A mysterious highway accident that no-one witnessed

Like a good house-trained fellow, I visited the supermarket for the food for a day or two, leaped on my bike, and began cycling energetically home. 

The cycle route passes over a bridge over a slight but historic stream. I stopped to admire one of the stream's daffy Coot birds. I climbed back onto the bike, and started increasing the pressure on the pedals. 

The next moment, so it seemed, I was looking up into the faces of a small crowd. Two ambulances waited nearby. 

Something had happened, some drama, that knocked me from the bike. It was as if I woke part-way through a nightmare, and only after a few moments was I aware of considerable pain, and splashes of blood from wounds on my face and arms. 

That was Monday evening. I was rushed to the excellent St George's Hospital, and squeezed into their trauma ward. 

Trauma ward

I couldn't have wanted for better carers, for more empathy, and for that matter more bandaging. A very bruised, bloody, and curious fellow was to spend the night and almost another day there. 

I didn't know what happened, the medics could only guess, and tomorrow – if recovery continues to progress – I will visit the scene to see if I can find tracks of a vehicle that somehow almost-secretly bulldozed down my bicycle and its rider. 

It's great, even astonishing, that we can live and learn from dramas in life, even one as potentially life-threatening as this. I've never experienced the non-awareness side of an accident before. I have no recollection whatsoever of the missing and brutal minutes. 

Why didn't I hear the vehicle's approach? Why didn't anyone report the collision? What will that grassy track beside the busy A240, the Kingston Road in the stretch to the Kingston Bypass, reveal? 

I hope to be able to offer some answers to a personal and very painful experience tomorrow. Continues on the blogs for my ocean adventure book, Sailing to Purgatory, at SailingToPurgatory.com