Sunday evening, July 28th, was looking like a fine night for a ride.
That afternoon, there had been a joyous bridal shower in Appleton for my daughter Elisabeth (the gents had a “tool” shower for her fiancé Chris – complete with tasty unhealthy food, and comical or serious marital advice). My ride would cap off a great day. Diane and I had driven separately to the events; she was due to arrive home an hour after me. In the meantime, it was around 7:10 PM, and with summer’s long days lingering, I could still hit the trail.
I have a standard route – roughly 13 miles which takes me about an hour – lately I had been pushing myself for faster times, and more calorie burn. Bike riding is two things for me: First, exercise, of course (I count calories, and if I burn, say, 400 cal., I get to eat 400 more – certainly something on my mind as I anticipated a late dinner after the bacon and donuts of the tool shower.)
And second, for me, biking is also reading…ahem, I should say, listening…to books. Or podcasts, or sermons…but most often books, fiction, non-fiction, etc. I have a wide gamut. That evening I was listening to When the Sea Came Alive, An Oral History of D-Day, by Garrett M. Graff, the same author who used multiple actors giving real-person accounts to tell the story of 9/11. The kind of book you’d actually rather listen to than read…engrossing stuff.
So, I headed out for a little solitude and exercise on that perfect late summer’s eve, little expecting what lay ahead. Literally. Because 8 miles into my future a tree had fallen across the Wild Goose Trail, which hadn’t been there 2 days before.
As I rode merrily along the Wild Goose, my D-Day listening grew tiresome and called for a change-up, and while I was looking down to switch to a different book, well…you know. When I looked up from the Audible app, the fallen tree was two feet in front of me, and I was going too fast to stop.
Nevertheless, stop I did.
AFTERMATH
I flipped over, I suppose, or twisted off to the side – I don’t really know. But I do know that lying on the ground, the pain was…let’s say, new. New…like, on a scale of what I had never felt before. Nevertheless, I got up and tried to walk it off. Hah. In such moments, you just want to reassure yourself that you’re okay. But you can’t walk off 5 broken ribs and the beginnings of a collapsed lung, yet I tried – after all, Diane would be expecting me back at the house to help unload bridal shower stuff.
With sundown coming, on a deserted trail, I was screaming, and moaning, and crying out.
At least my Apple Watch was with me. It read: “It looks like you’ve taken a hard fall. Do you want to call 911?” A good reason to swipe right. And so, I did.
The 911 operator was very good. I talked to her on my watch. She asked: “What is your name?…What is your current location?…What is your phone number?…Did you hit your head?” (I was wearing a helmet, but either way, the answer to the last was: “No” – perhaps the first of many reasons to thank God). “Sir, an ambulance is on its way…”
I asked for her name – wanted to be more personable; she declined and gave me a number. Standard Operating Procedure. Fair enough.
And then, in the twilight, while still talking to 911, down the Wild Goose, coming the opposite direction from my previous course, was a large vehicle…a truck. I’d never seen that before on the “NO-motorized-vehicles-allowed” Wild Goose. The truck stopped directly in front of me.
A man got out. He had been outside nearby (about a football field away at his house which I didn’t see on the tree-lined Wild Goose) when he heard the bellowing and shrieking coming from the trail. Mike Kartechner had come to lend a hand.
911 told me not to leave the scene; the ambulance was on its way. Mike calmly told me that we would be eaten alive by mosquitos on the trail: We needed to leave. He was there; 911 was a number, and the swarm was real. I got into his truck. We gave the dispatcher his house number and the first responders would pick me up at his place a few minutes later.
All neck-braced up, I would experience the first two ambulance rides of my life that night, number 1 to Waupun Hospital, and Number 2, to UW Hospital in Madison, after Waupun assessed my injuries and determined I needed to be served by an expert trauma team.
Later, reflecting on it all, my mind began running down two tracks, focusing on two great truths/lessons which formed my thinking, and which I would take away from the experience…and which I will write about next…
(FYI, Part 2 is here)
Entrusted with the Gospel 
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