Be prepared.

original

It's sunny today for the first time in what seems like forever (the news says it's rained for 39 out of the last 52 days), so this morning I decided to go on a bike ride up Provo Canyon. It was fantastic to feel the sun on my shoulders and the wind in my ponytail as I zoomed up the canyon, headphones threaded through my helmet. But on my way back down, I could tell something wasn't right.

There's just one blind corner on the bike path; it's in the middle of a shady dip that winds around and under the highway. It's actually my favorite part of the trail; it takes you out of the sun, gives your legs a break, and you get to ride right next to the river. It's easy to speed into the turn and coast out, which I usually enjoy doing. But not today. The presence of a space-consuming family on roller skates caused me to ease slowly into the turn to avoid them, and it's a good thing I did.

I arrived about thirty seconds after a terrible accident. Two girls on bikes had collided on the blind corner. One had been wearing a helmet, and she was scratched up but okay, but the other girl lay supine on the pavement, eyes open and frozen at weird angles. She was completely still. The few of us that happened to be passing through called the paramedics and stopped traffic around the corner so others wouldn't speed into the turn and hit the motionless girl. I didn't know what to do. Despite all that I've studied about acute neurological injury, I have no credentials or experience in practice, so though I wanted to help I didn't touch her and kept my diagnostic ideas to myself. Instead, at the request of the paramedics (who arrived with incredible speed), I positioned myself and my bike across the trail and asked incoming bikers to get off and walk. I described the accident to those who asked as the EMTs loaded the still-unresponsive girl onto a spine board and sped away in an ambulance. One biker a few years older than I immediately put her hands to her temples when I told her what had happened. "Oh my gosh," she exclaimed. "And I'm not wearing a helmet today."

Moral of the story: Helmets. Please wear them. Traumatic brain injury can happen to you.

Also, according to Mr. Harold Camping (yeah, his website's down...wonder why?) today is the Rapture! At 6 PM local time all over the world, righteous Christians are going to be sucked up into heaven by Jesus while everyone else suffers in a sequence of earthquakes, fires, and plagues until October 21.

I love the hype and really get a kick out of eschatology in all its forms, serious and non-. I was 10 years old during Y2K and remember watching the ball drop in Times Square from the TV in my playroom, end-of-the-world kit in hand (comprising some extra Martinelli's, a chocolate orange left over from Christmas, and a Y2K-themed Beanie Baby). I couldn't wait for my computer to explode and for the Western world to rebuild from scratch.

So we've got Camping's Rapture today (for which I indulged in a large portion of Magelby's chocolate cake last night, just in case), and then in 2012 we've got the big one, the Mayan prophecy for December 21. I just realized that I'll be on my mission for that one--I wonder if Koreans are into the whole 2012 thing? I really hope so. :-) Also, I realized that I'll miss all the fun surrounding the 2012 election. I wonder when I can register for an absentee ballot. What can I say? The world's a fun place to be right now.