On the day of our final ride, between the deep blue of the Arabian Sea with a fringe of anti-tsunami boulders and a broken strip of settlements...I lost my balance and fell into the road, as I suspect do millions of cyclists every day.
The sight of blood always attracts attention, so the guide and driver dutifully attended to my grazed knee and, trying to ignore the sharp pain in my right wrist, I resumed riding - reluctant to concede defeat or risk missing out on the remaining 50 miles of the adventure. It was a beautiful day and included access to hidden places gained only by crossing between isolated points in small ferryboats. Magical.
Quite how I negotiated the rigours of some broken sections of road, multiple speed-bumps, the teeming National Highway, and all the intervening hazards, I'm not entirely sure. As we progressed towards our hotel I searched with increasing desperation for signs that we were nearly there; my arm jolted with pain and was incapable of braking or the vital operation of bell-ringing. In the end sheer relief at being able to stop holding the handlebars swamped any sense of achievement at having completed the ride.
I suspected there may be some damage deep in my wrist but didn't fancy the hasstle of foreign hospital assessments and a complicated insurance claim; if I was careful it didn't hurt too much so I'd wait until we reached home.
That was more than 3 weeks ago...and still I haven't got a firm diagnosis. But my wrist is encased in a plaster cast and will stay there for another 2 weeks, minimum.
Which means I cannot drive or return to work.
I must keep it dry and have very restricted use of my dominant hand
So, I have walked a lot and waited for late-running buses - as do millions of others, every minute of every day. I have had to ask for help with opening packages and jars but doggedly defied my limitations to accomplish several tasks single-handedly. It's frustrating, but hopefully one day it will be better...and one day soon I'd like to get back on my bike.
At the moment I've reached a crucial stage in my quest towards writing a thesis...and I'm wallowing somewhere in the dark between what I thought might be my thesis and what my supervisors would like my thesis to be...and being semi-grounded ought to be a good opportunity to make some progress. It would be ideal if I could scribble my notes in the margins, but at least mouse-control and typing are possible...perhaps this time on the sidelines will prove the key to these final negotiations.
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