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Short version: Mark (markbvt) was in an accident yesterday at around 6pm. He was taken to the hospital with some pretty serious injuries, but he is awake and seemingly doing well (given the circumstances of course). He broke his right leg in two or three places (femur, tib/fib) so I suspect he is done riding for awhile. Since he is in the Surgical ICU visitation is tough and they won't give me much info, but now that he is awake he is going to see what he can do to make it easier for us to visit. I will keep everybody posted.
Long Version:
As I'm leaving my house, I come upon some traffic and a large number of police cars (4 or 5, which is a lot for this area) blocking 3 out of the 4 lanes on North Ave, right in front of Mark's street. I think nothing of it at the time, as it is a popular spot to pull people over. As I work my way through traffic, however, I immediately recognize Mark's dad's bike, a 1983 Kawasaki somethingorother 550, standing on the sidestand with some fluids around it, and an SUV with a very distraught looking driver on the side of the road. It looked mostly intact though, so I started looking around for Mark.
Except I can't find him. So I ask one of the officers if they know what happened to the rider, and all she knows is that she thinks the rider was taken to the hospital. At this point I don't know for sure that it was Mark, because he was in the process of selling that bike. I make a call to Adam to try and spread the word amongst a small group of us to try and find Mark, as I was going to be a little busy for the night.
I tried a few of my local contacts, but they either didn't know any more than I knew, or weren't allowed to find out. So at 10:45 I finally found the right number to call the hospital, and I call to find out what I can. All they can tell me is that yes, he is in there, on the third floor in the surgical ICU. At this point I wanted to make sure we got ahold of his parents, but I didn't have their contact info. Thankfully David did, and called to tell them.
It's a good thing that we called, because nobody else had. His mom is now on the way up, so at least she should be able to help take care of him. It would be great if we could take some time out of our day and go pay him a visit. I will let everybody know when that will be an option.
As far as what happened in the accident, the best I can surmise is that he was turning left across two lanes of traffic (onto his street, he was literally a few hundred feet from home) and made contact with an SUV. He went over the handlebars and hit his head pretty hard. I'm guessing he broke his leg on contact with the SUV, but he doesn't remember anything.
Keep him in your thoughts. I would like to get something together as far as support goes (fundraiser? volunteers to help him move? hugs from creepy ginger kids? (Hi Parker and Adam )) so if you have any ideas please let me know. I've never been that excited to see his name pop up on my caller id as I was this morning. I'm glad you are going to be ok buddy.
Sorry if this is hard to follow, it's been a stressful night/day trying to find him and make sure he was ok.