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Being A Speed Bump With A Sore Throat Makes For A Bad Week!
by Raul Gallegos on Friday, November 2 2007Leaving October and starting November has not been the best thing this year. Let me start off by saying that overall, I really am doing great. In fact, I feel better than I sound or look. If you want to hear just how bad I sound, give technical support a call today so you can laugh at me. Losing my voice from a sore throat was one of the better things which happened to me this week. In fact, if the only event was my sore throat, I would not be writing this entry. So, let's get to what actually happened.
As you may or may not know, I've been deeply involved with testing our up-coming GPS product for the Voice Sense Notetaker. In fact, I did a presentation on it a couple of weeks ago. If you want to hear it, visit the Voice Sense files area of our site where you can download an archive of the presentation. Right now, the presentation is not the important thing however, what happened to me is. So, I'll continue. I consider myself an everyday user of the GPS product, both here in the office, and at home. Since I can't really do much testing while sitting at my special area designated, "Raul's Space," I have to do most of the testing after hours. This is fine with me because I actually have a reason to walk, other than the fact that walking is good for you. In fact, walking is what brought on this week's event.
I'll start off by describing what happened Monday night, October 29. I went out around 9:30 at night and created a manual route around my neighborhood. This route took me from my house, around some streets, and back to my house, making a total distance of one mile. Because I was creating the route manually, it took me longer to walk this one mile due to having to stop at each turn so that the proper waypoint could be made. When all was said and done, or rather, walked and done in this case, I went home and ended my day with much needed sleep.
Now we are up to Tuesday night which was one day later. Obviously everyone knows that Tuesday comes after Monday, but I thought I'd throw that in just to be clear this was one day later. I also realize that the last sentence was rather long, but oh well. I loaded the route I had created before and began my walk. Since the route was already created, I didn't need to stop at each turn like I had the night before. Because of this, I knew it would only take me around twenty minutes to complete the one mile walk, whereas the night before, it had taken me over half an hour. I switched on the multiple command feature of the GPS program and started walking. For those of you who may not know, the multiple commands feature is where the GPS program will tell you certain things automatically every twenty seconds or so. This way you don't have to keep pressing the command over and over if you want to know the status of certain things. In this case, I wanted to keep tabs on the heading and the speed. Since I was trying to see how fast I could complete this route, I wanted accurate speeds and didn't want to slow down to type the "S," command on the Voice Sense. So, there is a brief explanation of multiple commands. I seem to keep getting off-track somehow. This must be due to my sore throat. Anyway, during the first ten minutes of the walk, I averaged around three miles per hour which I thought was very good. Once I got to the last third of the route, I slowed down a little for no apparent reason.
There I was, minding my own business, walking East at around two miles per hour along the next to last street of my route when I heard a car pulling out of a long drive way off to my left. In the half-second it took my brain to process the thought, "Hey, that car is sounding like it's moving right toward me and I'm in its way," the car hit me. In the next instant, I'm lying on my right side after my right knee and right elbow broke my fall. Although it was very nice of my knee and elbow to do this for me, hitting the street like that was not the best thing. There was instant pain as both my knee and elbow had some skin removed due to my fall. I won't go into more details because I'm sure you get a pretty good picture of what happened. Keep in mind that in late October in Indiana at night is not very warm. I was wearing jeans and a light jacket and I still got scraped up. Of course this was nothing compared to how my left leg felt. So now back to the car. It turns out that I was very lucky because the driver was pulling out rather slowly out of her drive way. Also, either the feeling of the car hitting an object or my yell of, "Ouch!" was enough to make her hit the brakes and stop the car. If she had not, I'm afraid that more than my leg, knee, and elbow would have gotten hurt.
Let me take a moment here to express that the priorities in my life were rather screwed up that night. You would think that someone getting hit by a car, even one going as slow as it was, would think of their own safety and their own life first right? Well, I'm almost ashamed to admit it, but the first thing I did while I was lying there on the street was check the Voice Sense and GPS receiver for any problems. As I lie there on the street looking for scratches on the Voice Sense I finally come to my senses and think to myself, "screw the Voice Sense and GPS receiver! I'm in pain." Actually, I didn't think the word, "Screw," but this is a G-rated post so that is what I'll use here. Anyway, it only took about a second for me to get my priorities in order, but I feel I would be less than honest if I had not mentioned it here.
