on friday the hrc came by and picked me up for lunch (we went to a dairy queen), then drove me out to the honda dealership where my bike was taken so i could get some stuff off of it. the guy at the dealership said he was pretty surprised i wasn’t hurt worse based on the condition of my bike. the progressive agent had circled all of the problem areas with the bike. i hadn’t even realized when i looked at it at the towing lot that the whole rear fender had been bent. in the end, he said they had $8212.36 just in parts so they didn’t even bother working up labor costs. so now i’m waiting to find out from the progressive agent how much they are going to offer me for it as a total. i’m still not sure i understand exactly how they value the custom parts that were on the bike. while i was at the dealership, i also took the opportunity to look around a little at the current bike offerings honda has. it’d probably be at least a couple of months before i would be getting a new bike, but it can’t hurt to look right? 🙂
the guy at the honda shop was nice and didn’t care about me getting stuff from the bike, so i grabbed my rat key ring, the “ride hard” ring off the handlebars, my allen wrench and paperwork and stuff from the toolkit compartment, my windshield mounts (as i wasn’t using the windshield at the time so i still have it, and i’d like to keep the mounts to go with it), and my license plate. i was planning on grabbing the chrome metal inspection sticker plate but i forgot about it. and i guess that’s the last time i’ll ever see my bike.
the rat key ring actually goes back all the way to my a&m days. it’s the rat head off of that hot wheel car that had a rat head (i don’t know if they still make that one or not), and was used as the identifier/insignia for a secret society i was in.
the “ride hard” ring was a cheap skull ring purchased in summer 2004 up in macomb illinois at a laundromat. my brother and i had ridden our motorcycles up to illinois for cornerstone, and we were doing our laundry. i thought it was kind of funny this vending machine had all of these different biker/skulls rings, so we bought a few. i put this particular one on my handlebar tube. it was called the “ride hard” ring because as we were leaving austin for our c-stone trip we stopped at a traffic light and a grungy man begging for money came up to my brother and said “you guys ridin’ hard?!” “you ride hard! heh heh. ride hard!” so i called it the ride hard ring, and it’d been on my bike ever since. which surprised me, as i always figured it’d come off at some point. but it never did. not even during the wreck. i’d just bought the bike right before that trip, so it was around almost as long as the bike itself.
friday i sent an email to a person that works for hr in my company. i asked her if there was a person in our hr who interfaces with our insurance company, and explained the situation i’m in. she gave me a name and number, but i didn’t get around to calling her before 5pm. so i’m planning on doing that monday when i get up.
the progressive agent had also called me about discussing the pay out offer on my bike since it is going to be totaled. i called her back and had to leave a message, and she didn’t get back in touch with me friday, so i’m assuming i’ll hear from her monday.
friday night i was having trouble sleeping. i ran out of the e.r.-prescribed motrin long ago, so i’ve been taking 3 200mg gel-tabs twice a day instead. (the 20 tablets the hospital gave me were 600mg for 4 times a day.) as i mentioned before, i gave up on the vicodin days ago, so the remainder of the 25 5mg tablets they gave me have just been sitting there. well, friday night my leg was making it really difficult for me to sleep so i decided to try a vicodin. i think it helped, but i’m not particularly sure. i don’t know if it’s because i hadn’t eaten in a long time, or because i was really tired, or both, or what, but i had some crazy dreams…or thoughts…i’m not sure if i was asleep all the time. i woke up a fair bit, so some of it may have been half-awake synapse firings. anyway, it was odd. i also took one last night about 30 minutes before i went to bed (since my leg hurt pretty bad the night before and the vicodin might have helped a little), but i didn’t have any weird experiences. as of right now i still have 12 tablets left, so as you can see i really didn’t use them that much.
saturday the hrc came by and got me and we went to lunch at tacos-a-go-go. she dropped me off at my house, but a few hours later she came back by with the mini-hrc in tow. they’d stopped by target and gotten me some microwavable soups, gatorade, a grapple (sp? evidently an apple with grape genes spliced in or something), a patrick the starfish cookie, a container of cut tropical fruit, and a get well card. she’d also gotten me some low-cut socks, as i’d asked her for some since all of my socks are mid-rise and they don’t feel good when my ankle swells. we all went to subway for supper, then they dropped me off at home and took off.
today the potts came by in the afternoon and we went and ate at pronto (italian) on montrose. we were originally planning on going to riva’s, but they are closed on sundays between 2pm and 6pm apparently. i’d never been to pronto before, it was pretty good.
from my outings over the last few days, i’ve determined that i can handle about an hour of being upright (which includes sitting) before my leg starts to hurt a fair bit. once i hit about two hours, my ankle is swelling and my heel and leg are starting to show bruising-like places (which i assume is from internal bleeding). i don’t really like to go past that too far, because the one time i did my leg ended up feeling like it was on fire and it hurt for a pretty long time even after i got off of it. so basically my leg can handle about two hours before i need to be back in a position where my leg is elevated above my heart. which kind of sucks, since it keeps me from being able to do much other than short jaunts, which then have to be followed with a pretty long period of keeping my leg elevated before the swelling goes down. on the good side, the swelling on my knee and ankle aren’t ever as bad as they were the first few days after the accident. and after being in bed overnight, or usually around 10 to 12 hours, my left leg looks fairly close to normal as far as swelling goes. the other thing i’ve learned is after having had my leg elevated for a long time, once i go to get up there is about one to two minutes of pretty intense pain in my leg as the blood rushes back in. then things sort of level out and it just hurts like it normally does.
i’m still not sure about the status of my knee or ankle, but hopefully i can get something worked out with my insurance so i can see an orthopedic doctor soon. and perhaps i’ll find out something about the status of the police report tomorrow, as i should be talking to the progressive agent and i think she’ll have a copy of the police report.
