A Bonus Experience

When I set out on my bicycle this morning, I was looking forward to an adventure, but what happened is not quite what I had in mind. With my official Health Frontiers visa expiring on Monday, I needed to take a trip across the border to get a tourist visa. I had been thinking about visiting the sculpture garden near Nong Khai for some time, so I decided I would ride across the bridge, visit the garden, and ride back with my new visa. Well, I guess that is actually what I did, I just hadn’t factored in the bicycle crash in the middle.

After a sticky rice and mango pancake at Kung’s, I packed my gear and headed off. I enjoyed a nice, relaxed ride to the bridge, passed through Lao immigration and was most of the way across the bridge. Shortly before the Thai checkpoint, a set of train tracks crosses from the left side of the road to run down the middle of the bridge. The angle they enter is kind of unusual and is not far from parallel with the road for awhile. I’ve been nervous about crossing these rails when I’ve crossed on my mountain bike in the past but the thick tires have been OK. Today, I didn’t cut across perpendicular enough and my thin road bike tire got stuck in the groove and it was all over. I found myself sprawled on the road across the train track. Thankfully there were neither cars nor trains approaching. I didn’t lose consciousness, but I was dizzy and quite woozy for a few seconds. This wooziness wasn’t helped when I sighted the blood spots on my limbs. I slowly picked up myself, my bike and the accessories which had freed themselves in the crash. I sat down on the guard rail and surveyed the situation. Despite my fears, I realized my shoes had unclipped on their own. While not fun, I was thankful that things hadn’t been worse.

After struggling to get my chain back on, I rode to the Thai immigration check point. When I walked up with my sweat-soaked clothes, bloodied arm and grease-stained hands, I think the immigration folks wondered if they should let me in. I found a sink to wash the grease off my hands and clean up my wounds enough that they stamped my passport. It was while standing in the line at immigration that I discovered the cracks in the helmet along the right side, kind of where my head hurt a bit. Thank goodness I was wearing my helmet! The helmet sacrificed its life for mine.

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After entering Thailand, I was left with a choice: I could turn around and go back home to Laos or I could take advantage of this last trip to Nong Khai before I go back to the US and go to the sculpture garden like I’d planned. Taking my wounded and probably slightly-concussed self home would have been the sensible thing to do, but I didn’t want to ruin a perfectly good Saturday! So I slowly rode through Nong Khai to the sculpture garden. This was when I looked down and realized my handlebars were not perpendicular to my front wheel. Hmm, that’s not so good.

So was it worth it to continue on? Totally! The sculpture garden was fascinating. This was the work of a Lao citizen who had designed the sculptures in Buddha Park in Laos prior to fleeing to Thailand at the time of the revolution in 1975. He then continued to construct his odd sculptures with an unusual mixture of Buddhist and Hindu imagery. Thankfully, I have made major progress on my snake phobia or the multiple-story naga crown statue with the dangling tongues would have prevented me from sleeping for days. Walking through this very large sculpture garden in Nong Khai made me again wonder what the mind of this man was like. Was it all just religious influences or were there some hallucinogenic substances or mental illness helping things along? After ambling through the odd array of imagery, I ventured into the main building. Again, there were mixtures of Buddhist and Hindu images, but even more fascinating was finding the corpse of the creator enclosed in a glass bubble surrounded by tinsel and strings of flashing lights. Kind of creepy.

With my new visa in hand, I rode home at a relaxed pace and felt pretty good. It wasn’t until I got home, took a shower and started to talk to my friends that I realized that I felt like I’d been hit by a train. Ironic. Amy and Chris brought me takeaway noodles, ice and ice cream and helped me clean and dress my road rash. It’s good to have friends and although I would have been OK on my own, I was very happy they came.

So, you see, I did just what I had planned for today. The bike accident was just a bonus experience. And I get to buy a new helmet!