So, now the car has stopped and I'm slowly getting up off the ground. The driver gets out and walks over to me and says, "What are you doing?" As if it's not obvious.
"I'm lying here on the street," I replied, still getting up slowly and taking a few steps further into the street to retrieve my cane which had flown out of my right hand and landed some two feet away from me.
Upon seeing the cane, she said, "Oh, you are blind? I didn't know that."
I'm thinking, "You idiot." Out-loud I said, "Would that have made a difference?"
Either she thought that was a rhetorical question, or she didn't get my humor, which by the way, I was proud to be having considering there was white hot pain shooting up my leg and my elbow and knee were bleeding.
Next she said, "I didn't see you,"
As if that were not obvious, I pointed out, "Yeah well, that makes two of us who weren't seeing well this night."
I do want to say that I truly feel that it was not totally her fault. My reasons for feeling this way are because it was late, dark, and I was wearing dark clothing on top of the lateness and darkness. She still should have watched where she was going though. From a gut feeling I have about people, I get the feeling that she just figured that she would pull out of her drive way and not really check carefully for a pedestrian since it was a residential street and not many people will be strolling late at night. Furthermore, if I had been sighted, I would have probably jumped out of the way upon seeing a car slowly pulling out of the drive way. What made this situation frustrating however, is the fact that she just turned around and got in her car and left. She didn't bother asking me if I was alright or if I wanted a ride home.
There are only two houses along this stretch of road where it happened. So, even though I'm not sure which house it was, I'm not really interested in pursuing it any further. I have medical insurance and accident insurance and no permanent damage was done. I'm getting ahead of myself here, so I'll stop and keep telling my story.
So, after she drove off, I limped my way home. Luckily I was only about a block and a half from my house, so it was not too bad. I should have called my wife to let her know what happened. She would most likely have come and picked me up, and gotten the actual address of the house. As much as I would have liked to have called her though, I could not because I had left the cell phone on the kitchen counter. Silly me, I know, but well, there is nothing for it now. Ironically, I had the cell phone with me the prior night.
So, I get home and find that my wife is fast asleep. By this time, it's about 10:00 PM and everyone except the dog was asleep for the night. I wake my wife and tell her I got hit by a car. Naturally she does not believe me because I have a rather warped sense of humor. When I showed her my right knee and elbow, she finally believed me. At least, I think she did because she didn't get upset about me waking her. Come to think of it, she never did say she believed me, but she did ask me if my life insurance was up-to-date. I think I did annoy her a little because I got a little blood on the sheets. In any case, she was awake instantly and in nurse mode. After several minutes, first-aid kit next to us, my knee and elbow were patched up. An ace bandage was around my left leg and four pills were in my stomach. The pain in my leg had lessened considerably and since I could put some weight on it, I didn't think I needed to be seen that night.
The next morning I called into work and went to see the doctor. After an x-ray was taken, it was confirmed that there were no fractures or breaks. All I have to deal with is soreness and swelling for the next week or so. Some friends of mine were suggesting that I at least try to get this person to pay for the medical bill. Or at least to have her home-owner's or car insurance pay for it, but I'm really not out to get anyone, and besides which, with it being Friday today, it may be too late for that now. So anyway, I came into work on Thursday and limped around slowly with some discomfort. Overall, I got through the day without problems. Well, mostly anyway. At around 2:00 PM my throat began hurting a little. Small fits of coughing began and my head started to hurt.
Now it's Friday and I'm here with a sore leg and a sore throat. Luckily as the morning has passed, the calls have been slow. I'm glad it's Friday because if I do end up with a bad cold or infection of some kind, I'll have the weekend to try and get through it. Hopefully when Monday comes around, I'll be much better. So, that is my week.
