About a year ago I wrote a blog in this spot on my experience of trying to only use my bike for all transportation for a (very short) 10 day period. I wanted to see what it felt like for our refugee family to provide for 8 people without a car. I had built a small trailer for trips to the grocery store and to haul lumber and a propane tank from Home Depot. Mostly the bike was used along to get to the Y, to church and a couple of trips to the hardware store.
This is a photo of my rig from the blog. Note the sweet custom trailer and the ET basket on the front of the bike.
I continued to ride as much as I could into the fall and continued to enjoy it. Feeling much more connected with my surroundings, being able to greet people in person without the separation of a vehicle, the fresh air, just found all of it to be a type of life I wanted to continue.
On a trip to my local grocery store, I had an interaction with a cement truck that really didn't go my way. I was appropriately in a crosswalk with the light in my favor but the truck pulled out from a right turn on red lane without really looking my way. He heard me yell and the crunch of my trailer so fortunately he stopped with my legs under the bumper of the truck.
I was very fortunate in that I walked away from this alive. The next day my left leg was very unsteady so an x-ray showed a broken fibula in my lower leg. The ortho doc told me if I were going to break any bone that was the one to break where it broke because it would heal on it's own if I were careful with it for a couple of weeks while it knit back together. I ended up getting pt for my left shoulder (I think I tried to stop the truck) and I bulged a couple of discs in my lower back which were treated with a single steroid injection. All in all, other than the shock of it happening, having to call my wife and kids to tell them I was hit by a cement truck and healing pretty much for the next 5 months, my string of luck continued.
I have hurt myself 3 times since January 2018, any one of which easily could have killed me but for some reason I am still here. I have spent a lot of time lately wondering if I am doing something that I shouldn't be doing or not doing something I should be doing. Is God trying to get my attention? Don't really know but I hope I can figure out whatever it is that I need to understand before the next time He reaches out to me. It may be as simple as truly living in faith, really believing that God is in charge and that our salvation is assured by the gift of the death of His son Jesus Christ on the cross.
I am riding my bike again, hyper aware of my surroundings and quite nervous any time I see a cement truck but I am alive. Thanks be to God. Jim Weyers
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