Tuesday in Boulder county was perfect weather for riding a bicycle, so that is what I did. I was 10 minutes from the end of my ride when I saw a state patrolman pull a car over, naturally I started to mentally high five myself because someone was getting a speeding ticket, and it wasn’t me…

The next thing I remember, was seeing all of the flashing lights, ambulances, fire trucks, and police cars. They told me what happened as they loaded me on to the stretcher. I was hit from behind by an suv, and thrown into a guard rail, before I rolled into the street. “And my bike?! Is my bike okay?!” I asked like any good cyclist. Then I lost consciousness. Then I woke up again and screamed “ARE MY FEET MOVING?!” As they flapped wildly against the stretcher…someone has seen too many Grey’s Anatomy episodes. Then the lights went out again…until I started asking the EMT to look at my pinky finger, “I think it is broken, please tell me its not broken, I use it, like, everyday, I really need it” I babbled on.

Once we got to the hospital, they took cat scans, x rays, and stitched my shin back together. The good news was my cat scan showed undeniable evidence that I, Laura Tingle, have a brain. I was also shown a possible hip fracture from where the suv hit me. The whole time I was at the hospital a super hot fire fighter was there for an emt course. As I chatted with him I tried to straighten my enormous blonde hair (for more on this, please see my blog entry about enormous blonde hair) as I ran my fingers through it, I pulled out a humongous tumbleweed…odd. Then the nurse went to work scrubbing the road out of my rash. That was my least favorite moment of my life. After that delightful experience, the police officer came in with pieces of my bike, and the pieces of my cell phone that he found all over the road. My phone was in the back pocket of my jersey, as I inspected it, I came to a brilliant realization. My wee little phono gave his life, to protect me. So anyway, this is where things stopped making sense. They fitted me with crutches and a knee brace, and eventually let me leave the hospital. The knee brace caused excrutiating pain in my hip, and I couldn’t use the crutches because my shoulder hurt so bad. So, I situated myself in my favorite recliner until it was time to see the orthopedist two days later. He said,  ”Broken scapula” oh balls, this sucks.