It was a normal day, like any other. The sun was shining, the birds were coughing from the air pollution and the radio-active plants were trying to eat people.
Yum, blonds!
I was invited for a day of fun by a sweet girl. Her sister was going out to ride mountain bikes and she asked her sister if I could join them. I of course just wanted to spend some time with the sweet girl. So if that meant to sweat, breathe heavily and most likely get a heart attack while trying to move forward in 32 Celsius weather with no shade and failing deodorant, then why not.
Ah Curaçao, the Island of heat.
You might think "Ooh he fell from his bike and so busted his knee!", well, no.
I prepared myself as most men do for this battle of the extremes with a small bottle of water, lightly cooled. And sun block, plenty and plenty of sun block. And with the high hopes that a white t-shirt will be enough to keep me cool.
So we head out, driving our way to the road we'll cycle on. It looked innocent enough, the bikes looked well used but still drivable. So I picked one that seemed to have some working suspension. With that I mean some suspension that did move, be it almost no movement at all. I hadn't ridden a bike in over 10 years. but after going for a few minutes it all came back to me. We were off, the dirt road at first was nice and flat. This soon changed as we got to some big hills with plenty of holes and rocks. So at the first hill I already found out that the gears on my all terrain mountain bike only worked in 3 gears.
Gear 1: Use a lot of energy but can still get forward. Kind of like a car using a tank of gas just to get out the drive-way.
Gear 2: Spin so fast that a hurricane warning gets broadcasted over local radio, while moving so slow you can see snails laugh at you.
Gear 3: I would like to call this gear, the gear of "Just give up and walk". As even going down hill with this gear is impossible unless you got the legs of an Olympic runner. Trying to move forward in this gear is impossible in every way.
So I spend most of my time in gear 1, this meant that after 10 minutes I could feel my heart trying to crawl out of my ear. I was sweating so much I looked like I took a shower, face so red it could have made Rudolph the cocaine sniffing red nosed reindeer jealous. Basically I was ready to just sit down in the shadows and give up on life.
But I learned from other survivors I met on the way that we were going to the "Blue Room". This is an underwater cave on Curacao that you can swim into. It is beautiful to behold, and largely gets used by local men to bring woman too so they can seem romantic.
Romance is on!
So with the new found potential of cool water and shadow I intensified my efforts. So after a test of endurance and significant loss of water weight we reached the Blue Room. By this time I could barely walk. So little did I know we had to climb down to get into the water and swim to the Blue Room. I decided, as I could barely move anymore, to not do this and instead sit in the shadow that was thankfully there.
While I was sitting trying to regain the water I lost my mind created a thought. "So you got here, you will still have to get back". As I tried not to laugh manically at this thought I just covered myself with water and tried to talk to the sweet girl.
After this short talk it was time to head back I thought. Well no, we had to bring the bikes to a nearby beach. This meant more cycling, unfortunately my tire decided to make my life slightly more interesting. So I had to walk the rest of the way, not a problem you might say. But by this time the temperature felt like being in an oven and the wind decided "I'm not going to blow today". Eventually we did reach our end point, a beach! Great I thought, we can go for a sw... nope. The group wanted to go to another beach. Ok, sure why not. At least there I can maybe sit down and recover my hydration level.
So after a short car ride we got to Knip, one of the more popular local beaches on the Island. It is also one of my less favorites as it is always busy there and as it was already late in the day meaning that the only shade spots would be mostly near where people throw their garbage and other fun things (Fun things do not include actual fun things).
Arriving at the beach we walked all the way at the back were some shade was still to be found at the back. The lovely smells would be carried by the now again blowing winds back and forth (Thank you wind, you sadistic piece off air current!). At this time my body informed me, by growling in Klingon, that it needed some food. So I asked the sweet girl if she wanted something also to eat. As there's a small food joint on the beach we went there and ordered the hamburger with fries. It sure looked good on the picture!
Who stole the vegetables?
So after receiving the food I opened the Styrofoam package to behold a burger that most likely has been homeless for some time. Seriously, the bread was most likely made during the stone age with a salad that was created from undead vegetables and fries most likely made from plastic. So after having eaten very little of it I decided to just sit down and relax.
After a little while it was decided to play volleyball on the beach. Great, I thought, I'm already half dead. But the sweet girl looked with so much hope in her eyes that I could not say no. So we went off to play.
As I played volleyball when I was younger I found I could still play it still pretty good. So I was hitting the ball with more and more confidence and eventually jumping left and right to get the ball. Until my foot actually got stuck in the sand while I tried to do a backwards jump to a ball.
I heard a nice crack, as I could feel my knee coming apart and snapping back into place. I fell face down into the sand and was screaming in pain so loud the whole beach came to watch what was going on. The sweet girl, who's also a doctor rushed to the rescue. She inspected my leg and moved it around, which made her conclude it was not broken and made me conclude that pain hurts. I was helped up and guided to a bench where I got a nice ice pack to decrease the swelling, and increase the pain. After using 4 bottles of water to get the sand off me and out of my mouth I called my parents to help get me to the doctor. Yes I called my parents, every person does that when they are in pain. Maybe it has to do with our instinct, or that we know they will help us no matter what.
But there was a problem, the beach I was at had stairs going up to the parking lot. And as I could barely move the 10 meters from beach to bench even with help it seemed unlikely that I could get up the stairs. But thankfully there's an emergency road for emergencies going up! But this was locked. So some people went to the restaurant to ask if they could open the gate so a car could go down to bring me up. The owner refused, as it was only for emergency vehicles. Apparently having your knee injured to the point were you almost faint from the pain is not an emergency. But some rather large men decided to inform the owner that indeed it was an emergency and so I was driven up to the parking lot where my parents where able to take me to the doctor.
So now it has been 3 months to this day, and I am happy to say I can actually walk again. Stairs are still hard for me without crutches but it is getting better everyday. I would also like to say that, while I was screaming at the beach helpless and in pain, a ton of strangers came to my aid. It was interesting to see this many people wanting to help out. I wish I knew them all so I could thank them personally, but I don't. So maybe while writing this I might be able to still thank them. To all those that where there to help me, thank you very much.
I would also like to say that me and sweet girl are as close as can be, mostly because during the recovery time of my leg I was able to spend a lot off time with her.
So all in all the story does have a happy ending, I now got a sweet girl in my life! Just wish it didn't had to almost break my knee for it.
Well my friends, I will write more soon again, as there's a lot more to this story.
Till next time!
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