Until that dreary morning last year I'd never done a cartwheel. Alas, I don't recall my first, but they say that's a good thing. Your brain will draw a dark curtain around what it thinks you're better off not remembering.
The doctors and the lawyers needed to know, however, so now I know what my brain won't tell me.
From the driver's testimony: "I would say he was airborne for -- from the point where he separated from his bike -- 10 to 15 feet before he hit the ground, and he bounced, quite literally, back into the air from that initial impact."
From the surgeon's commentary: "Your helmet is cracked because you landed directly on your forehead."
From the medical reports: "Unstable neck fracture, C1-C2."
The driver: He "basically tumbled from there down the hill . . . somersaulting, rolling . . . an end-over-end all the way into my car."
The surgeon's commentary: "You were doing cartwheels."
The medical reports: "right wrist and hand fracture"; "left second rib fracture"; "left [shoulder] separation."
Driver: "He was on his back . . . I said, 'Don't move.' "
Medical reports: First surgery: "This was a complex operation . . . requiring two board-certified neurosurgeons . . . using a power drill preset to 28 mm we cautiously drilled holes through the [top vertebra] . . . we inserted 22 mm titanium screws into these holes . . . and locked them down with a torque wrench."
Second surgery: "The [shoulder] was exposed . . . the drill guide was placed . . . a wire was passed through [the hole] . . . and tied on the top" to close the separation.
Surgeon's commentary: "It was the classic Christopher Reeve injury. It is a miracle you survived."
But this is not about falling down. It is about getting up, something that you do every day. And it's about choices we all make when we roll out of bed.
The question I asked myself last year, and that I ask you today, is: "What are you going to do?"
Is it time to pack it in? Is it time to recognize that most people give it up after a while? Is it time to accept that being 20 pounds overweight isn't fatal? Is staying fit worth the time when time is so precious?
And -- here's the biggie -- I'm flat on my back and you're flat on the couch: Is it even possible to get up and get fit? Can this washed-up, busted body ever work right again?
We are, after all, not teenagers anymore! I'm 56. No need to kick my tires. The body creaks, it aches and sometimes it shrieks out in pain when those muscles are asked to bebop along like a college kid's.
More on my own answers in a minute, but here are yours.
Yes, you can get up and get moving again.
Yes, you can avoid the injuries that have stopped you every time you've tried.
Yes, you have the time if you can find the willpower.
Yes, you have the motivation.
Your motivation is the same old, same old. You know you'll feel better. You know you'll like yourself more. You know that you can apply the brakes to the aging process.
You're lucky. The sciences of sport and nutrition have matured right along with you. Not so very long ago, a whole host of things could put your desire for fitness on permanent hold. Now we know better. The know-how about the way a body works, why it fails and how to correct it has increased tenfold in the past decade.
You've watched as the ways to exercise have mushroomed into the thousands, and with those opportunities come a lot of people just like you to share the experience with you.
Sweating isn't such torture if you're doing it with a friend.
The first step is getting up out of bed.
Or so I told myself.
A thought came to me that night as I lay there awaiting surgery that, should it go wrong, would leave me in a wheelchair forever. This is it: "The winds of adversity can knock you down or lift you up, depending on how you spread your wings."
Aging and adversity may not be twins, but they sure are kissing cousins.
It is all about faith and the will to move forward. I took as an act of faith that the operation would go well, that I would regain my fitness and that one day soon I would be stronger than I was that morning when that car swerved in front of my bike and sent me soaring.
What's more, I made a silent vow that after I found my fitness again I would do my best to help other people find theirs.
So far, held together by steel, titanium and wire, it has worked. At first, I pedaled a stationary bike in a neck brace, with one arm in a sling and the other in a cast. I started out jogging on a treadmill, but now I run outside. Finally, after a year of shoulder therapy, I can swim in a fairly straight line. This month, I won a triathlon in Texas. I made the U.S. team in my age group for the triathlon world championship in Australia this fall.
I will not lie and tell you that the journey from being screwed back together to winning medals has been painless. For a while, just moving in bed caused me to scream. But that's long over with, and the satisfaction of being whole again is so worth whatever it took.
And my promise about helping other people get fit again? From 9-year-olds to college kids to some folks who are seriously adult, if you get my drift, that's what I've been doing.
To my fellow baby boomers, here's my simple message: Boom again, baby!
I'm upright again, and you can be, too. I'll help, but do me one big favor: Try to stay away from cartwheels.

It's a busy, busy world....

The Dream, Part Two

The dream resurfaced again last night, this time wearing a different face. This time I was falling, in a fetal ball that uncurled as I descended. I awoke with a start before the skid down the pavement that I sensed was coming.

The Dream Emerges

In the months since being liberated from all the plastic braces and slings, I'm told I frequently kick and twitch in my sleep, something I'd never done before. Sometimes it wakes me up, although the dream that caused the physical reaction never emerged until last night. All along, I'd figured I must be dreaming about the instant of the crash, of which I still have no conscious recollection, even though it certainly is embedded somewhere in my subconscious and I've been warned that it may emerge eventually.
But I awoke in the middle of the night last night with the dream that is causing the twitching still fresh.
I was in a wheelchair, trying to escape.

Worlds Live!

The Start of the Women's race on September 27. Kerri at the finish, winning the bronze medal in 6th place overall. And the finale of the the awards ceremony, when all medal winners were summoned back onto the stage.

Is it Miriah?

In Greece it is the Meltemi. Egyptians call it the Sirocco. In California they are the Santa Anna Winds.
I don't know what they're called in Italy, but the winds that blow the tree-tops sideways arrived here about 12 hours ago and have howled all day. The bike course runs parallel the Adriatic coast, so beach sand has been whipping across it since early afternoon. While sailing in the Greek Islands I once was trapped by the Metlemi on Tinos for 48 hours. I hope this wind blows out sooner. The women's start is 24 hours away, and the first men's start comes 15 hours later. The parade of teams just ended, each national team marching behind its flag, introduced to music from their home country. We got the Beach Boys. Coulda been worse.

Rimini

This little city on the Adriatic is just dozing now before it goes into winter hibernation. The temperature ranges from about 50 into the high 60s most days, and the huge array of beachfront bars and restaurants, the shops and hotels, all speak to summer months when this place must be wild and swarming. The Hotel Bikini, where we're staying, has a tour guide book in Russian and, like most European hotels, has literature in all the major European languages, but the newsstands tell a different story. All of the newspapers and magazines are in Italian, suggesting that in the main, this is a resort populated mostly by Italian vacationers during the summer months.
I've had the same funny reaction to Italian that I do when I visit most foreign countries. Hearing a language I don't know somehow activates my high school Spanish. Totally useless Spanish vocabulary, words that I've never heard or thought of since the 12th grade come back. Fortunately, when I needed it most, it turned out that the banyo was the bagnino. Close enough!
The mind is an entertaining device.