January 14 :: Villahermosa, Mexico :: a BAD DAY for Graham

January 14 :: Villahermosa, Mexico :: 3 km / 954km total

Last night Tim and I rain-proofed our bikes and gear, fully ready to ride through whatever stormfront is causing this unseasonal extended rainy period down here. Fully psyched up for a long, hard, determined day through the rain, we said goodbye to Dad at 6 a.m. and rolled out into a light drizzle and heavy morning traffic.......

1km into the ride we turn onto the main road heading out of town. Traffic is insane, but particularly troublesome are the taxis and minibuses darting in and out, scavenging whatever passengers they can find. "No problem", I've ridden through many, many scenes of utter chaos like this all over the world. A quick check back to see where Tim is, a quick look back forward, a stopped taxi appeared in front of me, wayyyy too close to break and stop in time, as if it teleported in at the exact moment I did the shoulder-check back, and stopped. Dodge? No, don't want to get creamed by an oncoming bus. I braked (as much as possible), braced, and SLAM. Later Tim would tell me he heard a CRACK. I ran into the taxi, bounced off to the side, thinking "don't go down, whatever you do, don't go down" and fought to stay upright. Successful at least in that, I pulled over to assess the damage.

The bike seemed ok, and is, as far as I can tell. The impact was taken square and full on by my mid-shin, which now had a shockingly-immediate scary-huge bruise about the size of half a grapefruit - and puffed out just as far. Didn't look good. Did I break something in there? Blood vessel or otherwise? Damn. We rolled over to a convenience store and Tim went in for a bag of ice. For about half an hour I sat there, icing, rolling through possibilities in my head - most of them quite unpleasant. However, there was no pain and no apparent broken anything. The ice seemed to be bringing it down. Still, I didn't feel it would be wise to ride over 100km on an unknown and questionable injury, so we went back to the hotel. Dad got a surprising knock on the door, and I continued icing away. Damn.

Its about 2pm as I write this and the swelling is almost gone - at least compared to how it was. Its a mystery to be how quickly and hugely it swelled up - maybe because I was cycling the blood was already pumping hard and fast through my legs, and accelerated or accentuated the initial swelling. Either way Tim and I have re-adjusted our plan, and we will take a bus tomorrow to make up for the 2 lost riding days (Day 1 at Cancun, and today). The next 200km of road out of here is fairly uninspiring, anyways - more flat drudgery through some big towns/cities. We'll bus just past that, and hopefully put in a full day's ride tomorrow.

The winner of all this was... Dad! Instead of spending a relatively boring day here alone, we all had breakfast together, and just finished playing about 3 hours of cards. Tonight Tim and I will walk him and his stuff to the bus station and pick up our tickets for the next day's bus ride.