They say that your life flashes before your eyes in life threatening situations. So far in my life I've been in 3 situations that, looking back, could have been it. In none of those situations have I had a look back at my life.
The first was when I flipped a car. My clearest memory of that is thinking that things were going so well in my slide around the corner at 90km/h (not deliberately) that I should try slowing down by braking. It gets a bit hazy after that ... but the end result was the car ended up upside down. I walked (well, crawled out the back window) unscathed from that, without even a scratch.
The second time was white water rafting. After being dumped out of the raft at the rapids, I tried to surface and my head hit the bottom of the raft. I had a bit of a think about the situation (very quickly obviously) and dived back down to hopefully catch a current and resurface away from the raft. If I'd had the wind knocked out of me or I'd panicked I may have drowned. Drowning white water rafting in Wales would have been quite embarassing, so I'm quite glad that didn't happen!
The last time was this morning. I've started riding a bike to work, for fitness, to save money and because it's quicker than any other way to get to work. So today, like most days I rode up Venner Rd to the lights at Ipswich road on the footpath and waited for the lights to change. When the green man came on I hopped back on the bike and continued over Ipswich Rd down on to Waterton. The bike lane starts a little way down the road so there's a brief bit where I normally stay on the footpath until I can safely get on the road. Today a lot of cars turned left so I went straight on the road.
Down that hill I reckon I can get above 60, so I tried to get up a bit of speed, as that way the cars that catch up to me aren't going that fast comparatively. Unfortunately there was quite a bit of traffic on the road today, and the guy coming out of Hungry Jacks was having trouble getting out. So when I was about 10 metres from the driveway he pulled out. With no where to go I smacked into his right side of the bonnet at about 30 km/h (according to Strava).
As I tumbled through the air ( I remember being upside down ) I can remember hoping that I would land safely and roll. Or at least not break any bones. I landed, but I don't remember how but it must have been on my hip as I have a very impressive scrape there. I got up and the adrenaline / shock kicked in so I basically ran off the road and paced for a bit until I'd calmed down. My work shoes had come flying out of the bag and someone picked them up for me. I don't remember where the bike ended up, but the other side of the road as someone took it off the road for me.
I was quite obviously in shock as it's a bit of a blur for the next few minutes. The guy who'd pulled out in front of me was as well, as was the lady who was behind me, as she pulled her car up and rang 000 for us. As I do, I made light of the whole thing and tried to crack a few jokes. The first people who turned up were the the fire department. No real need for them to be there, but I appreciated it. Then the ambulance showed up, gave me a once over and then the driver.
It was good to have the 10 minutes rest and recover, and then I walked home and put the bike away. Gave Mick a bit of a fright with me saying I'd been hit by a car, but I don't think I was thinking quite right.
Got to work around 1030 or so, which was not too bad. The best thing is that I rang work at 8am (when I got hit) to let them know what had happened, but the message didn't get passed on. At about 930am our producer asked if anyone had my number to check on me, in case I'd been hit by a car ......
Photos of the damage: https://plus.google.com/photos/111624362804658067487/albums/5704120785994345969
The (very short) ride: http://app.strava.com/rides/3775887
In all seriousness, I am very very happy that I walked away from this accident. I can't help wondering how badly injured I would have been if this had happened further down the hill. Or I'd hit somewhere else on the car and not been able to go flying over the bonnet.
It really makes you appreciate the good things in life. Ironically, I was going to start blogging daily about what made today good. Today was the fact I had my first serious accident on my bike and walked away. Stay safe people, and enjoy each day as it comes.