Gradin.com » accident

Road Rash is Like Diaper Rash, but Not as Cute

Olaf — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:21:56 +0000

Carlos brought to my attention his recent exploration of road rash. Oh, Carlos, where can I learn more? Personal experience is often a better teacher than anything else.

Today I took my first big spill on my bicycle. I was very close to work, as it often happens, so I finished up the ride with blood running down my leg. When I got to work and hit the shower, I learned the extent of the damage. In describing this for my right leg, it’s probably easier to talk about the parts that remained undamaged. They’re without noticeable tan, hairy, but otherwise beautiful. Maybe a few lumps and scars from previous accidents. Oh, and rare hamburger meat comes to mind when looking elsewhere.

It’s entirely my fault. I was shooting across a green light with traffic to avoid stopping and losing my pace. The roads are wet from all the rain, so when traffic stopped just after the light, I was unable to follow suit. I touched the front brake to slow me down, but the front tire instantly locked up. Too much pressure, apparently. With that, it was a matter of 1 second before all hope of regaining composure was lost. I flattened out on the road with my bike and slid for an eternity before finally stopping myself with my face…on the curb. The curb is okay and only suffered minor indignities. I actually had time to think about how bad the road rash was going to be while I slid. I was toying with the idea that it may not be so bad because of the wet roads – a true fact, actually. Funny thing about these things is that you don’t really feel the pain until after you stop. I felt heat on my leg from the friction, but that was it. And like a 10-year-old, I jumped up out of the street and yanked my bike up onto the sidewalk as if to pretend nothing happened. I was asked if I was okay and needed a ride, but the adrenaline and shock had me thinking I’d be fine, if only a little scuffed up. I am okay, truly. The rash on my leg hurts pretty bad, but it’s tolerable.

I was able to get it cleaned up pretty well in the shower at work, though I will need to do some scouring at home. The worst part at the moment is that I’m wearing jeans that are slowly getting damp with, presumably, lymph fluid. My buddy, Brandon, is picking up the medical supplies to keep me from sticking to the jeans. I have some additional precautions to take while riding in the rain, but I didn’t really learn how to avoid the lock-up problem. Brandon says disc brakes are better for “modulating” to avoid the lock-up. Calipers tend to give you all or nothing, which is certainly what it felt like today. On a positive note, I’ve now ridden nearly 350 miles commuting.

A Surreal Morning

Olaf — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 20:29:19 +0000

Monday morning I began my day like many others. It was the first day of school for many, and it was the beginning of the work week for me. I also managed to get out the door in record time (related) that morning; the sun was just creeping up above the horizon as I set out for work. As the roads were particularly empty, at least in the opposite direction to the commuter’s pilgrimage, I noted a single SUV driving opposite my direction across the median. I noted it, though it was for no reason other than my significant training in Zen Driving. Over the next 7 seconds, I would take special note of this vehicle as it careened out of control and ended up on its side in the middle of the lane.

It began as what I took for childish misuse of an SUV by brazen young kids on their way to their first day at school in the new year. There was a wild swerve into the median – a hard hit against the curb wall followed by a brief foray on a narrow median, ending in the erratic jerk back into the vehicle mainstay. This was the opening act for several more wild swings of the SUV’s rear end as it tried to come to terms with the perfectly straight road. You might say it was going through corrective maneuvers, but each swing seemed wilder than the former until the wheelbase could no longer handle the large vehicle’s centrifugal force. I witnessed the slow and labored moment where the driver-side wheels lifted off the ground and I knew the driver had lost. The truck rested on its side in the middle of two lanes; as though it had happened sometime in the night when no one was there to see it, and now it is found with the surrounding mystery of how it got there.

I pulled around at the very next median break to see how I could help. I have a cell phone, vague knowledge of CPR, and I’m 2 meters tall with great dexterity – surely that makes me useful in some ways. However, people were already running out from stores on the side of the road and other cars behind me had stopped in the road to lend their hands. In seconds, the scene was covered in people looking down into the truck’s interior. I have no idea what happened in there, but I can only imagine a few circumstances. A) There was a fight between the driver and at least one passenger. B) The driver had a seizure. C) It was intentional. All of these are pretty bizarre circumstances in my book. The oddest thing is that it has taken me three days to actually blog about this and I didn’t mention it to anybody until late Monday. The whole event seemed to have taken place in my imagination. It was difficult for me to keep the memory from being a nebulous dream in my mind.

Curiosity Killed the Cat

Olaf — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 05:17:15 +0000

We were quite suddenly frightened tonight when we arrived home from dinner to find our sleeping son’s finger had turned mostly black. While he drifted into sleep in his car seat, he had been playing with a Beanie Baby elephant. While doing that, he had apparently worked his finger into the label loop and begun twisting it around his finger over and over. We were completely unaware of this accident happening in the back seat and by the time we got home, his finger wasn’t looking healthy at all. Amy noticed and I rushed to the scene to untangle his finger or cut the loop. My Boy Scout days help me here, because I was able to untangle his finger rather quickly. It didn’t take but a second for the color to return to normal, if not a little red from the duress. Amy reminded me of what might have happened had this sort of thing occured over a longer trip. Of course, I was wondering what in the world made him do that. I know what made him do it. I did far worse things in my youth. Our capability for curiosity, even in adulthood, generally out-weighs our intelligence.

The Beanie Baby is now loopless, as will any future acquisitions become with our new wisdom.

In Memory of Douglas Adams (1952 – 2001)

Olaf — Thu, 25 May 2006 14:46:45 +0000

Today is Towel Day throughout the Universe. If you know of and love Douglas Adams, you will wear your towel in reverence of his comedic brilliance.

