Oh, and You Come Crash Into Me, Baby

 Well it's Friday and here I am without any cat photos...

Instead, I want to celebrate the 5th anniversary of John getting hit by an F-150 pick-up truck while riding his bicycle...Or really, his recovery from that.

He had gone to Lone Tree to visit his dad's and his grandparent's graves and was heading back to Iowa City when an older man dropped something on the floor of his pick-up and bent to retrieve it while driving 55 MPH. When he sat up, he found John on his windshield, at which time he braked hard and John went flying into the ditch. John said he yelled the F word really loudly and worried that it would be the last word he ever said. I told him that it would at least be appropriate to the situation.

John got Chris Horner to sign his back brace at Jingle Cross in 2010. Who else can say that?

We were supposed to go on a date that night. John called me from the emergency room in the afternoon and told me he had to cancel. I asked why and he told me about the truck crashing into him. I asked him if his mom was with him and he said he had told her not to come. At that time, he thought he only had a broken leg. I asked him if he wanted me to meet him. He hesitated and then said he'd probably be okay by himself. Since I had been in that weird horse and buggy accident in 1992, I knew how scary and lonely an ER room could be by yourself, so I took his hesitation as a yes.

I showed up and the woman at the front desk asked me if I was married to John. In my head, I laughed to myself and thought, "Well, we've been dating for about 3 weeks now, so...we're practically married. Right?" To the woman, I said no, but that I was his girlfriend. She let me in and I helped John get some pain meds finally. After all the CT scans and x-rays, it turned out that he had a burst fracture in his lower spine and a broken bone in one of his legs. He said when he was in the ambulance, the EMT guy gave him his helmet and told him to check it out. It didn't have a scratch on it. John was so lucky that he didn't hit his head.

John had a spinal fusion surgery and his doctor told him he didn't think John would be able to run again. Since John was fastidious about doing his PT, he was able to spin on a bike trainer a couple months after the surgery and did his first bike race after the crash at Kent Park at the end of March. Also, he not only still runs, he does a crazy 25K trail race every Spring. They say that cats have nine lives. If that's true, I hope humans get at least that many, because John is already down one. Here's to the first 5 years of John's second life. May there be many, many more.