Experience that is very memorable

My most memorable day started out with my brother and me visiting my grandmother by bicycle for lunch on a Saturday. We rode our bikes without incident to her house but on the return trip, my brother’s bike broke. I got off my bike and walked it with him until we got to a long steep hill that led to the railroad tracks we needed to cross. Before the railroad tracks there was a small dirt jump built by some kids a few weeks back. I left my brother and rode down the hill to pick up speed to go off the jump. As I reached the bottom of the hill, I could feel the wind ripping at my face so I looked down at my bike computer and saw that I was going 30mph. Tried to slow down but with no success due to the loose gravel this made me go off the jump slightly turned to the right.

I flew off the jump got about 15 feet of air and landed on the other side of the railroad tracks. When I landed however my front tire hit a large rock and sent me and the bike into cartwheels. As I was tumbling in the air, I could hear my bike crashing and smashing against the rocks, just as I noticed my bike my head landed directly on top of another large rock and I heard a snap. My back felt like it was on fire from being twisted like a pretzel. My nose I could feel was swollen to about twice its normal size. As I reached up to feel my nose, I felt that my entire face was covered with blood. I reached up to wipe my eyes so that I could see what had happened and my hands felt more blood. I thought that I was nauseated by the fact that there was so much blood but it was due to the blood pouring into my mouth from my twisted and probably broken nose. I tried to stand up but immediately fell back down in pain and began to scream for help.

I could hear footsteps in the gravel as I lay down in a puddle of blood. The man tried to hand me my glasses but there was nothing left of them but a few shards of glass and a twisted piece of metal that vaguely resembled a pair of glasses. My brother arrived shortly after and watched me as the man ran to call 911. After waiting for what seemed hours, an ambulance arrived and untwisted me onto a stretcher in the most painful way imaginable. Once inside the ambulance I asked for a glass of water I was shocked to hear that I could not consume anything because they might have to operate. All the way to the hospital, I was too afraid to ask why they would need to operate and felt nauseated by that along with the taste of blood still in my mouth.

Being wheeled into the hospital all I saw were people’s heads and the fluorescent lights rushing past me. I was pushed immediately to the x-ray room so the doctors could determine how badly I was hurt. Lying on the cold x-ray table in a dark room I was told to contort into the most painful positions imaginable and hold them for an eternity. After the grueling x-ray, process doctors inspected each on of the many gashes from the rocks that were strewn across my face, arm and legs. The doctors finally allowed my mother to see me while they inspected the x-rays. In her hands, I could barely see two blurry red objects. She handed me another set of glasses and the objects came into focus. In her hands was my helmet that had split directly down the center. The loud snap that I had heard thankfully was not my neck but it was my helmet. This still did not ease the pain that was shooting up and down my back every time I tried to move.

The doctor came back and said he had good news. He told me that I did not have any broken bones and that my back was severely sprained but not broken. He gave me a neck brace and told me to wear it for and week and to move as little as possible for that week and I should be fine as long as I did not do any strenuous activity in the next month. On the way home from the hospital we stopped back at the railroad tracks where I had crashed to pick up my mangled bike. The blood on my bike was still wet as I carried it back to the truck. After I had recovered from the crash, I avoided crossing the railroad tracks at all costs.