I’ve had a lot of injuries in my lifetime but nothing really compares to what happened to me on the weekend of memorial day 2018. I had woken up that saturday morning like any other, it was around eleven in the morning and i got up to eat my lunch / breakfast and checked my phone to see if anyone had sent me anything (it was empty). About an hour or so later i had texted some friends to see if they could hang out at the park. Less than half an hour later i was on my bike headed for the park.

I had made the trip to bailey park countless times without any problem at all and I had figured that this time would be no exception, oh how wrong I was. Honestly looking back at the whole incident now it’s kind of funny, I remember talking to my step mom about how I was going to be “just fine” and that I had already made the trip many times before. Had I known then what was going to happen I would have just gotten a ride to the park, but I was set on riding my bike to the park for some odd reason.

The ride there started normally with me riding to the school and then on to M-66. The road was slightly more busy than usual; however, that didn’t really affect the way I rode at all. Admittedly I wasn’t going slow but I wasn’t going super fast either, I was across Wendy’s when I first noticed the car pull up from the drive through, it was a black Audi, and I thought that the driver had seen me and would wait for me to cross in front of him. Unlike every single other car that I had ever crossed in front of before, this vehicle saw a gap in the traffic on M--66 and without looking back to the right, (my direction) booked it. That’s when I came into contact with the vehicle.

All I really remember thinking in the two seconds before I hit the car was that this was not going to feel good al all. Next thing I know I am thrown onto the top of the car and in an instant I was flung onto the busy street of M-66. It seemed like I was flying for seconds just being suspended in mid air, like I was flying. All I heard were cars and other vehicles coming to a screeching halt. As I layed in the road, all I felt was a searing sharp pain in my face, and I began to worry that I had lost my teeth. My entire face had went numb and the only sensation I was left with was the feeling of blood running down my face; furthermore, I was being frantically rushed to the side of the street where I could wait for an ambulance to arrive.

Eventually I had calmed down enough to really evaluate my situation and gather myself to form some kind of idea of what just happened. I came to the conclusion that I had been hit by a car and I had some sort of deep wound on my head. The way everyone made it seem it was only on my forehead and not down my entire face. I had my white shirt over my face in order to try and slow the blood flow and it worked. Honestly though i kind of wish that I had seen what I did to the car in order to gauge how hard I actually hit it but as I mentioned, I had a shirt over my face so seeing wasn't really much of an option at that point.

I remember going to the hospital and seeing my dad and the rest of my family at the hospital in Kalamazoo. Their expressions told me everything that I needed to know about my current situation. I told them them “You guys look worse than me.” That was my way of lightening the mood to let them know that I was going to be okay. They rushed me to the surgery room and the next thing I know I wake up with seven staples and over one hundred stitches in my face, along with a newly constructed nose and some pig skin to replace what had been “scraped off”. It was hard to eat a lot of foods after that day for about two weeks but I bounced back well enough. One thing I can say however is that I’ve learned a really valuable lesson when it comes to biking and safety, first off, make sure if you are crossing in front of someone that is getting ready to turn, either wait or go around them. Secondly just make sure you take extra caution when it comes to riding on busy roads.