No pictures yet

So I left off the previous crash blog when I was lying in a ditch.

I had a bit of a chat with the guy whose car I hit, then I called my mum and told her I had a wee bump and was waiting for the ambulance. The driver was obviously in a bit of shock, but he seemed happy enough that I hadn't destroyed his car so after checking I was alive and that the marshalls had sorted out an ambulance he headed off.

The ambulance took a bit longer to arrive than I would have liked. I knew it was only a couple of miles away as I had passed it twice on previous laps. Turns out they were busy treating another rider who had had a self-induced argument with the tarmac and lost a bit of skin.

Once they did arrive the ambulance crew were very friendly and quickly had me up out of the ditch and had my arm slung and strapped me into the back of the ambulance. Having confirmed that the marshalls would take care of my bike they gave myself and the skinned bloke a lift back to transition. This is the point that I made my big mistake. Those of you who read my big bang post will no doubt be thinking that we are now half an hour on from the big mistake, but really I don't think any of the little things that stacked up to cause the crash were a lot of small mistakes that anyone else wouldn't make, it just happened that I stacked them all up in quick succession.

In future the rule I will be staying with is "Do not get out of the ambulance!". The crew were still being friendly and they again offered me some gas and air, which I manfully rejected (small mistake). They then asked if I wanted to be taken to Raigmore, or wanted to get out. Too much testosterone and Raigmore being in the wrong direction coupled to wanting to rescue my clothes from transition and my swimming stuff from the locker in the pool, led me to get out of the ambulance. I reasoned it would be easier to get seen in Elgin than 60 miles from anyone.

I thanked them for their time and went to round up my clothes and transition gear and wait for my parents to come and pick me up. I managed to collect all my gear and with a little help got my bike shoes changed for my trainers. Managed to chat to about half the field while I was waiting and arrange with the race organiser to get my bike back to Aberdeen. Then my parents collected me and my car and took me back to Elgin and my mum took me to A&E at Dr Grays.

So this is where the mistake comes back to bite. Walk-ins to A&E are not treated the same way as someone who arrives in an ambulance. If I had come in with the ambulance I would have been considered as a road traffic accident, triaged, x-rayed and probably into surgery within an hour or so. Instead I got asked to take a seat. Which I did. Two hours of X-Factor later, I got seen by a very junior doctor. I got handed some painkillers and they took an x-ray. Then they sent me home and told me they would call me on the Monday.

And now I have managed to write all of this and still not get to the pictures.