5 Responses to “GhostCycle — Bicycle awareness”

1. #1 by MRambler
   August 5th, 2005 at 5:36 pm

   Cool, if it keeps one cyclist from getting hit then the effort was well worth it…..

   In Oklahoma, everyone would just run over the white primered bikes and keep on truckin’…..
2. #2 by Jek
   August 5th, 2005 at 7:35 pm

   It didn’t last long. The GhostCycle at location #2 was taken down sometime today. Hopefully I don’t become a future GhostCycle.
3. #3 by MRambler
   August 6th, 2005 at 7:12 am

   Isn’t there a song called “GhostCycles in the Sky”?….. (Ghost Riders – GhostCycles, close enough….)

   I suggest a big airhorn,lots of flashing lights, and eyes in the back of your head…. (Oh yeah, and a baseball bat for those close calls…..)
4. #4 by TTop
   August 7th, 2005 at 8:16 am

   Speaking of bike accidents, I’ll share this email that came to the WRQ Alumni list last night from a former WRQ employee — I’ve removed the names to protect privacy, but this sort of thing is pretty much why I don’t commute by bicycle:

   Some may recall I was tagged on my bike while communitting home from WRQ in October 2002 (10-2-02 at 5:18pm actually). A nice sedan was kind enough not to hit me personaly but alas my bike came to a very quick hault into his front wheelwell sending me flying superman style out over 2nd ave down town. Unlike superman I must have had my arms at my side as the whole impact went through my helmet. (Hence I’m alive to write this message).

   So that’s the past – it broke my back and broke my brain – my back is healing up nicely unfortunately the brain isn’t. WRQ was increadibly patient for a good 2 years as I tried to get back on the horse (working), LOAs, flexible hours, allowing me to focus on only one task at a time, letting me log more hours in the futon room than my office some days… but in the end the brain just didn’t recover to the point where I was able to continue with any level of working.

   Seems I’m good for about 100 minutes of cognitive activity in a day before I feel like I’ve run a mental marathon. I know – I had no way of relating to this before the accident either but if you can imagine running or working your muscles to the point where you just collapse and can’t take another step or even lift your arms to feed yourself – that’s where my brain gets mentally after a couple hours of activity – mentally exhausted.

   If I push things to 2-3 hours, I get a really really bad headache. Go 3-4 hours and it’s a really bad migraine that will last 3-4 days and take a good week to fully recover from.

   Even if I was able to find a job that paid my old salary for working 1.5 hours a day, frankly that would be all I could do in a day – I’d be maxed out and in bed for the remainder until I got up the next morning to do another hour and a half looking forward to the weekend. And to be honest… I’m not sure I could keep up that pace for much more than a couple of weeks before 1.5 hours proved to be too much every day.

   They say a brain injury will do about 90% of his healing in the first 18 months… and the last 10% of what you’ll recover over the rest of your life or so. As I’m coming up on 36 months in October I’m pretty much at where I’ll be at now.

   So it would seem I’m on a permanant friends and family plan for the foreseeable future. The good news is while the average dad spends less than 5 minutes a day with his children, was born in Feburary after the accident, is 2.5 now and a tremendous joy in my life. She’s definitely kept me alive through the worst of this recovery and her “angel kisses” are enough to pull anyone out of thier worst moments.

   Some of you know , as she worked at the Q for
   several years as well. She’s the one with the Yahoo account which I joined this group under. She’s continuing to pursue her Feldenkrais practice and we’re finishing a room in the house to act as a studio for her to work from. The work is very rewarding though starting up your own practice/business is extremely difficult and slow going at times.

   We all recieved so much support from WRQ after my accident both from the company and individuals (far too many to list). My attourney said he’s never seen such support from an employer in his 20+ year career. It was truely inreadible to be on the recieving end of so much kindness and really went a long way to helping us get through those first years. We’ll definitely never forget what it meant to us.

   The good old USA has a system for everything as you must know, so no, I’m no where near a settlement of any kind from this accident. The good news is there is one on the horizion (he was insured and he did stop) but it’ll still be another year I’d guess before that milestone hits.

   It’s nice to reconnect again and I look foward to seeing future postings of what folks are up to.

   Keep that helmet on!
5. #5 by Jek
   August 7th, 2005 at 12:16 pm

   Wow, that’s incredibly sad. It’ll give me pause before I head out tomorrow on my way to work (with helmet on). I can imagine WRQ being that kind to an injured employee, especially back then.

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