Having learned my lesson from last year's alley of doom I'm (maybe not-so) quietly waiting for the alley to clear and temperatures to rise enough to get the motorcycle out for another year of heavy riding.

This year, the view is much the same, but happening a few weeks earlier. The recent weeks have been bitterly cold, with single-digit temperatures as welcome highs after double-digit negative temperatures. This last week has been in the 40F degree range, though, so much of our frozen water has turned liquid.

Today, even though I wasn't remotely considering taking the bike out, I was reminded that winter is not to be taken lightly. While treking into the alley to take this snap, intended to excite and thrill the occasional reader, I managed to slip on the ice. I'm trying to be patient with the melt, and I was trying to be careful as I stepped across the ice to take the snapshot. I evidently wasn't careful enough, however, as I suddenly found myself staring skyward.

It was a foggy morning. Foggy enough that I couldn't see the houses across the street from the houses across my alley through our back window. A gentle haze hung feet from the ground, no doubt brought on by the additional humidity due to the fast melting snow and ice. While I've joked with the wife about taking the Valkyrie out the instant the alley is clear, I'm waiting for it to be safe beyond the alley, too. The fog made me a little happy as it indicates that might happen sooner, but made me a little sad, too, because it meant that no matter how much the alley cleared over night, the conditions out there would certainly not be motorcycle friendly.

Resigned to driving the Jeep, I prepared for my day and set out for work. While in the alley to get into the Jeep, I thought to maybe snap a shot, for posterity. As I stepped very carefully on the giant block of ice between my garage and alley, I found myself turtled, staring at the sky.

This wasn't a simple turtling, though. As anyone who's fallen on the ice knows, it's instantaneous. Slipping on the ice may be different, but when you fall, you don't have any concept that it's occurring, just that it's done. No chance to brace yourself or even reflect "crap, I'm going down." You're just on the ground.

This might also be partly due to the smack on the head. Maybe I did notice myself falling, but after I hit my skull, I knocked those memories out of my brain-cache, and it never got logged into short- or long-term memory. (Brains need a journaling mechanism.) I noticed I wasn't looking where I was stepping any more, but instead was starting to focus on the trees. I also noticed I couldn't hear anything, like the gentle rush of traffic or any kind of wind noise, like I had just before. Even looking around was difficult. I had that kind of stutter vision, like the gears in my neck were stuck and when freed my head would jerk into position and then the eyes would wobble back to where I intended them to go.

After seeing the sky, the first thing I recollect seeing was my hand. It wasn't where I thought it should be, and my fingers were all crooked and bent funny. I thought maybe I'd landed on it and smashed it up good, but it didn't hurt. What did hurt was where my had just at that moment hit my face. I then realized I wasn't controlling my hand, either the finger-crooking or the position in space.

I wondered for a moment if I was having some kind of seizure. It started coming back to me what I had been doing a moment before looking at the sky. I couldn't remember stepping onto the ice, but I could remember walking out of the garage to take a picture of the alley. I pieced together that I must have been walking out to take the picture and had probably fallen on the ice. Also, during this entire thought process, which I also remember thinking was as out of place as the missile-turned-whale in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I realized I was still not feeling at all in control of my body. No feedback or input other than the visual and these strained thoughts.

Then some of the systems started to reboot. I became aware that my head hurt. On the right side of where my yarmulke would be, if I wore one. I got a sensation of a recent impact, followed by a gritty substance rubbing on my skin, followed by the cold. I surmised that the grime on the ice was probably pressed against my head, which was moving a bit as I was trying to right myself. I still wasn't trying to stand, which added another tick to my thought of seizure.

I tried to will myself back into control. I became aware of some of the other parts of my body, and as the arms and legs reported back in, I realized I was pretty still on the ground. Just my left arm was moving, and it wasn't where I thought it should be, as I smacked myself in the face again. I tried to reconcile my vision with my arm-awareness, and came into a slow agreement. I managed to orient my hand into my vision where I thought the two would connect. I consciously straightened my wrist and fingers, flexing them with growing control and feedback. I turned my head, swooning much less than before, and found my right hand where I thought it should be, and without any weird contorting.