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failure is not an option. it's a requirement.
You would not believe what they sell in vending machines in Japan. I have not seen any bizarre ones close to home, but I am currently on business in the Tokyo burbs, and I found one that sells pr0n (I don’t know if that’s the proper H4X0R spelling of that, so I may be losing cool points) videos and right next to it another one that sells racy underwear. I’m further amazed/amuzed by the fact that someone went to the trouble of building an enclosure that keeps them out of sight. I would think that the lack of visibility would cut down on business…
Be sure that you’re extending your leg fully at least part of the time. You can do this and keep the leg elevated – just stick the pillow under your ankle instead of under your knee. This won’t feel as good, but otherwise you’ll start to lose range of motion. Trust me, that’s bad. And getting range of motion back sucks balls.
Good luck, and I’m sorry health insurance in USA sucks so bad.
Any chance you can go back and get the drive chain from your bike? I ask b/c a good friend of Mary’s is now wedded to a blacksmith. One of his minor specialties: knives forged from motorcycle chains. You could have a distinctive piece of memorabilia made from a piece of Angelina if you can get the chain.
ack: i hesitate to ask this, but…how did you know that’s what was in the enclosure that kept them hidden? 😉 (btw, you got both “pr0n” and “h4x0r” correct — you could have kept those cool points if you hadn’t given yourself an unsure out.) i’ve heard vending machines in japan are crazy — hot foods, cold foods, magazines, manga, even electronics.
doc: my leg is at a bit of an angle, it’s on a wedge that is flat at the top for my lower leg, so it’s probably a 20 degree or so bend. but i get up and walk around, so i think standing straight is okay. i have not been able to bend my knee like i normally do…maybe to 45 degrees or so before it starts to hurt a lot, but i think that may be due to fluid/swelling under the kneecap. i hopefully won’t have to do any kind of special physical therapy for it. i hope.
chris: that sounds pretty cool! and would be a pretty great piece for memorabilia. unfortunately, angelina was a shaft drive, not chain. can he make short swords? 🙂 i still have the original front fender, which is bent up. the bike should actually still be at the dealer right now, since i haven’t given a verbal or written consent for salvage status on it yet.
Here’s an Ack-induced post: here in Taiwan (at least in Taipei, where I live) they sell some crazy stuff as well. You know how they put stuff near the checkout counter in 7-11 to encourage last-second compulsive buying? At the 7-11’s here, you can buy, and I’m not kidding, good-luck women’s underwear. Now, this isn’t “good luck” in the sense of “getting lucky” or anything. It says on the package that if you wear the underwear for a week (I’m not sure what the washing rules are for that week!), that you luck will increase. And anyone familiar with Chinese culture knows that to a Chinese person, luck=more money (the more the better).
The mini-hrc insisted on getting most of the stuff that you got. aka “OMG! OMG! OMG! CAN I GETZ HIM A CARD??!!!” I did want to get you some snacks so you would not starve to death since I am out of town.
Last time I saw you your leg looked much better, but I am still worried about it. I also think you need to stop trying to do stuff and just rest. Your mess will be there when you are better. But you are naturally hardheaded and I have to not think about it cause I know you are not listening and it just gets me more and more pissed off and pissed off hrcs are scary.
I will check on you on my way back from SA.
— “the hrc”
I think a knife out of the chain would be awesome…if your bike had one. It would be cool to keep something from it (besides the plate). I guess at least you have some nice pics that Jack took.
To answer your question about how I knew what was in the enclosure, the machines were not completely enclosed. I had actually walked passed them, stopped, and commented to the person I was with that it was odd for someone to put an enclosure around a vending machine. Natural curiosity plus knowing that they sell odd things here led me to investigate. I think the enclosure is meant to give a little privacy to the customer. Another odd thing is that they were built like safes. Very heavy, thick metal and bars across the window. I would guess that they have trouble with drunks from the bars trying to break into them.
ash: good luck women’s underwear sounds like something that should be sold in the u.s. you should look into importing that. or do you think they sell it in asian shops here already?
hrc: pissed off hrcs *are* scary. but i’m not sure they’re scary enough to stop me.
ack: which begs the question…how do you know they have trouble with drunks from the bars trying to break into them? 😉
Heh, heh — that’s just conjecture. The machines are on a well-trodden road between the base and the bar row — actually between the base and pretty much everything since the train station is a few blocks past the bar row.
Also being familiar with stupid drunk GI tricks (they get a lot of press and I’ve got 14 years worth of hearing the stories — I’m anticipating your next question 😉 ) it seems to be the logical conclusion.