Journal: |
Having finally got my wireless modem to work last night, I was up
later than planned catching up on diary uploads and reading my
incoming e-mail. I didn’t get to bed until 10:30pm and decided
to sleep in until 3:00am. I packed and then stopped in at the
24-hour roadhouse next door for a slice of carrot cake and orange
juice before hitting the road around 4:00am. It was raining
when I got up, but had stopped by the time I started riding and,
although mostly cloudy, a setting full moon occasionally peeped
through. The road was relatively flat and traffic was light
and I made good time heading south towards Perth, which I would
reach in another 160km. Tomorrow I would pass Cape Leeuwin,
the most south-westerly point of Australia and turn to head home
along the south coast. It rained lightly every now and then
and the road was wet. At 5:30am, after about 40km, at a time
when it wasn’t raining, I was on a long straight level stretch of
highway when the road in front of me was lit up by the high-beam
lights of a vehicle approaching from behind. There was nothing
coming in the opposite direction. I felt safer riding at night
than during the day because, aside from there being less traffic,
you always had very early warning of approaching vehicles, from both
in front and behind, because of their headlights. I always
rode with two headlights, powered by my front-wheel hub generator,
and three battery-operated flashing rear lights (plus a spare not
switched on), two on the bike and one on my helmet. I also was
wearing a large reflective yellow and silver patch, similar to the
colours worn by police, which covered the entire back of the
backpack I always wore when riding and had a large reflector on the
bike rack at back. I once had a driver who had passed me on
the road at night tell me that he thought I was a police
breath-testing station when he first spotted me in the far distance.
Anyway, as the vehicle approached me from behind, I got as far
left on the road as I could, either on the white road border line or
on the narrow 25cm strip of road surface to the left of it, and
waited for it to pass me. Generally, when there was nothing
coming the other way, passing vehicles moved over a lane giving me a
wide clearance. I cannot recall anybody passing close to me at
night. If there is a vehicle coming the other way at night, I
steer off the road surface onto the verge and stop and wait until
they have passed. I waited for the vehicle to pass then, as it
reached me, felt a huge impact on my right arm and elbow and
remember thinking “he’s hit me”. Next thing I was lying on the
wet road, conscious enough to think that I must get off the road
surface before another vehicle came along, and aware of the lights
of a vehicle coming from the other direction. Lying on my
back, I inched off the road, gasping with the pain from my arm, and
trying to examine the rest of my body for injuries. When I got
off the road onto the gravel, I just lay there collecting myself and
groaning from the arm pain. My bike lay a few metres behind me.
It was pitch dark as the moon had now set. The vehicle coming
the other way turned out to be the one that had hit me. The
vehicle was a high-topped white escort van, mounted with amber
flashing lights and signs, that was returning from Karratha in the
Pilbara after escorting an oversize truck on a trip up there from
Perth. The driver thought he had killed me, and was very
relieved to see me move my good arm as he approached. He
parked his van behind me and set the flashing lights going as a
warning to other traffic. He claimed not to have seen me until
the moment of impact, which had smashed his wing mirror. I
don’t know what speed he was traveling at, but it was open highway
and the limit was 110kph. I slowly sat up and then stood up,
even managing to put a little weight on my damaged arm.
Incredibly, I didn’t seem to have any other significant injuries,
although I did feel like I had been in a prize fight and my arm hurt
badly. I told the driver I didn’t want to call an ambulance
at this stage and set about assessing the damage to my bike and gear
in the dark. As the van had passed me from behind, it had
sheared off my right rear pannier bag with its wheel well, and
collected my arm with its wing mirror. The contents of the
pannier were now strewn about 30 metres up the highway and the
pannier bag was completely destroyed yet, miraculously, the bike
seemed to have been untouched and the left pannier and rack-top bag
were fine. My rear-view mirror was snapped off either by the
vehicle as it passed or the fall. I found the rear light from
my helmet in the middle of the road 10 metres on, still winking red,
and the front headlamp from my helmet 20 metres up the road in the
gravel on the opposite side. I wasn’t conscious of banging my
head or helmet, but daylight later revealed it was heavily
compressed on the right rear side and fractured on the right side.
