Soaring, Tumbling, Freewheeling

Long before my friend Juliann was a Texan, she encouraged me to write creatively. I got to skype with her yesterday, and was updating her on my Wednesday evening adventure. She told me to share it with the world, and I promised to do my best to make it as enjoyable to read as possible. It was a potentially horrific moment that I choose to see as comical. Know in advance, I'm alive and well and laughing about it.

I'm a sucker for good Mexican food, and there's a delightful little taco truck about an hour drive away from Kandern that's only open twice a week from mid-morning until they run out of ingredients. I'd planned to caravan up there with my parents and one of my co-workers with his family on Wednesday before hitting up the Christmas markets nearby. We're far enough north on the globe, that it gets dark pretty early here, so even though it was still late afternoon, the thick cloud cover and heavy rain combined with our axis away from the sun made it pretty dark by the time we arrived at the market with the renowned Mexican food cart. Chris came up to our car to say that his wife and kids were going to wait to eat until the markets, but my parents unloaded my wheelchair and we prepared to cross the street and get our fill of taco goodness.

I'm still relatively new to the whole wheelchair maneuvering system, and I find the rain rather hard to navigate in with the wet handholds. I told Chris this might be his only chance to ever push me since I'm generally adept on my own. I was so eager for the Mexican food, I neglected to go over the safety procedures with Chris. Really, there's just one rule to pushing me: when we get to a bump, let me pop a wheelie for my little wheels to get over it then keep going. It's usually not a big deal, and when we found our way to the center of the market and food carts, I managed to pop over the power cords with no problem. The greatest devastation was that the Holy Taco Shack (that's the actual name) had apparently already run out of food and left for the evening. We turned around and headed back to our car. The rain was still coming down steadily, and the second most disappointed part of this story (after the lack of Mexican food) is that this next part was not well lit for the impending comedy.

Chris got me into the street, and we somewhat simultaneously realized there was a car coming closer than comfortable, so he sped up to reach the other side. There wasn't a high curb, but a couple centimeters separated the street from the sidewalk. As we rapidly approached, I didn't have time to tell Chris the rule, but I got myself ready to pop the front wheels up for him to keep moving me forward. He saw the bump, and realizing the little wheels needed to come up but not knowing my system, he went to tip my chair backwards.

The opposing forces launched me into the air.

For a brief moment, I was soaring. My hands flew out to catch me, and the saddest part about being the person flying for a few seconds was that I couldn't watch from the outside. Imagine how absolutely hilarious it would look to see a person literally launched from a wheelchair into the air. My soaring was brief, though, and I tumbled onto soaking wet concrete which was less than pleasant though not unbearable. Remember, I've broken two vertebrae - the pain I experienced at that was the greatest I've ever endured. This was just a scraped knee. 

Wet and without Mexican food, I was more ready for a warm bed than Christmas markets after the ordeal, so my parents and I turned around and let Chris's family enjoy the festivities sans wheelie.

My knee is totally fine. I'm still recovering from those broken vertebrae though. Please keep praying the nerves find their way back to each other and remember how to send messages correctly. Also, I'm going to have a quesadilla for lunch. With lots of jalepenos. Delicious.