THE FALL (DAYS 73,74,75,76)Part One

Normally, I enter the days events on the next day.
Normally, I do this at work.
Normally.
It was Thursday and I was working, getting stuff done. The day was a little wonky. I killed a fruit fly by smacking myself in the face. Usually, I wouldn't go to such extremes, but the little buggers are taking over the place and getting on my nerves. Shortly after that I went to go in the kitchenette in the back of the shop.
Someone had closed the sliding glass door.
I bounced off that sucker like a bouncing ball. Smacked my head and crunched my nose pretty hard. I'm a tough cookie so I shrugged it off.
It was Thursday and I was off to home to celebrate my youngest daughter's birthday. She was turning nine today.
So, here I am pedaling home. I love to ride my bike. I'm also a creature of habit and like to take the same route every time.
The stupid shits who run the city of Kalamazoo try to throw a monkey wrench into everything I do. In this particular case it's the downtown mall. It used to be this lovely walking mall where children could play. Now, it's a cobble stone road only no one knows how to do real cobblestone anymore so, it looks like crap. Now, they are tearing up the road to put this water system underneath it to thaw out the roads during winter and prevent plowing. Why they couldn't have thought of this when they were building the damned thing is beyond me, but there it is.
So, I have to take an alternate route. I was zooming through a parking lot and jumped a curb. No big deal, I do that all the time. I had some pretty good speed going and I turned the front wheel as I stood up and pedaled hard to get out of the road and back to the mall area of downtown away from the road I was on.
Then my chain snapped as I was bearing down with about 235 pounds of me on my right leg. The bike folded under me and sent my chubby butt into flight. My mind raced. I panicked as I flew and all too soon I hit the ground pretty damned hard. Thanks to years of Judo training and being a little graceful I managed to not strike my head on the pavement. I went to get up and realized I was going to need a minute. When I hit I felt the pavement tear into my right arm. It flared with some pretty bad pain. My knee felt pretty bad as well.
I got up on the second try and felt pretty wonky. I picked up my bike and got out of the road. An older gentleman asked if I needed help or needed to call anyone for me. I assured him that I was fine and called Martha.
The pain was pretty bad but my loving wife was on her way. Where I stood was a shitty place to pick up someone with a busted bike. I looked at my arm and it made me nauseous. It was mangled and dark red. The elbow looked like shit. I was able to move my arm so I figured nothing was busted. The leg worked so that was good. All told Jesus was looking out for me and made sure that nothing debilitating had occurred.
It was time to move down the road a little way to wait for Martha. I, of course, went the wrong way and she eventually found me.
We went home and the littles had gotten home while we were gone. Dandelion came out and looked at me and her little face was worried for a minute. Then she smiled and said,
"Did you have anything to say to me, Daddy?"
With a road rash that would put Bam Margera to shame, a swollen right leg and a scraped knee I looked at her and smiled and told her Happy Birthday.
Then I had to call work and tell them there was no way I was going to work tomorrow. Tracie is a good boss and she told me to take it easy. I knew that all those muscles that had tensed for a fall were going to be agony.
Then came the wonderfully painful process of cleaning the wounds. The knee was just a rug burn in that the pants never ripped. A little hydrogen peroxide and a little burning and that was right as rain. The arm was different. There are some areas that have absolutely no skin. I cleaned those the same way and man, did it burn! Martha thought it would be good to wrap it for the night to keep it clean.
I think I slept a total of about four hours and when I woke up on Friday I felt like someone had gone off on me with a baseball bat.
I slept for a while and woke up again. Pretty fitful sleep. Martha had some driving around to do and I didn't want to be home alone so I went along.
She paid the power bill and we picked up some things for Dandelion's birthday. she got a new DVD player that we found at Toys R US for eleven bucks! I picked up two more just to have spares for when one breaks. We got her some creepy crawler goop for her creepy crawler maker. And the one thing she wanted the most. The Nightmare On Elm Street boxed set. Heh, I love my daughter. For Christmas she wants the Friday The 13th set. She's a good girl.
We were going to my mother's for Friday and some of Saturday so we decided to pick up the kids from school instead of waiting for them to get off the bus.
I have never seen such chaos before in my life. In the end it would have been better to wait the extra twenty minutes at the house for them to get dropped off.
So, we were on our way to my mom's.
We hate the highway so we took old 45 to 37 to get to White Cloud. At6 least that was our intention. The construction seemed designed in such a way to make sure we got off the beaten path as much as possible.
I decided to make this a two parter because sitting here is really killing me. I'll finish this up tomorrow and then things should be back on track here at The Waltz Compound. I still have to see if my bike can be fixed.
TO BE CONTINUED.