Wednesday, July 21, 2004

Tamburger pt III: Fried

A look down the mountain showed my trail rollicking a long long way into vague and unknown territory.  I could just see, far up the hill behind me, where the trail slipped back into the tulgey woods from which I’d emerged some time previously.  I decided to go back up rather than forward and down, preferring the devil I knew and thinking my car was closer that way. I started walking the bike back up the trail.  It was hard work but I had all day.  Turns out I needed it.

Once I got back to the woods whence I’d ridden out prior to my velocipejection, I followed the trail to a fork that was poorly marked.  Then there was another, and another.  Ever the intrepid outdoorsman, I got myself lost - and I mean good and lost.  There are a lot of trails up there and I couldn’t find my way back to the right one.  I just kept walking among them trying to make consistent choices.  Instead I got loster and loster as the afternoon ripened.  I had fallen at 2.  It was now past 4 and things were not getting any better.

Then, right on cue, I saw a good sign, sort of. “Muir Woods.” Well that would get me somewhere populated, someplace I knew how to get out of.  It was also miles off my anticipated route, but that was better than camping out in my shorts and muddy t-shirt with no food, shelter or fire.  I took the Muir Woods trail and hoped for the best. 

I’d been to Muir loads of times, but not to this part of it.  The part I knew was the valley floor, a flat paved trail lined with redwoods and laurel with a crystal stream meandering at the bottom.  It’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever visited, and so wonderfully accessible that Kelly takes her blind students there on field trips where the smooth blacktop path wraps around five-hundred year old arboreal giants.  But where I was, it didn’t look like that.  It was just a series of drops and switchbacks down a steep hillside of manzanita scrub.  The bike had long since grown quite heavy and my contusions and lacerations were starting to make me want to stop moving but there was nowhere to lie down and rest and anyway it was getting chilly fast as the fog started funnelling through the narrow ravine on a fresh Japan breeze.  I was goosepimply and thirsty and tired; it had been three hours since I fell and I could easily imagine darkness coming before I got to a safe haven. 

The path eventually bottomed out onto asphalt - the very furthest reach of the valley floor trail with which I was familiar.  I was finally back in civilization.  The end wasn’t in sight but I was definitely in the right area code.  I rolled the old Nishiki beside me, leaning and limping.  My right side was a long dripping smear of dirt and blood and sweat, and the rest of me must not have looked much better because people on the trail, as I now began to encounter them, got the hell out of my way.  Families with kids, groups of seniors, vibrant young outdoors types - they all took one look at me and got to the far side of the path.  I definitely needed the middle and they did not want to risk brushing against me accidentally.  Whatever was wrong with me, some of it might rub off on them. 

My strategy was to get to the gift shop near the front entrance to the park and ask to use their phone to call Kel to drive over and get me to the other car I’d left at Richardson Bay, which was still a good 15 mountanous miles away around the base of Mt. Tamalpais.  At the shop, a cashier immediatly called for a ranger who took me into a back room to check me out. Seems I was rather pale and clammy, and they didn’t like the look of my numerous cuts and bruises. I somehow explained to their satisfaction what had happened and where, and then convinced them that I was capable of driving myself home if they would get me to my car. So a mellow park ranger with a big hat and a big gun loaded my bike into his back seat and me in his front seat and he took me to my car, watched me secure the bike to the rack and drive off safely. 

Some details here are not too clear for me.  At some point I called Kel; was I supposed to have picked her up from work?  We spoke briefly; I told her the bike was broken but nothing more, not wanting to worry her, so she was significantly surprised once I got home to see I’d been turned into Tamburger.  I asked her to help me get into bed; then she called Dr. Andy who came over from up the street.  He cleaned me up a little, told me he’d have stitched my knee if there had been any skin left to work with.  There was nothing to do but provide palliative treatment - pain pills and anti-inflammatories.  My bruise eventually covered the entire area from my right calf to my left elbow - I was basically a big purple welt with legs.  And I am proud to say, I was in court the next morning for a hearing, wearing a suit with pants I couldn’t zip because my body was so swollen - a hearing that went well for my client, no less. 

Then I took two days off, but suffered no lasting injuries.  I’d somehow endured my worst fall ever, gotten all tore up and terribly lost for hours, and was ultimately none the worse for wear.  Even the bike needed only the most minor of repairs.  Maybe I shouldn’t have taken a lesson from that, but I did anyway: I never took a ride even remotely like that alone again.  Years later I went with my friends back to the scene of my disaster and showed them exactly what had happened, and where.  Brian then promptly fell from his bike at the same spot.  However, his bruise had nothing on mine.