Beyond my hand I saw my phone was in the wet rut in the alley, and noticed in my periphery that my PC bag was also laying on the ice, thankfully not in the flowing water. I willed, and verbally instructed myself to flop over and grab the phone and try to move out of the way of what I feared was a rush of traffic that wouldn't see me (there was no one else in the alley as far as I could tell).

I moved like I was very drunk (been there, can relate to that). My hand reacted like it was asleep, the fingers moving, but not providing proper feedback, and no sensation of touch yet coming as I would have liked. I managed to fumble my phone into my hand, and visually gripped it. I slugged my arm through the strap on the bag and managed to stand without really focusing on it.

I was disoriented. The world wobbled, and it didn't seem like I was tall enough. I wasn't walking straight, but I recall missile-into-whale thinking how proud I was of my unoccupied body to get up and stumble back to the garage. I thought to force myself into the house, where at least if I collapsed I could be dry and warm.

I coaxed myself through the back yard and up the steps and through the back door. I was starting to feel a little more in-body. The dogs were excited to see me return so soon, but got out of the way when commanded. I dropped my stuff and hung my coat on the hook. I wasn't feeling nauseated or faint at all, but was starting to have a lot more physical feedback. I was wet, from knee to armpits, on my back, right side, and front. I must have rolled over from my turtling and hauled myself up on hands and knees to stand, or maybe that was when I was focusing on getting my phone off the road.

I think I said something to the brother (who's staying with us for a little bit while he job hunts) about thinking I fell down; he pointed out that I was wet all over, and I said "no, that's from trying to get up," or something like that. I remember saying something like that, anyway. I remember him being there at any rate, and felt safer that if I probably would be tended to if i collapsed.

I trudged upstairs to change; I had to get to work, after all. That was coming back to me. I remember thinking that my shoes were squeaking on the floor, and that I probably should have taken them off at the door because they were wet. I got upstairs and sat on the bed for a moment. I thought that laying down would be bad, because if I was hurt I'd have to tell someone before I passed out and didn't wake up. I wasn't feeling hurt, though. A sore, dirty spot on the top of my head was all.

I couldn't feel a bump growing, but I didn't know if I was getting good enough feedback from my internal sensors yet to be certain. I shook off the wet, dirty clothes I had on, and took to rinsing off my head. No blood, just a little dirt. From what I could manage to see in a pair of mirrors, there wasn't anything out of place. I dried off and redressed.

The head and neck started to kick in some feedback. I pressed and pulled at my ears and neck and chin and nose and skull. Everything felt OK, so I don't think anything is broken. I tried to see if my eyes were normal, checking myself out in the mirror. My neck was feeling a little abused, though, especially on the back on the right side, and left on the front side, but otherwise everything else was normal. I figure I must have flipped over and landed more or less on my skull on my right side. My back and shoulder don't hurt, so I may have been padded by my laptop bag, or rolled off my head onto my back during the fall.

As I re-gathered my stuff to re-head to work, I realized I didn't have my glasses. They must have come off in the fall, and I probably wasn't aware of it. I was already at the back door, so I decided to just check out the alley; if they were there, and in the way of traffic, better to get them before getting crushed than after.

I noticed I'd closed the garage doors. I wasn't aware that I was that aware on the way in. I got to the alley and saw my glasses on the far side. I snapped a couple shots of the slip spot (near bottom of the photo), zoomed to the glasses, and then walking only on cleared concrete, finally got the intended snap up the alley.

I carefully stepped over the ice and collected the glasses. I took them into the house and rinsed them off in the sink. Just a little grimy splash-up had gotten on them, but I didn't want to scratch the lenses by rubbing the grime off on my shirt. I collected my things, said my farewells, and set off for a surely exciting work day.

I got to work a half-hour later than intended, but still before 9AM. I don't seem to have lost a lot of time, and except for not remembering the fall and a little tenderness in my neck and jaw, I'm pretty much as normal as I get. I've tried to be aware of any kind of head-injury related things that may go wrong. I've got a headache, and the muscle abuse, but no bruises (that I can tell), or other indications of breaks. I've not been slow or slurring, any more than usual, and unless my brain is completely translating this into something different, I'm able to read, write, and type as normal.

This hasn't deterred me from wanting to ride the motorcycle as soon as possible. It does reinforce my lesson learned last year, and my thoughts already this year, that I've got to wait until the alley and other roads are cleared before taking that on.