It was an expensive helmet and I think I may have got my money’s
worth out of it. Despite the damage to my gear and arm, I
was very conscious that, to continue my quest, I couldn’t afford to
lose any time or accept any assistance in terms of a lift. I
slowly collected all of my belongings from along the road and then,
by the headlights of the van, repacked them into my remaining bags.
I did a quick check of the bike and found that the wheels seemed to
still rotate freely and the only damage seemed to be to the
right-hand brake/gear lever which was awry but fixable with a bit of
(left-handed) muscle. I decided that I would get back on the
bike and continue riding to Gin Gin (40km) and make a more measured
assessment of my situation in daylight. The van driver
insisted that he was going to follow me in his van with the lights
flashing until it got light. I was angry with him for hitting
me, but could see he was shaken up and genuinely remorseful, and I
knew it would have been easy for him to keep going after he had hit
me with little risk of being caught. There was no point in
arguing with him about the accident and I was grateful for his help
in getting me going again. I rode for 10km towards Gin Gin,
but my arm was extremely painful to put any weight on and I was
having increasing difficulty manipulating the right-hand brake and
gear levers. By 10km I knew that I would not be able to
continue and needed to get the arm looked at by a doctor. I
stopped and the van driver made space for me and my bike in his van
and drove us into Gin Gin where he had found out by radio there was
a medical centre and an ambulance station. The medical centre
was closed, but he called an ambulance which arrived a few minutes
later. While I was being loaded into the ambulance, a doctor
from the medical centre arrived and said she thought the arm was
broken and I should be taken to hospital. Two policemen also
arrived and got some details from me before I was driven away to
Joondalup Hospital. The police took my bike and said they
would work out a way to get it to me later. The paramedics
also offered to get my bike to me. Everybody was extremely
sympathetic, professional and kind. At the hospital, about
60km away, I was admitted to Emergency and spent the next four hours
there getting assessed. X-rays did not show a fracture but may
indicate a chipped bone in the elbow. I had a puncture wound
in the back of my upper right arm where a large chunk of flesh had
been gouged out and this was stitched up. I refused
pain-killers (I like to know when I am hurting!), but took the
prescribed anti-inflammatories and left with instructions to wear a
sling (for at least a couple of days), do no significant lifting for
a week and to work on gentle mobility. I caught a taxi to a
motel in the north Perth suburb of Wanneroo where I booked in for
the night. POSTSCRIPT The police kindly returned my
bike to me at the motel the next morning and said they will be
investigating whether the van driver had observed the rest
regulations applying to professional drivers. If not, then
charges may be considered. I think the police accept that I
was appropriately lit up and riding on the left. The van
driver told the police and me that he sticks to the left of the road
when driving at night because road train drivers tend to drive down
the middle of the road. Sharon booked me a flight back to
Sydney yesterday morning and picked me up from the airport. As
we were driving back to the Central Coast up the F3 Freeway at
110kph, I again felt a sense of wonder that I was not dead or in a
wheelchair, having been hit by a vehicle traveling at such a speed
(recognizing that my forward speed of 25kph would have mitigated the
impact). If the van had hit me a few centimeters to the left I
would have been history and this sense of relief largely offsets the
anger and disappointment I feel at having stolen from me what would
have been one of my life’s great experiences (assuming I
finished…not a given) after making a huge personal investment.
It is now three days since the accident and my right arm is
grotesquely swollen and bruised from the bicep to the knuckles, and
difficult to move. But the pain is not great and I have little
doubt I will heal quickly. The stitched wound also looks
healthy. I have a number of other cuts and abrasions, but they
are no worse than the usual mountain-biking fare. I don’t
think I will be making another attempt on the record for riding
around Australia. I do have in mind a West to East crossing of
Australia on a mountain bike via the outback tracks and deserts, to
follow the South to North ride I did in 2006, but it won’t be a ride
against the clock. And there are lots of other ideas for
adventures to follow up. I’m very grateful for all of the
encouragement and support I received from you all along the way.
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