Yesterday, November 6, 2026, I was out riding my e-bike and came to a place where I normally turn around and head back home. As I was making the turn, my front tire hit a very small patch of dead leaves. Even though I was only going about four to five miles per hour, my front tire went zip! It scooted out from under the bike, and I did a face-plant on the pavement!

This was the first big crash I had had since I got the bike, more than 6400 miles ago. About one year ago.

I was wearing a helmet, a windbreaker, and leather gloves, and that gave me a lot of protection. But my mouth impacted the pavement, and I now have a massive abrasion on my upper lip that looks like a dark mustache. Of course, there are some abrasions inside the lip, and I chipped a tooth. But the worst thing that happened was that I dislocated my right shoulder.

Needless to say, it was a very disorienting experience. As I lay on my back on the ground after extricating myself from the bicycle, I was thinking: “This can’t be good!”

Fortunately, I had my AirPods in my ears at the time, so I was able to call my wife and tell her that I had had a crash and needed her to come get me.

She jumped in the car and brought our two grandkids with her, with whom she had been having a grandma day. She drove about two and a half miles around the neighborhood to where I was.

While I was lying there on the pavement, trying to get my wits about me after calling Jan, a youngneighbor came up to me and asked if she could help. She had been jogging in the street, and I had passed her a few minutes earlier. It turned out she was a first-year nursing student at Mississippi College, where my eldest granddaughter is also a freshman. They didn’t know each other. But she offered to help and offered to call 911. She did help me sit up, however, after just a few minutes of sitting up, I knew I had to lie back down.

When Jan arrived, I was able to stand up and get into the passenger seat of the car. Our 13-year-old grandson was able to get on my bike with my helmet and ride it back home, so we did not have to deal with wrangling that thing into the back of our SUV. We went back to our house and got the grandkids all situated. Then Jan drove me to the emergency department of Mississippi Sports Medicine.

Sadly, Jan had a bike fall back in June, so she knew exactly where to go to get the fastest service and the best evaluation.

The people at Mississippi Sports Medicine were very nice. They saw me in a decent amount of time and took a lot of X-rays. They said there were no broken bones, for which I was very, very thankful, but my shoulder was indeed dislocated. They said they did not want to reset the dislocation at their facility because they did not administer general anesthetic, and they were not in the torture business.

Ha ha ha.

They said that we should go to Baptist Hospital downtown and they could take care of everything. They put all of their X-ray images onto a CD to give to the people at Baptist so we would not have to wait to get new X-rays.

So we went down to Baptist Hospital and checked into their emergency department. It took a little bit longer than at Mississippi Sports Medicine, but it was not a terribly long wait.

They got my intake information, and it was only about five or ten minutes more of waiting until they took me back to a room. I saw a student doctor and then I saw the attending doctor, and he said they wanted to take their own X-rays.

Whatever.

So they took the X-rays by bringing the X-ray machine right into my room. The X-ray technician was much more oriented to taking X-rays without having to move a dislocated shoulder than was the technician at Mississippi Sports Medicine. At the first place, they had to move my shoulder around a lot and, I need to tell you, that was not fun!

Once they had gotten my X-rays and evaluated my dislocation, they said that they would put me to sleep and reset my shoulder, and then they would stitch up my lip, and I’d be good to go.

Aside from the pain when I had to move my shoulder and the extreme discomfort from just being in the car, sitting in the waiting room, sitting in a wheelchair, and being cold, it really wasn’t such a bad experience. I had gotten a little bit shocky and sweaty, and when I got into the air conditioning, all that sweatiness turned very chilly. The actual treatment was not that bad at all.

As I was coming out of the anesthetic, I heard them talking and could remember some of it. For example, they said that I had gone under at 45 minutes past the hour, and I was under for 23 minutes while they did the procedure.

After I was fully awake, the doctor gave me some lidocaine injections in my upper lip, and then put in a number of stitches. I did not count the stitches, but I think there were about five or six of them. I told the doctor afterwards that the treatment of stitching up my lip was not nearly as bad as the anticipation of the needles and the stitches. He laughed and said that’s usually the case.

We had a very nice primary care nurse during this entire visit, whose name was Addison. She was fairly young, but I guess that is compared to me at my now 80 years of age. And she took very good care of me and of Jan as well. As we were getting ready to leave, she asked, “Can I get you anything else?” I said to her, “You mean, like a butterscotch milkshake?” She laughed, and Jan laughed also. And when I told my son and a couple of my friends about this, they laughed also.

Hey, you’ve got to inject some levity where you can, right?

Spending the night last night after all of this trauma was not as bad as I had feared it might be. Sitting in my recliner is good for looking at the computer, although operating a computer with just one hand is a new adventure in challenges. I am now dictating this by voice through my microphone, and that sure does save me from doing a ton of typing. And I have been figuring out other ways to operate the computer with just one hand.

Blessedly, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been, and I consider myself very lucky and fortunate that it wasn’t worse. I was wearing a helmet and leather gloves, and I believe the brim on the helmet kept me from smashing my nose into the pavement as well as wrecking my upper lip. As Paul reminds us in Ephesians 5:20, we should give thanks to God for everything. He does not say to be thankful only for your blessings. And so, I have found many things to be thankful for throughout this entire challenge.

Last night, I discovered I could sleep very well on our couch because it is soft, long enough, and easy to lie down on and stand up from, in case I need to use the facility in the middle of the night.

Four days after the accident, this coming Tuesday I will go back to Mississippi Sports Medicine for a review of my situation and will probably get assigned to a physical therapist to recover from this trauma.

Yesterday, even after I got home, if I tried to move my arm on my own, for example just by lifting up my elbow, it would hurt like crazy. However, already today, when I try to move my arm on my own, there is very little pain. That is very fortunate, and it bodes well for a faster recovery.

We will just see what happens from here, and I am grateful to all of my family and friends for their attention and caring and prayers.

Now I have got to post this write-up on the blog, get the link, and send it out to a big batch of people so that I can let everybody know what happened without having to type it up 40 kabillion times.

So far, at less than one day past the accident, I am doing as well as anyone could expect from something like this. I very much enjoy hearing from all my friends, so if you want to shoot me an email or anything else, I would enjoy hearing it. And now that I can do some voice dictation, I might even be able to answer!

Take care, everybody.

And stay safe!”