"What do you do for a living?" the attending nurse asked me.

"I publish an online magazine, the theme of which is keeping people upright and on their bicycles."

"Ha ha, very funny," he replied. "What is it you reallly do?"

You have to keep your sense of humor in this life, and it was surprisingly easy for me to keep mine. It helps when you have some perspective, and world events of the past two months have certainly given me that, as will be described further on.

I tend to descend aggressively on my bike, but there is no accounting for sand (or gravel, or oil, or ice) on a curve, and down I went—sand being the culprit in my case.

It had been probably 20 years since I'd thumped the ground with this much vigor. Things would've been fine––a healthy road rash, maybe a sore hip––if both wheels would've slid out. But only the front gave way and I went splat, head and shoulder first.

I've always considered breaking one's collarbone a rite of passage in the world of competitive cycling, sort of the bike racing analog to a triathlete doing the Ironman in Kona. Now I can say I've achieved everything in life, both as a cyclist and a triathlete. Funny thing about breaking one's collarbone––you don't have to have experience at it to know when you've done it. Hurts like a sonofabitch, for one thing.

But I can honestly tell you that it's not as bad as breaking a rib, and I know this because I broke one of those yesterday as well. What's really inconvenient is breaking both of these at the same time, because whatever you do to favor one hurts the other.

Being the foolish descender that I am, I got to this curve ahead of my buddy Mandaric, who, arriving at a saner speed and seeing me sprawled and splayed akimbo, scraped me up and got me over to the roadside. He then went for help.

Here's the funny thing, though funny is not at all the right word. As soon as Mandaric left and I was there with my bruises and thoughts, my mind fixed itself on Abdul Haq. You may remember him from recent days' news reports. He was the emissary of the exiled king of Afghanistan––made a hero to the Afghanis while at war with Russia––who'd slipped into Afghanistan to drum up support among disaffected Taliban for a return of traditional government. He was reportedly captured by the Taliban and executed. As I understand it he was fleeing on horseback and phone calls to the Americans got him help in the form of a missile-equipped unmanned drone. It was not enough to save him.

Why did I think of Haq at that moment? Because one news report I'd heard said that he did not die nicely. It occured to me as I was on the side of that country road with a broken body that there were two ways it could go for people in my position. In my case prospects were only going to rise. I was at the ebb of my day. It was only going to get better. At some point Abdul Haq was as broken as I was, and he knew it was only going to get worse from there. Of such are the heroes and legends of this world made, and rightly so.

Pardon me for sounding overly dramatic, but that was what I was thinking. I'm interested in what happens to a person during pivotal moments. Saturday was just such a moment, but at the other end of the scale. I and two friends discovered the most lovely, twisty, hilly, one-lane abandoned road that provided us with an exquisite ride. Sunday––yesterday––was "momentous" as well. They're all moments. They'll all stick out as days we'll remember.

They gave me morphine while in the emergency room, and it was my first time for that as well. I didn't particularly like it. For those of you who haven't had morphine, the initial rush is not what I consider nice. In fact, it was a letdown. (I was looking forward to my first try at an illicit drug.) It hits all your muscles at once, and the feeling is precisely like what happens if you drive your car to 7,000 feet above sea level and start running fast––anaerobia (is that a word?) all over your body. Of course I wasn't breathing hard, and my heart wasn't pounding, but the entire rest of my body felt like it had gone deeply anaerobic. After a few seconds, though, it wore off, and then it was reasonably nice.

I had three ampules during my stay, and when I left the hospital the doctor gave me a prescription for something else. I haven't filled it because so far Tylenol seems to be fine. Honestly speaking, I've never enjoyed the narcotic buzz. Tequila buzz, yes, narcotic buzz, no. Tequila and I have formed a detente––I know how to calibrate for its effects. Not so for a pain killer. So I'm sticking to Tylenol. Besides, I don't know that I'm interested in being painless. If my clavicle starts to complain loudly I think I'd like to know about it.

Which brings up another point. My fractures do not appear to be merely cracks. "See," the doctor said while showing me the x-ray, "there's one end of your rib." It's not the rib I'm worried about. It's the two parts of my clavicle, which seem to be strangers passing in the night. The emergency room doc says, "There's nothing you can do. It's just going to take six weeks, maybe eight. The rule of thumb when it comes to activity is, if it doesn't hurt, do it, if it does, don't. Here's your prescription. 'Bye."

I'm cool with that, except intuitively I don't see how my clavicle ends are going to magically mate and re-knit since they're floating around in the flotsam and jetsam of my shoulder. I can feel them in there, searching for each other like lost lovers. Doesn't seem right.

So I called a local orthopedist––a triathlete––in the hope that he'd give me some good advice. I was hoping he'd say, "Don't worry, your clavicalettes will find each other without any need of a matchmaker," and that's basically what he said. "Pretty soon," he said, "the ends will get sticky, and then they'll find each other."

Typing. Yes, this is a pain in the ass. But I've devised a system. I type everything on my laptop, which is for once actually sitting on my lap, as I recline. It is angled up and to one side so as to be positioned within reach of the fingers of my immobile arm. When I'm done I go to my office, transfer it to the desktop computer, and upload.

I expect to be on a trainer within two weeks. I'll position the saddle so that it's angled very slack, because I'll be riding while sitting upright, almost recumbent style. That's the plan, anyway.

I shall keep the reader updated on my progress.