W-w-w-w-w-wipeout!!!

5 January - Awfullu cold and wet morning butit mostly stopped around 10ish and it cleared up quite nicely. I was sent out eastways to Port Vancouver, quite far ou from downtown and one of the items I was to take was a big box of freshly baked cookies with a helium balloon tied to the end of it. The reason why a biker had to do it was because the owner was adamant that the cookies not be moved by any driver who smoked (because they would stink up the cookies) therefore I was assigned (i supposed she prefers vancouver's carbon monoxide and car fume vapours infusing her cookies than cigarette smoke). I had the helium balloon streaming behind me for about half an hour but as I sped over the viaduct into the east side it detached and went up and up and on to freedom. i'm not sure if they missed the balloon when I dropped it off but I would soon have bigger things to worry about than an upwardly mobile helium Happy Birthday balloon. My next destination was Port Vancouver, a truck infested industrial area and train tracks verywhere. it was one of those train tracks, slick with the morning's rain, that sent Baby Blue flying out from under me leaving me crash into the pavement, landing on my wrist and head. I really heard more than felt my head hit the ground and despite it being a solid whack the helmet absorbed the impact perfectly and I was still clear of head enough to thank myself for not even considering to succumb to the helmetlessness that pervades this industry. The sprain to my wrist took a while to manifes but started to progressivelky worse very rapidly. As for the bike, he seemed to be absolutely no worse for wear other than the fact that the handlebars and front wheel had completely spun around backwards. A very uncomfrtable ride back to the core was not helpd by the fact that I kept on getting new trips on my Blackberry and I couldn't alert my dispatcher to what had happened because the radios weren't working. As soon as I got back to downtown I locked my bike up and just walked the trips I had left on me to their relatively clustered destinations and made my way to St Pauls hospital for my hand which was really starting to throb. Got in touch with chris who rambled a bit about one of hi own accidents before making some vague promises how I would be taken care of. The emergency ward is a really depressing place - not too crowded but full of miserable people with miserable injuries and the majority there seemed to be regular visitors. When they admitted me they took down all of my pertinent information down to all contact details and visa details (none of which I had on me) but didn't spot a single piece of real ID . The quote for the treatment went from $444 when I told them I didn't have BC Medical to $288 when I was on working holiday to nothing when it was an accident on worktime. The x-ray showed up no breaks which was a big relief but the perfujnctory examination beyond that didn't leave me feelinglike they did all they could do. My wrist was put in a splint and I was sent on my way. Obviously the day was over for me so I signed off and took the Skytrain home , puushing my bike along with my good hand (woe to the offficial who would tellme that I couldn't take my bike on the train before 6). Eventually got home, not 5 metres from the front gate my courier bag strap got bizarrely entangled in the back wheel and I had an excruciating 5 minutes of very painful and frustrating effort of trying to disengage my strap with one hand while being draged down by the bike that kept on threatening to roll (entangling the strap further and yanking me down) or just fall over (taking me with it). First thing first I had to decide what I was going to do for the pain. It was either slug back a few whiskeys and have a joint to relax or take a few of my dwindling supply of nurofens (not sure that those thing should mix). The nurofens won out but they seemed remarkably slow tto take effect. When rene returned home a while later he wasted no time in helping out by rolling a spliff, something I wwas completely unable to doo with only working hand. Marijuana is many things, not all of them ppositive, but one thing it is abnsolutely eexcellent at doing is relaxing one who is in physical pain. While I was spacing a while I feltcompletely detached from the now persistent pulsing pain that my wrist was now feeling. It turns out rene was given written notice bbecause he hadn't paid rent (it had eoonly been two days! I'm sure there is a bit more to the story but it was still a very excessive reaction by the landlord). Apparently they talked it outlater on . Did Rene a solid by emailing a bunch of pictures he'd taken on my camera of him taking down a huge tree to his girlfriend. Somer absolutely increidble pictures which i'll post up sometime of him in action. Watched two very interesting movies as well, Runaway jury, a fasst paced john grisham thrilller attacking the gun industry (very smoothly translattd from the cigarette company attack from the book but otherwise very faithful). Excellent cast, most notably in the supporting actors who were in the jury like luis guzman, bill nunn and the inestimable maori chamelon cliff curtis. I was quite shocked to find myself emotionally moved when the motives ffor the heeroes ar revealed. It may be trash but it's highly intelligent, well acted and well made trash and I loved it. The second movie was 'Kung fu hhustle', the chinese made stephen chow vehicle which was very entertaining with incredible balletic dancing aand over the top CGI wire-fuu fight scenes but the plot was nonsensnical at times and, even worse, completely lifted from the matrix in parts. I exxplained my annoyance to a housemate at the obvious plot gaps in the film and his respoonse was predictably dismisive. 'it's a movie, man, how can yuou expect it to be real when it's got all that crazy ass fight stuff'. A film can be abstract and not necessarily make sense but it should always be properly constructed or it just seems like it's a half arse job. All of the amazing visuals can be wasted if the movie doesn't make sense. But, it was fun anyway. I's ironic (well, at least one in one of the more popular common usages of the word ironsy) that the timi actually have a desire to recouint the detailed events of a day is the one time that it's really difficult to type them out with only m left hand (thank god, the left is okay). It's ver difficult to do thing for myself at the moment and I really miss those times when i've had someone close to help ith intimate thing like contact cleaning or even getting dressed but the housemates, especially rene, have been very helpful. Rene cut up a mango for me and washed some dishes and aaron did me the seemingly inocuous favour of tying my shoe laces. Really hoping my right hand recovers pretty quickly. Tres annoyment.