Six Days, Seven Nights

Nope, this isn't about the movie Six Days, Seven Nights (starring Harrison Ford...great movie!) this is just the first title to pop into my head.

Six days ago, I was hanging out with one of my younger brothers, my mom, and her current man. I generally avoid being around Mom & her man, but this evening, in order to hang out with littlest brother, JonJon, it was the only feasible way.
Jony and I made enchiladas, mango sticky rice, and watched a few episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender; a favorite show of ours. By the time we were done with everything we had been working on, it was nearly ten o'clock and I was extremely tired. So I headed home. I'm on my bike no matter what, and it was great weather outside, although totally dark (this IS March!! Early sunset.)

I was riding home, up a little hill, texting my boyfriend Colin while riding and not really paying attention to the road. Went over the crest of the hill, was heading down and kind of just staring at the road right in front of my front bike tire, when suddenly the thought popped into my head "There is something in front of me." At this point I was going at least 15 mph, and I snapped my head up to look and as I looked I saw a dark green, enormous truck parked on the darkest spot on this entire road and I slammed into the back of it, taking all the impact on my lower face/jaw area, and a bit on my right hand. I bounced off the truck, landed back on my bike, only slightly noticing my extremely sore lower abdomen where it had impacted the frame of my bike, got off my bike (which was still upright due to the 29 inch front tire - most bikes have 26 inch tires or less.. - being completely wedged under the bumper) and tried to determine if my jaw was broken or not. I decided that it was not, and forced my bike out from under the truck, checked the wheel rim and discovered that it was NOT bent, to my relief, and set off riding for home again. I was barely able to move my jaw at all without excruciating pain, and since I was only two blocks from Colin's house, and about eight from mine, I decided to stop there and ask his parents, Rick & Estée, to look at my poor abused face.

I got to their house, no problem, locked my bike on their carport, and went inside without knocking, as is my habit. Rick looked up from his computer and immediately noticed that something had to be wrong with me. He says I was shaking and my eyes were as big as saucers.
"What is wrong?" he asked.
"Will you look at my face?" I asked. "I hit a truck."
He did not laugh, for which I was grateful, but he checked my jaw, Estée came out of her bedroom and also checked it, and sent Colin (who I had not yet even said anything to) to the kitchen to get me an icepack. She settled down on the couch to do homework, and after sitting in a recliner for a few minutes talking to Samire (Colin's foreign exchange student sister) and the French Club from the highschool which was over at the house, I moved to Estée's couch and fell asleep on her lap.

Being extraordinarily nice people, Rick & Estée decided to keep me for the night so that they could keep an eye on me, and called my best friend's dad, Ken (I live with said family) to tell him what the situation was. After Rick made me a bed on the couch, I woke up, moved over to there, and fell asleep again pretty much immediately. I did have to get back up in about a half hour to use the bathroom, but then conked out again as soon as my head touched the pillow.

It's been nearly a week and I still have an impressive bruise on my jaw, that when I turn at the right angle, looks like a goatee. Two lessons have I learned from this:

1.) Always keep my bike light in fresh batteries.

2.) I don't like the way I look with a goatee.