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I didn’t really blow my eye out. When my friends, Kristi and Jeanine and I ran into the bathroom before our charity bike ride for one last attempt to clear everything out the old system, I joked to the girls: “No luck, but I nearly blew my eye out trying.” We all got a big laugh out the imagery, and who would have known I’d be hauled back to the parking lot in a fire truck…. with a “blown eye?” Let the record state: I did not want to be toted back from the rest area in a fire truck. I mean, I really, REALLY did not want it to end like that. However, the old eyeball was giving me some trouble on the bike. And, as I told Roger, my lovely attendant for my ride of shame back to the parking lot- “it’s not easy to ride a bike with just one good eye. Frankly, I am not all that adept at balancing with TWO good eyes!” My hubby and I had been enjoying a relaxing, fun, one hundred mile charity bike ride when my eye troubles began in earnest. “Do you?” I asked, him on one particular descent, “See all the rainbows on the road?” He shook his head. “I mean, the GLARE is killing me.” My husband, I don’t mind admitting, was kind of fed up with my excuses. I am not known for my daring descents- cautious, mind-boggling slow excuses of descents would probably be a more apt description of how I bike down mountains. Raymond, by comparison, loves to scorch the descents at blistering paces, which typically leave me literally miles behind him. He had been slowly braking his way down the mountains all day long- something which generally makes him incredibly irritable. After all, as he has pointed out to me, time and time again, he has way more mass to get UP the mountains than I do….. so the one thing he enjoys is using that mass to rocket down the other side. After about ten more miles, looking through my right eye was akin to looking through a piece of wax paper. Furthermore, with just the one good eye, my balance was…. to say the least- unbalanced. The road surface was bumpy and filled with potholes, all of which threatened to end my ride in a shameful crash. I kept going slower and slower and slower. We were at mile 75 when my husband announced: “If we go ten miles per hour for the rest of the day….. it is going to take us 3 hours to finish!” So it was I agreed to stop at the next rest stop and get “sagged” back to the parking lot. It was KILLING me; I have to confess, because I ALWAYS finish my centuries. It is a source of pride with me, and even though my eye was a blur, I didn’t want to quit. Had my hubby been amiable to doing the 3-hour pace, I totally would have kept going. I figured though, I would get in a van and get back to the parking lot, and then wait for my hubby to finish. On Monday I’d go see my eye doctor and it would all be no big deal. I wasn’t counting on Roger and the fire truck. I bid my hubby adieu while Roger peered into my bad orb with a flashlight. Then, he asked me to take off my shoes. “Why?” I asked, confused. “Because I am going to have to strap you in the cot.” He informed. “What?!” I bellowed. Was there truly no END TO MY SHAME??????? Roger took my vitals, warning me that sometimes folks had STROKES on these kinds of events. “Oh, I could not have had a stroke.” I told him. “Because truly, I was not working that hard.” I further informed Roger that I didn’t WANT to have had a stroke because, “you know, those crookedy smiles don’t look so great.” So it was that I was transported back to the parking lot in perhaps one of the most embarrassing trips of my life. Roger and I bonded, and I had to promise to get the eye looked at by a professional. A subsequent trip to the Eye Clinic revealed that my cornea was scratched and the blurring I had experienced was merely mucus as the eye attempted to protect the scratched surface. I was given a prescription for antibiotic drops and sent packing. Although I had not “blown my eye out” that morning, imagine my mirth at being transported back to the parking lot, strapped in an ambulance bed, with a bum eye.
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