One-Track Song-Man (eBook)

A true & musical story of amputee skiing, racing & prosthetic EVO '79-'07

Marc Romero (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
668 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
9798317821524 (ISBN)

Infos

A true and musical story of amputee skiing, ski-racing and prosthetic evolution, years '79 thru '07. Marc is the 1-track (also called 3-track) amputee & Paralympics chasing ski racer turned free-skier and then later grassroots and inside writer, video producer and always musical story-teller and writer of the best evolutions and characters we had in US Para Alpine and '1-track' ski racing and skiing with the 90's being the BEST and APEX of amputee and Para ski racing. But the book contains the BEST rock n roll music and lyrics of the 70's, 80's and 90's and Marc believes much in his 'musical guardian angel' who helped him write it. As the Fore Word in the book says - 'Electric Angel rock n roller, I hear what you're playing'(Cars, '79)

Amputee & Paralympic skiing & sports media producer, reporter and writer. Para Sports Network dot com and One Track Productions, Colorado, USA produced media

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A true and musical story of amputee skiing, ski-racing and prosthetic evolution, years '79 thru '07. Marc is the 1-track (also called 3-track) amputee & Paralympics chasing ski racer turned free-skier and later grassroots and inside writer, video producer and always musical story-teller and writer of the best evolutions and characters we had in US Para Alpine and '1-track' ski racing and skiing with the 90's being the BEST and APEX of amputee and Para ski racing. But the book contains the BEST rock n roll music and lyrics of the 70's, 80's and 90's and Marc believes much in his 'musical guardian angel' who helped him write it. As the Fore Word in the book says - 'Electric Angel rock n roller, I hear what you're playing'(Cars, '79)

Textauszug

Ch. 1 - Angel on my Bike

April 12, 1979 - I had owned the Yamaha 250 Enduro for three weeks and was just getting good and comfortable on it. It was my senior year of HS, I’d just finally taken up a high school sport being tennis, and had been commuting to school on the Enduro and to tennis practices on it when not finding trails to ride on. It was a sunny spring day and Holy Thursday before the Easter weekend, and I had been riding around Young’s pond and woods having a blast, really feeling the angles, gearing and handling of the dirt bike while classmates and older graduated young people hung out, played Frisbee and had a keg party at Young’s Pond/Field and in its main field.

It was my last spring in high school before heading out on my own to college in the Fall, and I had stopped smoking and selling weed/pot since getting my Enduro and since returning from a late March spring break trip in Ft. Lauderdale with a dealer non-friend that had ended quite ‘poorly’. I was psyched to continue getting better at tennis and to leave my most derelict and drug selling only friends behind soon with college, and was especially psyched to get good ‘on the dirt’ and be able to go everywhere including tennis practices on my sweet Yamaha 250 Enduro that I’d bought. I was starting to be able to keep up with my graduated older buddies Ronnie and Beman who were awesome dirt bike riders who loved riding all their various motorcycles, especially off-road in their backyard accessed trails, woods and marshes around Trap Rock and Pleasant Point and between Pine Orchard and Stony Creek.

After all my fun solo dirt riding at Young’s in the woods, I headed over to the party and keg in the field. As soon as I pulled up, a really cute girl that I had always liked who was a year younger than me but went out with a 20-something musician and singer who wasn’t with her for once, asked me for a ride. With her arms around my waist and with everyone watching her hop on and take off with me, I started to punch it just like I had been doing by myself on long straight-aways, while feeling quite pumped to have her arms around my waist for the adrenaline ride. But I quickly let off the throttle and leveled off at a medium RPM as the faith and trust she had put into me, and thus concern for her, hit me. So I then just cruised her around the field and then around the woods’ loop at a mellow speed, and at the slower speed we could also talk. I told her how much better I was getting on the bike and at tennis (#5 on the team with sights set on #3 next match) and that I was getting psyched about heading off to college and out of town after the summer. Too quickly our loop was up it seemed, and I dropped her back at the party and field with her girlfriends, smiles on both of our faces. I told her I’d probably be back in an hour and took off to find my two biking buddies who I knew were tearing up the trails, woods and marshes just a couple miles away.

Sure enough I found them half-way down Pleasant Point Road, and just coming out of a trail near the Trap Rock trains, with Ronnie leading in front. I had always just hoped to not get totally dropped by them and then lost in their maze of woods, marshes and dirt trails when I rode with them the past couple weeks. When I met them this time right where the trail meets the pavement I said to them “There’s a cool party at Young’s with a lot of girls and a keg, wanna go there now or after we ride a little?” When they both looked at each other, smiled and said “let’s go now” I spun around and started heading back up the road and back to Young’s, with Ronnie behind me. They both had much bigger and faster Enduros than me, had been riding many years compared to my three weeks, and would blow by me and show me the real trail riding when we hit the dirt later after the park, girls and party.

