We were flying down the road and W veered left. A rock near the curb launched us in the air. Landing on the berm, halfway into the ravine, I bumped my head and scraped my arm. I wasn’t out, but by the time I was upright on the road, calling to W, surveying the damage, and picking bits out of my skinned-up forearm, there were stopped cars at the scene. Everyone was huddled around W.
At first, everyone ignored me. They thought I was uninvolved. “Stay away!” they said. There was nothing I could do. I walked home. When I reached the top of the hill, I could hear the ambulance coming.
W’s little brother was ahead of us when we crashed, as we headed down the hill to W’s and B’s house. W’s little brother worried when we weren’t behind him. He turned around and walked his bike back up the hill to the turn where we vanished. W’s little brother asked where I was. No one remembered.
When I got home, we called the M’s. They called our house later to let us know that W was in the hospital, and that he would be okay.
When the story started to take shape, things were tense. Somebody at the scene scooped up W’s teeth and put them in cold milk. They noted the half-foot groove his teeth gouged out of the pavement. Someone else noted W had a broken arm. Once all the details were in place, nobody placed blame.
I couldn’t get my story straight. I was sitting on the handlebars with my feet out front. Maybe that’s not right. Maybe I was sitting on the seat and W was standing up in front of me. We tried both. Two kids on one bike heading down a mountain road is a recipe. Still, I caught some grief from my parents. Before or after the facts, none of our parents were fans of our plan.
The next day, I walked out to the main road and down the hill to the spot where we went flying. I looked at the gouge. I looked at my bandaged arm. I felt the bump on my head. I thought about the time a few years before when I chipped a front tooth on a rock when I fell off of a merry-go-round. Of all the places to fall off into the dirt, I found a spot with hand-sized rock stuck in it. Then, I thought about the time my sibling picked a fight with me and smashed my face down on the floor, busting my other front tooth half-off. I stared at that trench and I thought about W’s bad luck and my foolishness.
W was out of school for a week. He came back sporting a white cast we all signed, and something like braces that held his teeth while they healed. I heard more stories. Adults apologized when they realized that I’d been thrown too. I told myself that being ignored didn’t matter. I was okay. I could walk home. I could go to school. I just had a lump on my head and a big scrape on my arm. So what if my arm hurt? I guess.
I felt like it was my fault. At school, I kept W company. I was pretty good friends with W’s little brother, but now I got to know W. I said a lot of stupid shit to him about things I wanted build and share. After awhile, he said his arm was feeling better. They said that he would keep his teeth, but I don’t know how everything turned out, because I moved away.
All we wanted to do was to go to my friend’s house. My bike was 1/2 mile away, along a sandy dirt road with hills, at my house. It was hot, and their house was just 1/4 mile downhill, down a paved mountain road. It was a 10-11-12-year-old no-brainer. Hey, hop on my bike. I can take two.
Coaster brakes take a lot of force to work. One rider trying to manage the weight of two is tricky enough, but with only a fraction of the total load on the bike at his disposal, W's weight couldn't supply the needed force for the brakes. And, there was that rock.
I always felt responsible for the damage caused by our folly. While W and I were both willing participants, while W made it clear that it was his idea, my parents made a case that I should have known better. Sure, I was practiced enough to take my bike apart and maintain it, something Pa taught me well enough about, but I was also not adult-practiced in feeling through to the consequences of two riders on a bicycle built for one. I wasn't capable of working through what could go wrong. How could this go wrong? Back then, tweens were thought to possess a certain level of judgment. Sure, we could plan some simple things, but we all know now, or should know now, that tweens, teens, and young adults don't have the trained brain structures to work out consequences meaningfully.
I don't know if I need to shake the pain of that day. Although, I'm happy I recognize that the tangled-up anger I remember feeling around the time was also about the pain I felt. I hurt in a lot of ways. I can feel that if I take the time. I suppose my anger was also about being ignored and told I was an idiot. My parents bandaged up my arm and sent me on my way. The headache from the lump on my head wasn't too bad, so I probably didn't have much of a concussion, I don't recall other bad symptoms. Concussion wasn't taken as seriously as it is now, either. What a fucking world.
We were invincible on those roads, in those mountains, and then, we weren’t. I’ve worn a helmet since they became available. It was a no-brainer on a motorcycle. Bicycles became a commonly helmeted ride around the same time in my life. Later, once, I crashed hard enough to break a bicycle helmet. It was raining. My bike slid negotiating a railroad crossing that angled across my route.
At work that day, after noticing all my scrapes and bruises, a friend, a more experienced cyclist, asked how heavy my backpack was. That day, instead of going to a hospital to get checked out for a concussion, I bought a set of panniers. From then on, I kept my backpack weight at a couple pounds max. The next time my bike slid out, I was able to recover it. No crash. No fuss. It was like drifting on my old dirt-bike. Putting the weight in the right place was magical.
I hope that W is still out there, and I hope that he is doing well. I’ve tried tracking down people from back then but with common names and nicknames, I hit dead ends, mostly. And, don’t try this at home, except the panniers and helmets. Those work.