Entries from June 2008 ↓

Walking out of the train station I was a just little pissed. I had just found out there would be a 30 some odd minute delay until they would be unloading luggage from the train. Which meant I would have to wait to get my bicycle back. This is why when I travel, I normally never check anything.

I was calling Bobby to change our initial meeting plans when I passed a girl who sounding frustrated as she talked and waved at her cell phone in a language I didn’t catch on my first pass as I walked towards the corner. On my way back I over heard her conversation now with a taxi driver, and found out she and a friend were headed to the youth hostel. Assuming she was a backpacker from Europe and remember how well everyone took care of me when I was over there. I stopped and asked if she needed helped.

It turned out she did. They didn’t know where the youth hostel was, and the taxi driver was attempting to charge them $20 dollars for a half mile rile. Since my plans for the evening were pretty much only meeting up with Bobby who is also a backpacker and going to a bar to complain about women for, I figured we should try and help them out.

We took the girls to their first Wendy’s restaurant for milkshakes and talking about their trip so far before delivering them to the youth hostel. Turns out they just recently gotten out of school in Amsterdam, Holland, and they are taking a train/bus trip all the way around the Untied States. Their pictures can be found here.  The next morning I went with both girls to the Martin Luther King jr. memorial before they caught their next train to Savannah, Georgia.

Mostly…..

So I entered into a race called Wonderkat yesterday. Aside from a headache I felt amazing. So in an uncharacteristic move for me I popped an Advil and got prepped to raced.

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I was first off the line and carried the pace for the first half mile or so, but was soon forced to drop back and let several people in front of me who actually knew the way we needed to go. I was one of the first three people to the two check points I made it to. Even though I entered the Sopo parking lot on a sprint and off my brakes and over shot my mark. Unfortunately between the Freedom park stop and the High Museum, I don’t what happened. I am confident I had a had a seizure, passed, out and crashed my bicycle. Several people including the checkpoint worker told me they the heard sirens when I spoke to them later on that night. Unfortunately I have no clue when I went down or how long I was out for, but I was unconscious long enough for them to get me to the hospital and get an I.V. in.

When I woke up, I took stock of my situation, I was in a strange hospital……Again. I at least had my wallet and my cell phone, but I didn’t have my glasses. Looking around I could think of several better places to be. Lots of the people on the beds where wearing blue faces masks and so were several nurses. Considering that not everyone was wearing a mask the problem must have still been endemic, but still fairly infectious. So I made sure I could still walk, got up. And then read my name on the wall chart to see where I fell in the triage rotation. When I saw it was fairly fair down I pulled the I.V. and then walked out.

Looking at myself I saw was bleeding from both legs, my shoulder, and face. The large blood stain running down the front of my jersey came from mouth where I split my lip. Placing a few phone calls I was able to track down my bicycle and my glasses. Just the matter of riding the Marta a few miles and the walking a few more miles to pick them up.

Well happy birthday to me. Looks like a few days off my bike while I rest this time.