In 2014 I was finishing up the manuscript for the book I was writing about cancer survivorship with my late wife Linda when I went for a bike ride and started thinking about the book cover. Designing book covers isn’t an easy proposition. I tend to make them too busy, so I was riding my bike thinking about how to simplify the design and still communicate the depth of what I was trying to convey with the book The Right Kind of Pride.

A summer storm ripped through our region the night before. There was tree debris on the roads and puddles everywhere. I rode my Felt 4C road bike navigating through the sticks and wet leaves, then turned onto the Virgil Gilman Trail running from downtown Aurora out to Waubonsee Community College. That’s the same trail where in summer of 2013 Sue crashed her bike on one of our first rides together. She slid on her Scott tri-bike, crunched her shoulder on the ground and wound up having to get surgery later than year. The layer of wet leaves on the trail caused her to fall.

Given the conditions after the storm, I should have been more alert for dangerous trail conditions. Yet I was so preoccupied with the book design I had my head down thinking about it when my Spidey Sense told me to look up and there it was: a downed tree covering the entire trail. Without a moment to stop, I turned sideways and slammed into the tree at 20 mph. My face glanced a tree limb and my back crashed into it in turn. That was a sudden stop. Stunned, I somehow unclipped and tumbled onto the ground in one movement. Lying there I could feel the pain start and I looked up at the hole in the tree canopy to see blue sky. “Why…what the hell?” I said out loud.

I walked a few feet and sprawled out in the grass trying to assess the body damage. A couple came wheeling up behind me. They’d obviously watched me crash into the downed tree. She stepped into the grass, leaning over to speak and asked, “What are you doing?”

Speechless for the moment, I looked up at her through crooked sunglasses and tried to smile. That hurt.

“Because you’re bleeding,” she pointed out, motioning toward her chin, then mine. I touched my jaw and found the blood. I could feel a stinging gash on below my lower lip. “Yeah,” I admitted. “I am.”

“Do you want help?” her partner asked. “Should we call 9-1-1?”

I stood up, leaned over and stood up again. “No, I can ride,” I told them.

They both stared at me, ambled back to their bikes and lifted them over the downed tree. I stared after them, taking stock of the angle of the tree and its busted limbs. I hadn’t busted any of mine, but my back really hurt.

Reaching behind to grab my iPhone, the pain shot around my right side. The phone was bent about 12 degrees on either end from the impact. A few days later when I showed up to exchange it at the AT&T store, the salesperson looked at that phone and exclaimed, “I have never seen an iPhone bent before.”

I dialed my daughter first to let her know I was generally okay. Her voicemail was on so I left a message. Surprisingly, the phone worked for that call. But that was it. The next time I dialed it was to reach Sue, but the call didn’t go through. The phone fizzled and shut down.

Unable to reach anyone in my immediate emergency crew, I decided to ride into Aurora and stop at the house of some friends named Randy and Debby. I’d known them since 1981 because they were roommates with my late wife Linda when they were all young teachers in the West Aurora school district. Since 1985 when I married Linda we’d spent many occasions together including annual New Year’s Eve celebrations, as well as trading dinner dates, even going on camping trips and visiting Frank Lloyd Wright houses from the Midwest to the East. They knew me during my 20s as a competitive runner, and were there for us during all eight years of Linda’s cancer survivorship. If there was anyone I could trust in the world in a moment of crisis, it was them.

My bike wasn’t too messed up from the crash. Just a couple bent brake hoods and putting the chain back on. I rode a bit unsteadily but arrived at their house, rang the familiar door bell and stood there hoping one of them would answer. Debby opened the door and seeing the condition of my face, proclaimed, “What did you do?”

“I hit a tree,” was all I could muster.

“Do you want to come in?”

“Maybe, if you have time, we could go to the Emergency Room?”

“Of course,” she offered, grabbing her purse and sunglasses.

We caught up a bit on the way to the hospital. Earlier that spring we’d all three gone to Mineral Point, Wisconsin together to reflect on their friendship and my marriage to Linda. During that stay we booked a tour at the Taliesin home of Frank Lloyd Wright. No one else showed up for the tour, so it was just us and the docent, who happened to hail from Aurora, Illinois, walking through the home and sitting down in the living room. “Ask me anything you want,” he said. “You paid for the tour. We have all the time in the world.”

I felt like that interlude was a bit of an echo of our long friendship together. They were Linda’s closest friends in many ways. Both of them loved wine as she did, and as teachers they often compared notes about classroom experiences while I sipped my Killian’s beer or Maker’s Mark and Coke, a favorite for Randy too.

Debby sat for while in case I needed a ride home, but I called Sue on her phone and Debby was able to head home. The emergency docs and nurses looked me over and decided to put stitches into my chin. The doctor tried his best to sew the odd knob of skin sticking out of my face back into the flesh around it, but when I got home to clean off the wound I saw he’d done a shitty job. The stitches closed the wound but somehow missed the flesh hook protruding from the wound. I should have gone back and had them do it over but said Fuck It and laid down for the night. Sue ushered me home from the hospital but it was late and she had work in the morning so I laid down on the bed and fell asleep with my dog Chuck out of his cage and snoring on the bed beside me. “What a weird day,” I said out loud.

The real reason for the crash that morning was my ADHD. Alternately daydreaming and immersing my mind in total focus was a product of that condition. I’d bear marks of that mental mistake for many weeks after the crash.

The impact of my body against the tree caused deep contusions in the back flesh, which turned green, purple, rose-red and many other colors. The massive bruise was nearly a foot across in width and slowly began migrating around my hip and toward my crotch. Soon enough my genitals turned purple as the bruise blood headed wherever it was going and finally dissipated. Yet even that was not the end.

For the entire next year the scar tissue stung and tugged at my back muscles. Finally a chiropractor I visited suggested “scraping” it out with a hard plastic tool. That hurt like hell but it worked. Two years later, but it worked.

That day symbolized so many other incidents in life where my inattention caused me to crash into reality in one way or another. I took some wicked teasing from friends at our Friday night dinner gatherings. Sadly, it wouldn’t be the last time I had to admit to a bike crash over the years. At least once a summer for 6-7 years I had a bump-up of some kind. When it hadn’t happened yet each year, people would ask, “Aren’t you about due for your summer crash?”

I’d say, “Thanks for reminding me,” and have another sip of Jack or Maker’s Mark with Coke. Some habits are hard to break. That includes my habit of engaging in an annual summer crash.