The Painful Irony of Riding a Bicycle in Taiwan

Well, I said I was going to write more about my riding a bicycle to work, but this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. When I first moved to Taiwan, in spite of riding a motorbike for a year in the insane traffic of Bangkok, I decided that it was too dangerous to ride a scooter here. So instead I bought a bicycle which I planned to use for my daily 5k commute, until I could afford to buy a car.

Last night I was riding home from work as usual. As I was coming up a small hill, I stood up and shifted all of my weight onto one pedal to gain momentum. As I did so, I heard a loud CRACK! as the pedal snapped off the bicycle. I nearly fell off the bike, but instead I slammed my leg into the metal spike where the pedal used to be. I don’t know if the pedal shattered or simply fell off. I was in too much pain to think about that, and didn’t bother looking for the pedal on the ground.

Still, as painful as it was, I could see that the spike hadn’t torn my jeans so I thought the wound wasn’t serious. I rode on, with no pedal, for another kilometer or so. It wasn’t until I had to stop at a railroad crossing that I noticed a pool of dark liquid staining my jeans. At first, I thought it was oil from the pedal, but after I touched it and held my hand to the light I was startled to see that it was red, not black.

I’ve been known to be a wuss about such things. I still didn’t look at the wound. I was probably about 600 meters from home now, so I returned home before I finally took a look at my leg. What I saw was a nasty, gaping wound that was clearly in need of stitches. So off Nok and I went to the emergency room where they cleaned my wound, stitched me up, gave me two shots and five bags of pills.

I returned to the hospital this morning to have the dressing changed and to get a fresh batch of medicine. But it’s not over yet. The doctors are afraid of an infection, so I need to return to the hospital again on Saturday and again on Tuesday, and then yet again in two weeks to have the stitches removed. And even though I have National Health Insurance here, I’m still stuck with a good portion of the bill. Pretty crazy, eh? I bought a bicycle because scooters were too dangerous, and look what happened.

Anyway, for those with a strong stomach you can see a picture of my freshly stitched wound here. The shot was taken today, the morning after the accident.

My freshly cleaned and dressed wound.

The offending bicycle, now with only one pedal.

The nasty spike that bore into my leg. I’m looking into the possibility of taking legal action against the store where I bought it, so far it doesn’t look promising. At the very least, I’d like to have my medical expenses paid. I’ll write more as I know it.