quickly and spent the evening in a confused stupor punctuated by shivering chills, sweltering body fever, aching body parts and bewildered mood (thanks be that I had someone who loved me to take care of me).  The next morning wasn’t helped by the fact that I had to make some pretty serious decisions pretty quickly nor by my discovery that the expensive brand new helmet (bought that day) had been cracked and was now useless and Frangelica’s handlebars were twisted beyond recognition and I also had to get to A&E to find out if my body had suffered commensurate damage.  Decided that the best course of action was to go to Balmain Hospital (best waiting times in the city) which brought back memories of a 1 December 2001 visit where I was accompanied by dad after some very childish shenanigans (although they did confuse me with some guy named David, whoever the hell he is) - even though I was pushed through relatively quickly the radiologist’s lunch break and other patients did mean a fair chunk of the afternoon was swallowed (not that I was going to be doing anything anyway).  Got mostly cleared of serious injury but that didn’t change the fact that those serious decisions still had to be made.  ‘As It Is In Heaven’ failed to lighten or darken my mood significantly but luckily there were no chuggers outside afterwards to take advantage of the weakened wills of the cinema goers ... What to do?