Read It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life for Free Online Page A

she got me a new bike with her insurance, a Raleigh with racing wheels.
    Back then I didn’t have an odometer on my bike, so if I wanted to know how long a training ride was, my mother would have to drive it. If I told her I needed to measure the ride, she got in
    the car, even if it was late. Now, a 30-odd-mile training ride is nothing for me, but for a woman who just got off work it’s long enough to be a pain to drive. She didn’t complain.
    My mother and I became very open with each other. She trusted me, totally. I did whatever I wanted, and the interesting thing is that no matter what I did, I always told her about it. I never
    lied to her. If I wanted to go out, nobody stopped me. While most kids were sneaking out of their houses at night, I’d go out through the front door.
    I probably had too much rope. I was a hyper kid, and I could have done some harm to myself. There were a lot of wide boulevards and fields in Piano, an invitation to trouble for a teenager
    on a bike or behind the wheel of a car. I’d weave up and down the avenues on my bike, dodging cars and racing the stoplights, going as far as downtown Dallas. I used to like to ride in traffic,
    for the challenge.
    My brand-new Raleigh was top-of-the-line and beautiful, but I owned it only a short time before I wrecked it and almost got myself killed. It happened one afternoon when I was running
    stoplights. I was spinning through them one after the other, trying to beat the timers. I got five of them. Then I came to a giant intersection of two six-lanes, and the light turned yellow.
    I kept going anyway–which I did all the time. Still do.
    I got across three lanes before the light turned red. As I raced across the fourth lane, I saw a lady in a Ford Bronco out of the corner of my eye. She didn’t see me. She accelerated–and smashed
    right into me.
    I went flying, headfirst across the intersection. No helmet. Landed on my head, and just kind of rolled to a stop at the curb.
    I was alone. I had no ID, nothing on me. I tried to get up. But then there were people crowding around me, and somebody said, “No, no, don’t move!” I lay back down and waited for the
    ambulance while the lady who’d hit me had hysterics. The ambulance arrived and took me to the
    hospital, where I was conscious enough to recite my phone number, and the hospital people called my mother, who got pretty hysterical, too.
    I had a concussion, and I took a bunch of stitches in my head, and a few more in my foot, which was gashed wide open. The car had broadsided me, so my knee was sprained and torn up, and it
    had to be put in a heavy brace. As for the bike, it was completely mangled.
    I explained to the doctor who treated me that I was in training for a triathlon to be held six days later at Lake Dallas in Louisville. The doctor said, “Absolutely no way. You can’t do anything
    for three weeks. Don’t run, don’t walk.”
    I left the hospital a day later, limping and sore and thinking I was out of action. But after a couple of days of sitting around, I got bored. I went out to play golf at a little local course, even
    though I still had the leg brace on. It felt good to be out and be moving around. I took the leg brace off. I thought, Well, this isn’t so bad.
    By the fourth day, I didn’t see what the big deal was. I felt pretty good. I signed up for the triathlon, and that night I told my mother, “I’m doing that thing. I’m racing.”
    She just said, “Okay. Great.”
    I called a friend and said, “I gotta borrow your bike.” Then I went into my bathroom and cut the stitches out of my foot. I was already good with the nail clippers. I left the ones in my head,
    since I’d be wearing a swim cap. Then I cut holes in my running shoe and my bike shoe so the gash in my foot wouldn’t rub.
    Early the next morning, I was at the starting line with the rest of the competitors. I was first out of the water. I was first off the bike. I got caught by a couple of guys on