UFO’s or UDO’s

So it is 13th October 2008, 7.10pm. Yours truly is completing lap 7 of a hilly loop and setting off home. Cycling down hill I am suddenly filled with a sense of dread, then I feel myself rotating backwards and upside down. I brace my body for the impending impact. I feel my back hit the tarmac, and the breath is squeezed from me. Laid in the road I see my capable mountain bike 10 yards down the hill lighting up the road, I feel sick. I see 3 vehicles coming up the road toward me. Oh my God I am going to be run over. Fortunately the first car slows, the following pair do likewise. The  first car speeds off. The remaining two stop and the drivers alight. They help me to my feet and move my bike.

The driver of the third car, a mini truck, puts my bike in the back and asks where I live, he and the other driver decide I need a hospital, just to be safe.

By now I am rambling about being ok and he can take me home, insistently he proceeds to Aberdeen Infirmary. I sit, I shake, the put me at the front of the queue. They scan me, X-Ray me, hurt me. They inject me, I ask to be let out so I can ride home only to be told that I can’t ride home as I have two broken arms, a dislocated jaw, deep laceration to the chin, puncture wound to the left calf, and unequal pupils. My arms are broken at the elbow joints I can now not move my arms.

What hit me.. I will never know, the police opened a case and closed it three days later due to lack of witnesses.

13 weeks later I am still unable to ride the bike, have gained 31 pounds in weight and lost all my hard gained fitness.

So timetravel 8 months forward. I have now dropped 9 of the extra pounds I am cycling more frequently and gradually for longer.

Interestingly, if I hear a vehicle drop a gear or rev behind me I am immediately filled with the same sense of dread, the October 13th factor. So whilst I can never state for certain and never truly know what happened on that evening I have a very good idea.

The idea? well I doubt it was a UFO more certainly a UDO (unidentified driven object). So as I ride and think just how lucky I am to be able to write this I know there is a driver somewhere who hit a cyclist on a remote coastal road at dusk on October 13th 2008. Having done so he turned around to come back up the hill and see if the cyclist was still alive, having done so he left the scene. He need not worry it was an accident.