Pictures are everywhere, though Flickr is a good start. And here’s mine.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Think You’re Hot, Check This Out…

Olaf — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 22:10:27 +0000

Scientists just created (and recreated) the hottest temperatures in this solar system. Our sun is luke warm compared to the 3.6 billion degrees Fahrenheit reached within Sandia National Labratory’s Z Machine.

This is hotter than the interior of our sun, which is about 15 million degrees Kelvin, and also hotter than any previous temperature ever achieved on Earth, they say.

They don’t know how they did it.

Fortunately for us, we’ll never know if they accidentally spawn a nuclear reaction of all reactions and end the known world. So what exactly happens when this kind of heat touches anything. What’s plasma really like. How far away from a plasma bonfire would I have to be to roast a marshmallow?

Link: Record set for the hottest temperature on Earth

How Lightsabers Work

Olaf — Thu, 05 May 2005 20:42:57 +0000

Today, I was pointed to a good article on How Stuff Works [.com]. You’ll be amazed at the technical depth to which this article reaches. It just goes to show you the ernest efforts put forth by fans of Sci-Fi. Do not underestimate the loafer.

“There are two ends to any lightsaber — one end has the belt ring, while the other end houses the blade arc tip and blade emitter. NEVER point the blade emitter of a lightsaber toward your own body. NEVER look down the ‘barrel’ of a lightsaber, even if you are ‘sure’ it is in safe mode. If you accidentally activate the lightsaber, serious injury could result.”

Curtains for Bonny

Olaf — Thu, 28 Apr 2005 14:13:31 +0000

Bonny, my `94 Pontiac Bonneville, finally kicked the bucket yesterday on my drive home. I’ve written about her recently – about an accident for which I still have not secured any funds for due to a State Patrol officer’s form-filling failure (damn you!). She was unable to deliver me home on this last trip; she instead choked on her last gulp of tap water, siphoned her last gallon of gasolene, puffed her last breath of life-giving smoke, and slung an otherwise content rod into proverbial ‘hell.’ You see, these last remaining miles have been riddled with problems. The water pump leaked like a sieve – I had long-ago given up on coolant and instead just continued to add a gallon or more of water to the system at every start. Ever since I had the gas pump replaced, Bonny has guzzled her fuel like a frat-boy on Spring Break. That, and if I got down to a 1/4 tank, I was unlikely to start the car again. There have also been these new ‘sounds’ popping up on a daily basis. The latest noise arrived the day before her departure and gave cause to believe that the rear bearings in one wheel were shot. I can add that to the opposite wheel in the front whose bearings were already shot. Just before the incident, some new ‘gurgling’ sounds began in the bowels of the engine. I coaxed and prodded as the oil pressure slowly dropped to red-line levels. When smoke smelling of burning oil came from under the hood, I knew that I should prepare myself for the end. I was fortunate enough to have made it to a relatively unused neighborhood at which to quiet the racket. Just as I neared a subdivision, the oil pressure bottomed-out and the engine shut itself off. So brave was she that in her dying moments the engine made futile, wheezing attempts at continuing to my demands. I, the hard-loving slave-driver; she, the (now ugly) wreck of road hard machinery. She is no longer in pain.

Accident Involving American/Chinese – No Casulaties

Olaf — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 13:58:21 +0000

The picture says it all. Imagine our pretty blue planet encrusted with a garbage belt. Perhaps one day we’ll have rings the size of Saturn’s, though still just garbage. This is the sort of thing, I believe, that will continue to be a major hurdle for commercial space programs. Sure, NASA can watch the orbital debris, but does everyone else have the funding/ability to monitor this? Can you imagine a pileup of space craft end-to-end because some idiot up front wasn’t watching his mirrors?

The incident at hand involves some Chinese hardware and American hardware that collided back in January several hundred miles above the atmosphere. The American rocket component was apparently from 1974. What a beater!

Space.com Link

Long Goodbye’s

Olaf — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 04:43:00 +0000

Today my car was violated. As I drove soberly through inconsistent traffic in Gainesville, I noticed the 4 or 5-car pile-up that caused all the congestion. Continuing only 30 feet or so beyond the sad wrecks, I was greeted by screaching breaks and a solid thud into my trunk. The lady driving a Grand Jeep Cherokee behind me was more interested in watching the accident than preventing her own. To cap it off nicely, a smaller Honda rear-ended her moving at what, I guess, was a good clip. That car was destroyed in the accident. My trunk no longer opens, and my 11-year-old car with 200,000+ miles on it will probably just get totaled by the insurance company. I have mixed emotions about the possible loss of Bonny, my ’94 Pontiac Bonneville. I had rather hoped I would be able to last with it until some rust spots began to show up on the body. No such luck, I guess. Oh, and tomorrow morning it’s my turn to drive in the car pool. Sorry about my lack of trunkage guys!

SpaceShipOne Wins $10 Million Ansari X Prize in Historic 2nd Trip to Space

Olaf — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 19:38:04 +0000

This day in history! SpaceShipOne reaches a height exceeding the requirements for the Ansari X prize. This achievment is said to be the door to spaceward tourism, though I’m not as concerned about that. I would certainly enjoy a flight to space, but I’m guessing the price is a bit steep at the moment. We have reached an era, however, that finds spaceflight available to the common man. *That* is a big step towards the innovations required to get further, faster. This guy is after my own heart:

“‘We might have gotten to 370,000 feet if my mother-in-law hadn’t spilled about a pound of coffee on me this morning,’ Binnie said after stepping out of the space plane. ‘A little accident added to the drama of the day.’”