March 11, 2015
Day 37: Port St John: The one armed paper hanger
We have not yet been able to see the effect of our misadventure on the hit count, but we have seen something more important. Since yesterday there have been 40 messages of support on the Guestbook, and a forum thread on Disasters started by Jerry Witherspoon has drawn 24 comments. To everyone who contributed to this, we want you to know it has meant a lot. The support of the cycling community has always been one of our biggest reasons for carrying on with long distance touring. And now, when we could be the most discouraged, we have warm feelings only. We can not reply to each of the messages, but each one was read aloud and treasured.
The same applies to our children and grandchildren. We phoned them all, mostly before putting the blog live yesterday. One heartwarming aspect of this was a concern from more than one as to who got called first. Kind of like the who gets to sit in the front seat controversies of the old days. We love them so much!
Then there was the was the so instructive ability of Amelia (4 soon) and Evee (2 1/2) to absorb reality, apparently without shock or recrimination. "Got hit by truck!" "Got hit by truck!" they chanted.
Finally there was my big brother Harold. Having a big brother can give you a wonderfully protected feeling. Harold (and Francine) are renting a large vehicle and driving 320 km from Fort Lauderdale to rescue us and the bikes. Neither he nor the kids were having any of our plan to take a taxi to the Greyhound. The Greyhound, as we know, is a dog of a way to get around.
So here I am with the rest of the story. In a demonstration of balance in nature, my new, seventh bluetooth keyboard has quit working (well duh, it is almost two weeks old!). So I am pecking this out with one finger on my working hand, a good match for the virtual onscreen keyboard. Perhaps it will make for a more succinct blog. Or perhaps it will be more the work of a one armed paper hanger.
The first topic, I guess, is how are we doing health wise. To be honest, today was a bit hard. The doc had prescribed Oxycodone for the pain - famous as what the Hugh Laurie character "House" was addicted to. But it made me horribly nauseated. Vomiting in the toilet is no fun, and a waste of hard to come by food! I decided to take the pain over the nausea. So does anyone want to buy some narcotics? :)
On Dodie's side it's muscle pain and extreme bruising. How extreme? Have a look, as soon as uploaded. Overall, though, we are fine. It's four months before our next planned long trip. We could easily heal in half that time!
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Just as I once wondered what it would be like to be hit by a car, I also wondered just what tricks are buried in the costly travel insurance we buy. After only one day, we expect we have only seen a sampler of what they can come up with. So far, here is the list:
1. "It's not us, eh, sir". We are the insurance of last resort, the bills have to go first to somebody, anybody, else. 2. We only cover an initial hospitalization. We will not cover any needed follow on care. 3. We will not help you get home, unless you bought that extra coverage. And we are not afraid of any medical charges that come up while you might be trying to get home, since we are not going to cover those.
This is only the first shoe, we expect they are gearing up to disallow stuff on the detailed bill, when they accept to look at it. Meanwhile, the hospital does not have its bill done. They need to gather data from all the departments on how many tissues were used, etc. Could take a while.
Meanwhile the hospital reveals that Florida is a "no fault" state. That means each victim in a motor vehicle incident is responsible for their own expenses. So the hospital can not bill the truck driver's insurance, they say.
On the other hand we apparently have coverage from ICBC, the British Columbia public auto insurance. This comes from just having a BC driver's license. Oh, Canada! The fly in the ointment could be that ICBC will likely expect sane Canadian level charges. We have yet to see just what the Florida charges look like.
We spent our other leisure hours today managing a quite long list of logistical projects, based on:
We can not stay in this motel beyond tonight, they are fully booked. Marilyn Dennison has fallen seriously ill in Fort Lauderdale. We can not stay at her place. We can not carry on with our air tickets to Montreal, and Montreal-> Seattle Our dates for shipbikes.com are wrong One armed Steve may or may not be able to disassemble and fold the bikes Etc etc
People have stepped up to help with these problems, and tonight we can sleep easy knowing that most have been handled. Let me add that although we two worked hard on these all day, help came fro all quarters - the motel owner here, the motel owner down the road, Harold and Francine, United Airlines, PJ Mears on the guestbook and his godparents Tonia and Otto, the local taxi driver, Moses at Red Carpet Inn Fort Lauderdale booking, and more. Plus there were offers of help from people in Belize, Iowa, BC, etc.
All this works against the harsh impression of that truck blow, and brings things into much better balance. Thanks again, everyone.
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