The Awful Reality

I woke up Saturday morning and saw a message from one of my Florida riding buddies that was a quote from another one of my buddies that I have ridden with in California. The message was that Dawn was involved in a very serious crash. Dawn crashes once in awhile so I didn’t think it was horrible until I found out it was.

She was doing another 100 mile+ ride but it was still going into the night. She was on a bike trail along a river. There was a pretty sudden turn to the left that she did not see/react to in time and the result was catastrophic. She went off the trail and fell onto a steep concrete embankment that had stones embedded in it. She was likely going 30MPH plus when it happened. Her injuries are massive and she was literally touch and go for quite awhile with multiple internal injuries, a brain bleed, a collapsed lung and more. There was a very real chance she could die.

She has been in an induced coma for a number of days. She is more stable now but the total extent of her injuries is yet unknown. When the reality of the situation hit I sort of went numb. It was the sort of news that you wish was a dream that you can wake up from. Unfortunately there was no escape from this.

There was a gofundme created which has been generously contributed to by hundreds of people. The reality is that the financial distress that is potentially awaiting on the other side of this will be massive, far exceeding any donations that could be made. Assuming she is out of the woods there is still no clear idea of the extent of her injuries and what a road to recovery would even look like.

I had people ask if I was going to fly out to California because of the close relationship Dawn and I established over the last year. To me it makes no sense to do so as until she improves nobody can even see her except immediate family. I don’t really know exactly what I can/could do.

I have not had much contact with Dawn over the last month and a half so to get this news out of the blue was like a punch you didn’t see coming. At this point all I can hope is that whatever injuries she has suffered are not of the long term debilitating variety. If my near death accident in October didn’t teach me a hard enough lesson regarding the potential frailty of life, especially when riding on a one wheeled self balancing device, this incident engraved it in stone.

Yes every day you are rolling the dice, you never know if something could take you out. But when we willingly place ourselves in situations where only a moment of unawareness can lead to such catastrophic results you have to really do a thorough evaluation of your risk/reward equations. If you have a family that equation gets even more complicated.

I’m not a religious person but if you are, please say your prayers for Dawn. I have been trying to send her positive energy in my own way. There may be a hiatus to my posting anything in the blog for awhile. It just doesn’t feel very important.