What I did this summer
I badly fucked myself up at the end of June. I'm too close when I push past a balding dad on a cargo bike at the top of the hill because he's too slow, my ass off the seat. The highest gear of the new urban bike, a grey Giant Escape, which I specifically bought because it's sportier and lighter than most urban bikes I see, with higher gearing and thinner tires for higher flat speeds, the first change in form at all after a solid ten years of mountain biking and a purchase of which I'm unbearably proud, allows me to accelerate like a car. Speed in mountain biking is largely dependent on gravity, not the rider's force on the pedals as the feet don't rotate and remain with the heel down on descents, and this is the first time I'm allowing myself to attempt a high speed on this bike. I mean, not high high, but I'm expecting to get to somewhere around fifty kilometres per hour, or thirty miles per hour if that works better for you. I do know this hill well enough. The tramway offers none of the resistance of a scree field and I fly, pumping, regulating my breathing, blond concrete bluing, waving with wight signals, and the pavement for pedestrians streaks alongside and there are no cars, just me and the road and the steepening hill, constantly pedalling, flexing my quads as hard and evenly as I can, hunched over the handlebars with nothing to stop me but the déjà vu when I passed that guy at the top of the hill. This is probably a precursor to some form of brain fart-related karma because I felt similarly when I slid into the top of the black run with Clare in Gérardmer before getting to the third turn with no control, twisting too tightly to the right and then falling backwards vertically down the slope, the right boot not releasing, the thick plastic edge supporting the full weight of my body directly onto my calf, severing the muscle, or partially, and then not being able to walk for months, and the same as the time I attempted a single-track on the other side of the valley in the summer, ignoring the fact I'd never taken that path before off the top of the piste through the stinking wet pines. The double suspension soaking-up roots and largening rocks and I refuse to check speed until the path opens out over large rocks all grey no path and no way to stop over the handlebars literally airborne and then a crunching impact into the sloping side of a grass-covered mound on the other side of the rocks, a low, old, heap that looks like a funeral barrow, which I'd chosen because it was covered in short grass and therefore probably wouldn't kill me. I'd thrown myself at it when the front wheel of the bike had hit boulders too large to cross and turned to the side in the air to avoid missiling myself into the slanted edge of the barrow directly onto my face. I'd formed a flat plane with the side of my upper arm and my shoulder and elbow in a flat line to distribute the impact as evenly as possible like being shot empty lungs alone no one knows I'm here broken my fucking arm gasping nothing else broken legs face no blood no pain apart from the arm glasses lying across my face and the stench of mud. I rode home. My arm wasn't broken. I'd fractured my wrist, and it was the same blank space of thought where I'd decided to test myself physically regardless of the consequences, the same thing I felt at the top of the hill as when I dipped between the trees at the top of the track, the same on the black piste in Gérardmer, a repeated signal that I'd over-estimated my capabilities and that I would, obviously, pay. I probably wanted it, in retrospect. The greatest differentiating determining factor between the two aforementioned incidents and these moments on the tramline is speed. Now, curled over the handlebars, and somewhere around fifty kilometres per hour, I follow the tracks around a bend to the right, and no one blocks my route or even threatens to step onto the line as far as I can see through my sunglasses, because, regardless of insinuating earlier that I'm not used to cycling at high speed, this is actually not true as I did years of enduro mountain biking in the Vosges, but this is faster even though the obstacles aren't as prominent, which is a different situation, a little like driving quickly on the motorway where approaching vehicles enlarge slowly over long distances. If you're cycling in the woods, however, the obstacles are normally trees and rocks which appear quickly so you have to keep the speed relatively low, but here the rail bends round to the right, colours stain in my peripheral vision and a structure approaches on the left, the tram stop Les Arceaux leaking into an approaching triangle of concrete, metal and flesh onto which I'm unable to fix any kind of conscious attention because of the speed I'm travelling but I do know that it's on my left and leading round to the right, so I naturally take the apex of the bend which leads my front tire onto the rail, and, while a mountain bike tire would have traversed the gap between the road's surface and the rail, the thinner tire of my urban bike does not and I feel it slide to the left, glitch down, and from this point everything happens very quickly. I'm wearing a pair of shorts, a t-shirt and some trainers, sunglasses and a half helmet. Like, Montpellier is hot, a hot place to live. The rucksack I'm wearing is full of my laptop and various other electronic items, because I've been at work and it's now around six in the evening, so people are crowding at the tram stop. Small railings on the left seem lethal to me and I should avoid them and then all colour merges and I'm on my back, on the road, grunting, my neck curled, shouts from above stretched cylindrical, commuters oscillating against the sky, elongating towards me, bouge pas bouge pas, blood pissing out of my mouth I think, blood bubbling over my teeth, can't, breathe, don't move him don't move I can move my arms blood everywhere all over the bottom of my face their noses stretching towards me comment vous vous appellez taking selfies of my bloodied face with my phone which isn't smashed and send them to Lucie and Elsa with saccaded messages crashed bike waiting ambulance. I tell them to lift me off the tramline because I'm blocking the tram and it's rush hour, a bunch of them picking me up flat on my back, but when we reach the side of the road someone tries to get me to sit and I can't, like the bottom of my back won't bend and it's finally starting to dawn on me start to shake lay him down on his back allongez-vous shaking hard start to realise that the reason I'm surrounded by dozens of people convulsing the faces ça va taste of blood vous avez appelé une ambulance oui oui involved in something actually serious and that I can't stand the smell of takeaway grease and the grime between paving stones. Someone rolls me into the recovery position. My eyes are hooded and my breath jerks. Blood everywhere, in my eyes, in my mouth, around my teeth, but it's fine. Warm and the taste of metal. Trembling, I shut my eyes. Red trousers. Monsieur. Monsieur. Quelle ville ? Quel jour ? Les dents, monsieur. They place me on a stretcher and inflate red pads around my head to lock it in position and the sirens sound muffled, off, in the back of the pompiers' ambulance. Black. Send messages on my phone telling Elsa and Lucie that they're taking me to the clinique le Beau soleil. Black monsieur lights in my eyes dilatation atypique le klaxon rises falls vous m'entendez monsieur WhatsApp sending pictures of my bloodied face, post one to BlueSky. Urgence is white and I'm surrounded by three blue uniforms from the ambulance who are joined from the left by two white coats, doctors weaving down the corridor, scanner, says the doctor, the rectangular ceiling lights flicking past like blank tarot cards, the white coats tapping my legs and bending my toes and I can't stop trembling, like I'm borderline fitting and I don't understand why they can't see it, et je le dis à une des paramédicales : je tremble vraiment, est-ce qu’il y a une manière de me réchauffer ? Et elle me répond : c’est le choc, monsieur, on est presque arrivés, ne vous inquiétez pas. Banging through the doors into a white room filled with an MRI scanner and they turn the gurney or whatever it's called to the side until it bangs to a halt against the platform that slides into the giant hole. Then there's this silence and I lie there waiting for the pompiers to help me move across onto the scanner but they're looking at each other and looking at me and then the doctor, a slight woman of around thirty years with straight black hair, who's looking at me from the open door. The man standing closest to the scanner, I turn my head to him and he asks me if I can move myself onto the machine. He tells me to use the handle, a white plastic support hanging from a stand above the bed. I reach for it with shaking, blood-splattered fingers. The pompiers share glances. The doctor's eyes are fixed on mine, on me. The air conditioning chokes and the bed creaks as I pull on the handle.