November 5, 2014
Oh doctor! Good!: I pointed frantically at a passing rickshaw
A long, long time ago in a city far, far away (London, 2009) I was knocked off my bicycle by a turning car. I went flying through the air a bit like Superman, but perhaps with slightly less grace than Superman, and certainly with more crash landing. The driver stopped, picked me up off the tarmac with natural concern, and asked me if I was okay. I felt very much okay, and told him that there was nothing wrong with me and he shouldn't worry. As a matter of fact I was more concerned about my biscuits, which had been in a sidepocket of my backpack and had suffered terribly from the collision. I think maybe the driver noticed the tears in my eyes when I saw these broken hobnobs, because he looked at me a bit strange and then left very quickly.
I continued with my journey. I was cycling from my friend's house in Ealing into the centre of London, where I planned to start what was supposed to be my first ever bicycle tour, from London to Edinburgh (I was less ambitious then.) Over the course of the hour-long ride into the city my arm got progressively more and more painful and by the time I arrived in Westminster I was pretty sure my arm was broken. A visit to a hospital confirmed it and a doctor put my arm in a sling, told me to leave it like that and booked me in to see a specialist. A whole week later I had my appointment with the specialist, who took one look at me and said "Yes, your arm is broken at the elbow. It shouldn't be in a sling, it'll heal bent now." That's what you get from the NHS I suppose, but it's free so I won't complain about my L-shaped left arm. Anyway, aside from revealing that my first ever attempt at cycle touring ended before I got to the start-line (thank goodness I've got a bit better at it since then) the point of this story is that I knew from experience that adrenaline could mask the initial severity of accident injuries, and there was a chance that my back problems were going to now put an end to my 2014 march across China.
A restless night was spent in my tent as I found it difficult to find a comfortable position. The pain was in the left side of my lower back, but it wasn't very severe, just uncomfortable. Still I was worried that I might have done some serious damage in there somewhere and it was with some relief that I woke in the morning to find things hadn't got any worse, and I was able to continue cycling.
The roads were naturally chaotic but were mostly flat and in good condition and I was able to smash through the one hundred kilometre mark for the third day in a row as I began to bring myself back on target for completion of the China Challenge. Along the way I passed through the towns of XinJin, PengShan and MeiShan. In the first of these I got a bit lost and stopped to ask a man for directions. I was drawn to ask this man because, not only was he riding a bicycle, but he actually stopped at a red light. Seeing as we were the only two people waiting as all the other bikes whizzed past us it seemed a little silly to just stand there and so we fell into conversation as we waited for the lights to change.
He could speak a little English and soon pointed me in the right direction. After that I wanted to keep the conversation going (it was the first I'd had in a while).
"What is your job?" I asked him.
"I am a doctor," came the reply. It seemed like fate to me.
"Oh doctor! Good! I have this pain in my lower back. Pain here, look! I was hit, crash accident." He looked at me blankly. I made hitting motions with my fist. I pointed at my back. "I was hit. I hurt my back. I was hit by a rickshaw. Look, one of those." I pointed frantically at a passing rickshaw. The doctor continued to look at me blankly. Maybe he didn't understand me, or maybe he was just sick of people asking him for free health advice everytime he mentioned his profession. Either way, he moved the conversation along.
"What is your job?" he asked.
"Well, actually, I'm a rickshaw driver," I said, pointing frantically once again at another passing rickshaw. The doctor looked at me strange. It was the kind of sympathetic look you might expect someone to give to an idiot man who likes pointing at rickshaws.
Today's ride: 118 km (73 miles)
Total: 32,517 km (20,193 miles)
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