On the approach to Young’s field on the winding road, there was a right, left, right curve sequence for me and I was cruising along leading at 30 mph or so while taking those 3 sharp turns in a row. On the last sharp right hand curve and with a low 3 foot stone wall of the field to the right of me, suddenly out of nowhere there was a crotch-riding street biker at a 45 degree angle smack in front of my right lean and curve, and I made the split second decision to lean left…. as he creamed into me head-on and on my right side.

All I could remember after that and about the accident scene when I briefly had consciousness, was trying to look and get up and having my torso pushed back down while being told to “stay down and don’t try to look” by some lady who hovered over me with lots of people on the periphery. In the one brief glance I had gotten, I saw my fore-arm bone sticking out of my skin and a big pool of blood underneath it before I passed out again. I only remember briefly regaining consciousness one other time – in the ambulance, when I saw worried faces on the paramedics working on me and I asked them “Am I going to be OK?” In a low but also confident voice I heard back “I think you’re gonna make it. You had a good Samaritan and paramedic show up moments after the accident. We’re almost at Yale-NH Hospital and they have the best trauma doctors in the world.” My mind clicked on all she had said, but then shut back down, as I lost consciousness again… and basically “woke up” from my sedatives and surgeries induced “sleep” again two weeks later in Yale-NH’s ICU. For those two weeks I had had incredible, fantastic, morphine dreams of flying through the air often and in crazy plots and sequences, mixed with blue masked faces staring down at me all the time, elevators and automatic doors opening when I wasn’t dreaming.…or was I dreaming them too? One of my recurring dreams was of my Dad standing over me with hands folded, never speaking a word and with an expressionless solemn look which I had never before seen on his usually very animated face. The one of my Dad hovering over me had not just been a dream, I found out later.

As I came back to painful life, consciousness and reality one day in the ICU, I first noticed all the big orange sutures running down my chest and stomach like big orange railroad tracks to keep my chest closed, and then looking past them that my last nightmare dream of my leg being amputated and gone now, was not just another dream. My mom and sister Regina gradually filled me in on what had happened 2 weeks prior and mom did most of the talking as she told me - the first hours at the hospital and then all through the first night, the family was told by the doctors and chaplain that I probably would die, as the injuries were just too severe and they could not stop all the bleeding and especially from the femoral artery. My religious grandfather had prayed continuously, while I amazed and inspired the world’s best trauma surgeons who performed first-time procedures on me as my heart kept beating while I set one day and then one week ‘pints of blood used records' for Yale-NH, and they kept pumping it into me as fast as it drained out. After all the life-saving surgeries and procedures and on the 10th day when my critical condition had slightly improved, the decision was made to gamble on finally amputating the leg. After the amputation, my vitals and prospects immediately began improving and the docs told my mom “Well the leg’s gone, but the good news is that he’s definitely going to live.”

My Dad from down in Mexico, had immediately flown in after the accident and had stood at my bedside in ICU between all the life saving operations. But then mom also mentioned how he had left and flown back to Mexico the day before my amputation and upon getting the word that they had to do it, which was the last needed operation that ultimately saved my life.

My mom, sister Regina and my maternal grandparents were really the only ones I remember visiting mangled me in the ICU, where I had come back to the waking world after two weeks, and with the big orange tube clamps running down my chest and stomach to keep my guts closed, my right arm and wrist in pins and casts and my right leg vanished. Except for the one day when Ronnie and Beman bounced into my ICU room to see me.

Ronnie had been directly behind me on his machine and they both told me, almost competing with each other for the words, how a Pine Orchard rich guy’s kid and 23 year old known junkie named Geoff Townsend was the asshole who had creamed into me in my lane. How he had been checked into the hospital for the night for back pain, had been released the next morning and was drinking at the Old Towne Bar on the green the next evening and Good Friday night, while I was hanging on for my life. Then they added how T.A. (another friend of ours from the Creek) had gone up to Townsend at the Olde Towne bar and started a brawl one night but that everyone scattered and took off before the cops arrived. I joked with them -“Great day for me to lead the way and ride ahead of you guys huh?”. Right after that, Ronnie’s head and eyes were rolling around, he became fidgety and pale, and then quickly hit the door and booked out of the ICU room. When the nurse came back she said “Your friend had to throw up and told me to tell you that he’ll be back and see you again soon.” Beman and I cracked up together about Ron having probably hurled out in the ICU somewhere after not making it to the bathroom. Beman stayed talking with me another few minutes while saying things to me like “fucking Townsend” and...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 11.11.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Sport
• ISBN-13: 9798317821524 / 9798317821524