motorcycle accident

An easy riddle: what is one way you get into a motorcycle accident if you don’t own a motorcycle, or were not riding one, or an automobile was not involved, or a bicycle was not involved?

Answer: you get hit by one as a pedestrian.

Memorial Day weekend twenty years ago I got hit by a motorcycle at Greenlake in Seattle.
In some respects it was a life defining moment.  But it other ways it has also been inconsequential. 
I am simultaneously living one very extreme condition, and one very somewhat average state of being.

Here are some of the numbers behind my experience:
2 major surgeries
1 left femur broken
7 was the number of pieces my pelvis was shattered into
3 stainless steel implants (with many additional bolts and screws)
2 weeks in the hosptital
4 months in a wheelchair
1 week on a walker to learn how to walk again
1 month on crutches
5 months total out of work
1 Seattle to Portland 200mi bike ride completed 15yrs later (in 2010)
1 Ironman completed 18yrs later (in 2013)

One fact is certain: getting hit by an 18yr old on a motorcycle ain’t fun. 

Modern medical technology of all kinds was used to put me back together.
Every single relationship I had was put under extreme pressure: love life, work, parents, sister, friends.