Hi guys,


I am as OK as you can be when a school bus runs over some body parts. Big kudos to the random people on site who quickly applied compression to my arm as I was feeling I would go into shock with blood spurting all over the place, the quick arrival of paramedics and then the awesome staff at Emergency at the Ottawa Civic hospital where I spent most of the day yesterday. No discharged and back at home!


OK so I just started biking again a bit more constently as nerve/disic trouble were getting in the way for a few years. The last 2 weeks have been truly golden...each bike ride got better and better to the point that initially I could climb out of saddle at full power (I am in great shape from swim and rowing machine) and in the last two rides despite some left leg weakness, pretty close to full power sitting. I was just getting excited to adding biking back into my routine of daily swimming, weights, and alternate day rowing machine. It was really fun to be outside again.

Well, all of that ended after I hit something on the road yesterday that for some reason I did not see (I can say I had not lost any road handling ability during my hiatus). I have been on this stretch of road 2k from home at least 1000 times pervious. There is normally no pot hole, or dip in road or manhole, unless some utility crew dug up the road for some maintenance and patched it up poorly. So I THINK I hit something in the morning shadows and my hands went off the base bars which I was riding in approaching a traffic light that was just turning green.

In the bike lane side, my bike started veering right as my hands came off bars from the sudden road shock....in any case i ended up hitting the curb and bouncing back into traffic right at the time a school bus was starting to move forward (there was a line up of cars that was just getting moving at the green light and I was going to turn right).

I ended up veering right away from traffic, but then bouncing off the curb 180 degrees with my right arm and leg under the bus tires. The school bus, not knowing I was there and already in motion ran over my right bicep and forearm and my right foot. My right foot was basically unharmed due to the rigidity of the bike shoe (it is sore), but the two tires of the school bus covered everything from halfway up my bicep to my wrist and crushed/mangled things substantially

Miraculously, nothing is broken, but the bus managed to sheer away muscle from bone. This spot is 2K from home and I have done probably 1000 passes of this tarmac as it is part of a hill interval loop (this part is downhill and recovery phase....not that I am doing intervals as I just started riding).

In any case in all my years of cycling, my worst fear is crashing and ending up in traffic. Yesterday I finally did but under a bus (kind of like Cristian Bustos style for those of you old timers).

Now that I am mainly a swimmer my first reaction as I was crying on the curb waiting for the ambulance "What If I can never swim again....second reaction....Oh my God, I have a startup company to run....all these guys are depending on me!"

The paramedics were awesome. They gave me compression immediately, that stopped a lot of the blood outflow and stabilized things. Emergency guys were great. I got a bunch of Xray's immediately and after some analysis actually no fractures, just crushed soft tissue. While I find it hard to believe, it feels like the entire elbow joint is totally messed up and non functional. They have sewn everything back up together so now I have a "closed arm" with nothing protruding, albeit twice the size. They don't think there is any nerve or artery damage. They tested my fingers which I can move properly but in pain (ex typing now kind of works with arm supported at 90 degrees)

So the orthopedic surgeon at the ER feels the arm will work again. I look forward to when they will let me back in the pool to do endless kick sets. I hope I can do that. Right now I cannot imagine activating my bicep to even get my arm 1 inch off the hanging position....forget about overhead. No cast or anything, just a sling for now. They are concerned about infection, so they have me on antibiotics and they gave me some narcotic pain killers, but I am veering away from the narcotic pain killers and just dealing with the pain with some extra strength tylenol. This is the first time since 1992 that I have been on any antibiotics, so not thrilled about that, but I guess I would rather do that than risk this getting a deep infection as the "hole" when right down to bone.

Anyway, my one fear riding which I have always had is crashing for whatever reasons and ending up in traffic and getting run over. Now I had that one, but no head or chest being run over.

Looks like the rest of the summer and fall in rehab. Hopefully I can get back to full swimmer status in due course. Right now it feels kind of impossible, but I can't let how I am physically feeling now get in the way of what is possible. I have enough experience at this point to know that if your head is in the game, you can make a lot of recovery progress.

Anyway "not dead" but this is one of those freaky ones where everything happens at the wrong moment. My only fault is not spotting whatever I hit. I am totally baffled by what I actually hit that would send my bike bucking in that manner on that smooth tarmac. We could say "don't ride beside a bus" but probably in the 15,000 times I have ridden beside buses and trucks in the bike shoulder nothing ever happened.

Edit: Someone asked for pictures...so I will start with the good one.

I recently got back into biking training not for racing, but with the the hope to get back to riding in the Alps again. I wanted to and still want to go back to the top of Galibier not by car, by bike to ~8800 ft:



Well here is the step backwards towards that goal. This is what a Canadian School bus looks like. Normally they do not drive over cyclists and it was not the driver's fault