At speed, the impact probably
would have looked very interesting. Even more interesting if it had been filmed
with one of those ‘slow motion high-speed capture cameras’. Yes. The multitude
of expressions as my face approached the wall. The fear factor, as I was
airborne from the bike. Recognition, as I saw I was going to collide with
something. Surprise as I recognised it was to be the wall. Panic as I realised
I would not be able to prevent this from happening. Realisation, that it was in
fact a hard brick wall. Shock as I saw the roughcast cement (with added gravel)
was broken in places, and then, the actual impact. A spilt second or two, and
an entire gamut and a variety of thoughts and expressions flashed across my
terrified features. Someone said to me recently, “You must expend half of your
energy in the use of your facial expressions”. I inquired what they were
referring to. They likened it to the classic Italian character who talks with
their hands as well as their voices. That day I probably would have used a lot
of energy on my facial expressions as well.
So the face met the wall and the
rest of the body followed. You may recall how I mentioned in the earlier blog
of the kite, the stilt, my brother and his injury, (see blog 5th
April 2012 ) head wounds tend to bleed very
quickly and, a lot. Mine did as well. My face had mashed into the wall at
speed, I believe the rest of my body had tried to catch up with my face and
achieved a higher point of contact with the wall. I was upside as I hit the
wall in full contact. Gravity of course (another set of Laws which Newton wrote
down), would not allow me to remain there for long, as the formulae
demonstrates.
Fg= m1Xm2 /r2 *
So of course my body didn’t.
There was a moment when all of my face had been as mashed as was possible in
the circumstance. Before my body lost its horizontal trajectory and achieved a
point of motionlessness. Then the weight and gravity, forced the parts of me,
which were lower than my body, towards the ground and bitumen footpath also at a
calculable speed. So. We have crash, the bike bounces from travelling car, to
parked car and back to the travelling car. Is struck again and flung off
towards the footpath. The bike stops at the cement curb, at least the front
wheel does. The small wheel size of the Raleigh twenty was an issue here. They
only had a 20 inch front wheel. That was part of the attraction, but also a
contributing factor to the incident. The cement curbs were about 6 inches in
height.
(Continued tomorrow)
*(doesn't layout like that but typing it in is the best I can get)
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