This Week

Tuesday: This post isn't funny. It's not even remotely comical. Tuesday Pete, Bill, Don with the Brick Driveway and his friend Joe and I went for a mountain bike ride. We were going to go counterclockwise around Bell Mountain taking the high road back around to the single track, which will make sense, only to us. It's a ride we do every week. We weren't doing anything dangerous or technical. I have and would ride this alone. This ride is so non technical that the real mountain bikers only do it as part of a larger route. We were about 20 minutes into our ride, out in the desert at about the exact spot that I lost Randi and Earl, when Pete went over the handlebars and landed face first on a rock. Bill and I were too far back to see the crash. When we pulled up Pete was still on the ground. (For you non bikers, that is the first sign of Serious, because most of the time you hop back up and are dusting yourself off by the time the slow pokes arrive, while everyone who saw the crash rates it.) Don said we needed a first aid kit. We didn't. Pete had hit the rock at the exact right angle to slice open his face. And when I say slice open his face, I mean from his nose to his chin it was sliced open to the bone. His gums were sliced open. He was bleeding profusely. I called 911 and Don gave them the GPS coordinates. 911 wanted an exact address. I said there is no address for where we are. They insisted on an address. Then my phone dropped the call. Pete insisted I take a pictures of him. I did, but only under duress because Bill said it was what he wanted. I'm not posting any pictures because they are horrific. (I flat out refused to take pictures in the ER.) Approximately where we were:

Two riders rode out to help the ambulance find Pete and I rode as fast as I could back to the car and Don stayed with Pete. By the time I got back to the crash site in my truck, the ambulance had Pete on the way to the emergency room. Pete had to have facial reconstruction Tuesday night. They sewed his face back together and sutured his gums. The plastic surgeon reattached his chin muscle because it had been sliced through. He'll have to have dental implants to replace the teeth. They were hoping to be able save part of his nose, but the last indication is that he may lose part of his nose because of the blood loss. He'd have to have at least one more surgery to reconstruct his nose. Finally home from the hospital, I just talked him and he sounds in remarkably good spirits. I can't get over it: All we did was go for a bike ride.

Thursday: I did the Tour de Hospital and took Jessica to Loma Linda for a test, then visited with Pete and then drove to Las Vegas to meet up with Ami who was visiting from Charlotte. For Vegas trips, it was rather subdued. No one passed out in the Fat Burger Bathroom. No one got in any bar fights. No one was a Filthy Whore. I did get locked out of the room (fully dressed) and they had to replace the entire lock. My back hurt a lot so I used the codeine + gin pain management system. I stayed an extra night and spent some quality time at the pool. Not once, but twice the beefy guy giving out free tickets to Bare, the Mirage "European Style Beach Experience" passed me up. Ami said I should have raised my hand and said I was interested. I said, if it were a real "European Beach Experience" there would have been plenty of people with my body shape topless in bikini bottoms. I guess the mirage is that everyone on a European Beach is smoking hot. (And anyone who's ever been to a real European beach knows that smoking hot is not a requirement to be in a speedo or topless.) When I got home Mischief had barely been here and I still had one duck who was pissed the fuck off because she had no food, but who at least had been eating because she had not been for three or four days due to what I suspect was fowl depression.

Poolside at the Mirage

FIVE DAYS UNTIL JASON ALDEAN!

(Don't pretend you don't like Country!)