December 4th, 2007 started like almost any typical Tuesday, except I left home early that morning, because I had some extra duty as yearbook photographer to perform. For those of you who don't know at the time I was a junior at Midland Valley High School at the time. I didn't own a vehicle or hold a driver's license. Therefore, in order for me to get where I needed to be on time, I was my own transportation. My morning and afternoon commute normally consisted of a 2.7 mile trek that would almost always place me on Anthony Drive, Duncan Road, and Mustang Drive. I very rarely deviated from this route.
I remember waking up before 5AM. I had hit the shower hand cleaned up ate breakfast before 6AM. I was on the road by about 5:50. The morning was a cold one with temps in the upper 20s to lower 30s. I had a coat on with a hood. The weakness of this was the hood was on so tight that my neck could not swivel like usual, it created a bit of a blind spot. Riding in the cold was nothing new to me and riding like this was also nothing new. I eventually swapped to a ski mask following this accident. I also had a camper's back pack that had about 15 pounds of text books, good for about half my full text book load. If it hadn't have been for lockers and I had my full 30 pound load I would have been hurting even worse. The book bag was fastened to me by a harness with two cross straps. One around my waist, and one around my chest to prevent load shift. Strapped under these cross straps was my camera satchel. My Fujifilm Finepix S5200 survived this and many accidents in my padded camera satchel and I still own it today, just don't use it a lot.
After stopping at a convenience store on SC. hwy 421 commonly referred to by locals as the depot, I cruised down Anthony Drive to head for the school. After crossing the railroad tracks near Railroad Street Anthony Drive drops off down hill. It's not the steepest grade in the valley but on a bicycle you can pick up some speed. I was capable of good speed on a bicycle even then. My flat ground speed with no load was around 38mph. I had blazed fully loaded past the school resource officer who clocked me at 20, which was impressive for the fact my book bag was loaded. So, to give you an idea of what y impact speed would have been around 38-40mph. I was aggressively pedaling as I started to descend the hill, and even with a 15lbs load, I could easily make that speed on a down hill grade with my 21 speed mongoose mountain bike.
The route includes a bridge that crosses Horse Creek. I was running wide open as I approached the bridge at this point an unknown vehicle approached my blind side. I was aware of was behind me and moved over to give him room to pass. The incident happened so fast. As he passed somebody in the vehicle threw what I think was a half filled 1 liter Mountain Dew bottle out the window. The bottle hit me in the back of the head, knocking my coat hood over my face. Instantly after impact I was frantically trying to brake, but not even probably a hundredth of a second after impact, my bike hit the front of the guard rail. The guard rails are designed to collapse when hit by a 2 ton vehicle, however a 20 pound mountain bike with a 150 pound rider slamming it at the speed I was going was sure to make me hurt.
After hitting the guard rail, I was thrown from my bike airborne, for a brief second I remember seeing the tail lights of the perp's vehicle but couldn't make out anything else. I landed on the side of the guard rail opposite to the road. My bike landed not too far from me. I ended up in the mud. Because I was on the opposite of the guard rail nobody passing by could see me injured or knew of my presence. I layed on the ground for 10-15 minutes, pretty much shouting nothing but cusswords. The accident was about 6:30AM Eastern daylight time. I had just suffered the singled hardest hit I had ever taken.
I had been injured much worse than this in other accidents, but one thing that was key, was during this accident I was much more limber, due to the fact that I didn't see the hit with the guard rail coming. So, I didn't tense up like when I sprained my ankle in 2012 or contusioned my elbows in 2014. Had I saw it coming and panicked I likely would have been seriously injured if not killed. The amount of Gs I took in the incident were probably pretty impressive. The bottle strike was not what injured me, it was the collision with the guard rail.
Eventually rage would take over and I would pull myself up. I knew I had pulled several abdominal, arm and neck muscles. I knew the rational decision would be to turn around and go home. But after getting hit this hard, knocks the sense out of people, and I still wanted to go after this guy regardless of the odds of actually finding him. I had had an accident that was totally uncalled for and totally unnecessary. Don't get me wrong I never was somebody to get in fights, but this time was one time I was really wanting to find whoever did this and hurt him, good thing I didn't because I was in no shape to be fighting anybody. I highly doubted it was anybody who went to school with me, but I limped up there anyway to see if anybody knew anything and instantly regretted it on arrival. I had aggravated my pulled muscle injuries, and pretty much walked into the school looking like a drunk. My friends were trying to find out who was responsible for the incident but nobody ever found out. It all happened too fast for me to even get a description of the vehicle making filing a police report pretty much impossible. I had a suspect who didn't go to school with me, and had a run in with him before but never had proof he was the perp.
I lasted until 4th period English class before my mom picked me up. I spent the remainder of the day in bed and missed the next day of school. I would be off the bicycle for only 4 days. Though knowing what I know now I actually had no business riding bicycle for a month. I didn't know until a few years later I had suffered a grade 1 concussion. I was suffering from intermittent headaches for weeks following. It was nothing that made me nonfunctional, but having another accident would have definitely not been good for me. Worth noting is my head never took any direct hit other than the bottle strike, and the bottle strike was not hard enough to cause the concussion. The concussion was a result of impact force with the guard rail.
I wouldn't let this accident scare me from riding. People suggested I retire, but I knew I couldn't allow this one incident to terrorize me into giving up something I like.
