Cycle-wary

An old biker adage says there are two kinds of motorcycle riders: those who have been down, and those who are going down.

Bikers court danger; it's part of the thrill of riding. And the axiom is their way of acknowledging the inevitable.

Spend enough time in the World of Two Wheels, though, and you become forcibly acquainted with a third category: Riders who have been down and down and down again. Knocked down and plowed down. Dragged behind trucks. Pinched between fenders. Raked across loose gravel.

My dad falls into this category — tumbles into it regularly, in fact. Dad loves biking for its "illusion of flying" but too often experiences the "actuality of flying" while hurtling through an intersection face-first. The details of his many hospital-requiring collisions congeal in my memory; sutures blend into slings blend into surgeries. But I can recall with startling accuracy the sickening feeling of hearing him say, each time, "I'm really lucky. I should have been dead."

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