A few years back (over twenty years ago) I had been out fund raising for my rugby club, we were picking up hay and loading it in to haybarns. We would do this as a team and at the end of the night we had a couple of beers as ya do. In these days I was reasonibly fit and would push bike to events like this.
Well as the story goes, I was push biking home and it was about 11 o'clock at night and I didnt have a light on my bike, so I was keeping a close lookout for cars coming up from behind. I was on a striaght piece of road at the time of my little mishap. The road was downhill and in the distance I saw a caravan parked against the curb, but as I had just looked over my shoulder and had seen carlights coming my way I thought if I speed up I will get past the caravan before the car gets to me. I turned to look for the car again but I didnt see the lights (the car had obviously turned off a side road). As I turned back around to see where I was going I hadnt realised the speed I was going and there right in front of me was the back of the caravan.
I hit it dead centre and pushed it 2 metres down the road and put a fair sized dent where the front wheel made contact. As you can well imagine I didnt stop as quick as the bike did and was catapulted over the handlebars and threw the back window of the caravan. As I was hanging half in and half out of the caravan I realised I was being held there by a nice big piece of glass through my cheek (I was very lucky not to have lost an eye or cut my throat). Deciding that my predictiment wasnt to shit hot I pulled my face away from the glass that had me hung up and you wouldnt believe it but as I fell back out of the caravan's rear window my bike was still upright and underneath me. To add insult to injury I fell back down on the top bar of the bike and did my balls no favours. Now I was in real pain and rolling over on to the footpath and just laying there for awhile as the pain slowly eased to a dull throb.
I finnally got up and gingerly walked up the steps to the house and knocked on the door. A woman opened the door and saw the state I was in (hunched over and bleeding) and as I explained to her that I had just hit her parked caravan she offered to take me to the hospital and her car. As the hospital was only about 800 metres away I said I didnt want to get blood all through her car. Of cause she wouldnt accept this and wouldnt take no for an answer so she got the keys to her Morris 1100 and opened the door for me and she got in to start the car. Yep, you guessed it, the car wouldnt start and she asked me if I would give her a push to jump start it. Her driveway was luckily downhill to the road and I thought OK, what the hell, four steps pushing the car and it will be rolling down the driveway on its own. So out I get and start pushing this piece of crap Morris 1100 down the drive. I should have known better than to trust a woman to crash start a car, by the time she got it in gear and put the key on she was already at the bottom of the drive and half out on to the road with all momentum gone. I couldnt leave her there so I had to push the car down the road and yes she finnally tried crash starting this brit classic but to no avail. After the third time I graciously thanked her and said 'it's ok I can walk from here'. By now I was 300 metres closer to the hospital and with all the hard excerise I was getting from pushing the car the blood was now pissing out. My stomach and groin still hadn't gotten over the visit from my nuts so I was still walking funny, but I was on my way.
As I walked to the hospital I thought of the joke about Paddy the Irishman whos' paracute didnt open and by the time he figured out how to use the reserve shute he was 10 metres from the ground and thought 'its ok, I can jump from here'.
Eight internal and fourteen external stitches latter and all was well, but my story of the nights events was a good laugh for the hospital staff.
I've had a few good laughs over that night I run into the backend of a caravan.
