Steve & Cindy, DH & me

It started as a beautiful day.  A little early for me on a day off but worth it for a day ride to Astoria or points south for as far as we could get before having to come home.  DH and I were a little late meeting everyone but they weren’t ready to take off when we got there, anyway.  We gave him a bad time about the pissy helmet he was wearing, we all laughed and off we went.  I really hate riding I-5 so we went by wayof all the back roads.  Shelton, Chehalis, Satsop, we stop at a funky little store that carries food, drink, fishing lures and hardware not to mention the restroom.  We visited with a couple of fellow riders and discussed our route.  We got some advise.  Off we go and, of course, after having a drink at the first stop, DH needs another rest stop.  Our new friends pass us up and head on down the road.  What a great day!  What a great ride!  What the hell is a deer doing out at 12 noon on a warm day.  Aren’t they supposed to be in the nice cool woods?  She must have thought the woods looked cooler on the other side of the road.  I was two bikes back, behind my DH.  I didn’t see the deer until it tried to jump high enough for their bike to go under it.  She didn’t jump high enough and they hit her with their windshield.  Cindy landed in the ditch.  She broke her nose and right wrist and she’ll have quite a shiner.  Steve crunched his head and ended up in the ditch ten feet further up the road.  He didn’t fair as well.  Damn pissy helmet.  He is at Harborview Hospital right now recovering from a broken skull.  His liver was damaged but they say it should heal on it’s own.  The good news is they opened his skull and released the blood from inside to relieve the pressure and the bleeding wasn’t inside the brain but between it and his skull.  I guess that’s good news.  Now we wait and pray for healing.

All this happened before 12 noon.   Actually, the accident was around noon but we only just heard about his condition ten minutes ago (8:50pm).  DH and I got home around 6:30pm, probably not much sooner than if we had completed our trip.  The last time we all headed for the ocean, our daughter had a bad motorcycle accident and ended up at Harborview Hospital.  I don’t think we are supposed to go to the ocean.  At least not the scenic route.  DH commented that if we had only been 10 seconds slower.  Well, that’s a big IF.  There are alot of ifs in this story.  What if we were earlier getting to their house and we had left sooner.  Would we have even met those two bikers ?   We might have left the store much sooner.  What if we hadn’t talked to those two bikers.  What if I hadn’t wandered through the store and was the last one to used the restroom after other customers.  What if we had passed that slow driving lady.  We don’t know why we were there at that time, we just know that we were.  There could have been alot of different scenarios but who is to say that there wasn’t something worse down the road.