Derailed

Life is a funny sometimes. Not ‘ha-ha funny,’ but more the sort of scratch your head and say ‘huh?’ funny…

Now comes the part of the post where I tell you why I won’t be hiking the Appalachian Trail in two weeks. See, two weeks ago, I crashed yet another bicycle (this time a super-rad BMX!), landed on my head and slightly fractured my neck where it meets my skull. Say what?! Clarification: my spinal cord is fine; I can still walk, talk, play music, complain about things and write my semi-bi-monthly blog post. Phew! But I honest-to-god-cross-my-heart-til-I-die actually broke my neck this time.

I’ve been wearing a lovely neck brace (pictured below) for two weeks, and I’m happy to report that my recovery is coming along quite nicely. It turns out that the fracture, while real, is fairly minor, and the bigger issue was soft-tissue damage around the top of my neck. I essentially dislocated my neck on impact, but as of yesterday everything is back in line.

So what’s next? I wish I knew. In 10 days we’ll be homeless an unemployed. Theoretically we will work over the winter, save our pennies and hit the trail from Georgia in the spring. So here’s to (really) plunging into the unknown! Until next time…