Feeling much, much better
I just went for a walk to the Lower Haight for a slice of pizza, up to Corona Heights to meditate, and via my favourite corner shop on 15th and Church (the one with the incredibly cool Market Street Railway Mural) for ice cream. Grounding currents were very, very strong, like they normally are for me in Australia, but in the opposite direction, down instead of up. .
For the first time since the accident, I was occasionally doing or thinking about something that had nothing to do with it. My train of thought in general has been consistently clear in the last few hours, and it feels like gaps in my memory have more to do with me being me than me having been in an accident. I'm not sure how true that actually is, but it's nice to at least feel normal.
tgeller took me on an errand run this afternoon. I first went to S.F. General to see if they had my bike, and indeed they did. It's in better shape than I expected: everything along the handlebars has been damaged (gear indicators, headlight, bicycle bell, etc.) and of course the chain is out of the rails, but other than that, it all looks okay. The bell is completely smooshed, though: it's a tough, metal bell, so I'm amazed that it's that damaged and I didn't get more seriously damaged myself.
I'm confused about whether the accident happened at 10th and Harrison Streets or 10th and Howard Streets. 10th and Harrison is what people have been saying all along, and it's apparently what I said to hopeforyou when I called her from the gutter. But 10th and Howard, two blocks further west, is a bicycle route, and more directly on the way to Rainbow Grocery, which was my destination. Because of this confusion, the cop I went to report the accident to suggested I come back tomorrow, when he's had a chance to get in touch with the ambos and try to get their report. tgeller has volunteered to drive me there again-thanks, mate.
Today I also started questioning whether I was actually hit by a motorist. I may have just been cut off, or I could even have just lost control due to some debris on the road or something. However, my gut feeling is that somebody else was involved, and I'm not somebody who tries to blame somebody else for my own stuffups. Still, the possibility of all the ill feeling that people have had towards some anonymous motorist being for naught disturbs and embarrasses me, and I hope people would forgive me if this whole thing turned out to be my own silly fault. But both hopeforyou and my housemate, T., received telephone calls from me in the gutter, and both say that I said I thought I'd been hit, and I can't see why I'd even suggest it if I'd just lost control of my bike. I've also seen people do just that while riding at cruising speed, and while they tumble and get hurt, they normally just swear and limp away-they don't get taken away by an ambulance. It's also clear that I went flying-it's the top of my handlebars that are damaged, not the side of the bike, and my arm and face got hurt; my legs are unscathed apart from a couple of bruises on my inner thigh and a minor abrasion on my knee. The more I think about it, the more certain I am that there was some kind of a collision. I hate not knowing for sure, though. Once I get in touch with the ambos that picked me up, I'll probably know more.
In any case, when the new film about Harvey Milk gets released, I'll tell all my friends they might have seen me in it if it wasn't for the accident. =) They've been filming up on Castro Street all week, and tonight they're apparently filming the candlelight vigil. I identify strongly with my neighbourhood and my neighbourhood identifies strongly with the story of Harvey Milk, so I would have loved to have been connected with it somehow. But such is life.
Tomorrow morning I was going to go to a community gardening project with somebody I met at the Folsom Street Fair. I called her to say that I didn't think I'd be up to it, and she said she wouldn't be either. Apparently there were some huge cyclones back east, and she's been worried about friends and loved ones all week. I guess it's all okay, but after a week of worry, she just wants to rest... not that I'd know anything about that! =P
I hope she's received as much support this week as I have, and I certainly hope grynz received as much support when she had her accident. You've all been great. Special thanks to hopeforyou, sojournscoffe, dragon_spirit, tgeller, riseorbleed and kineticphoenix for running around to do stuff for me, and of course to veleda, cyan_blue, laughingstone, whimsywanderer, airshipjones, uncledark, starry_sigh and thebostondyke for coming to visit, even if I don't remember. =) But all of the SMSes, the tweets, the LJ comments, the cards, the flowers, everything has been overwhelmingly supportive. Thanks so much to all of you.
Update
Looking at the text under my flickr photo reminded me that at one point I clearly remembered the sound of the impact. I can't quite recall that sound now, but I recall recalling it, if that makes sense, and my gut feeling is now very certain that my bike was struck by something. I still crave answers, but I'm no longer wondering if the whole 'hit and run' thing is something I made up-I'm very sure that this is what really happened.