Seven years.
A long time to leave something unfinished, though I suppose the Longbike will never really be finished. I still have the frame of my Jamis Aurora, dented along the top tube and slightly tweaked out of alignment. Its officially totalled, though that didn't stop me from putting a new rear wheel on it and riding it around for a while. It never felt quite right again, so now its gathering dust until the day that I resurrect it as a beater grocery getter, or cut it up to use the steel for some project.
My recovery went well, though recovery took several months. I still have a nice set of scars on my left side, and a couple of my ribs are permanently tweaked forward, but other than that I've had no lasting consequences of note.
I got lucky. If the driver had been a few inches further to the right, I'd have been smashed by the body of the truck instead of just catching a glancing blow from the bumper and taking the passenger mirror off with by back. I'd probably have been crippled, if not simply killed outright.
But I got lucky, becoming one of the 40,000+ cyclists injured per year in traffic accidents, instead of one of the 700+ fatalities.
Life moved on. I recovered, worked for a while at Coldwater Gardens before taking a road trip around the Northeast in Summer 2013. Moved to DC in October 2013 and worked as a temp for a few months. Got a job offer in the UK with Turtle Rattle Learning and began work there in January 2014. Spent the next four years traveling between Portsmouth and Pensacola while working on the Royal Navy's Engineering Technician training redesign. Went through three separate bikes while in the UK, ending up with a purple glitter dreams Surly Straggler which has already been on a few tours around the Isle of Wight, many rides across London, a tour through the New Forest and a few trips across the Devon countryside. Its a pretty great bike, and a worthy successor to the Aurora.
I fell in love in England, and when the project ended in November 2017 Hannah and I decided to marry and spend some years together in the US. We married in April of this year, and are now traveling around the US in a 38 foot long converted school bus called, naturally, The Longbus. We'll be traveling for a while, at least until Thanksgiving of this year if everything goes to plan. We are sporadically documenting our travels on our website, Furak.xyz and on Instagram @thelongbus.
I've been asked on more than one occasion if I'd take the Longbike again, given everything that happened. I absolutely would. It was an adventure in the true sense of the word. I saw places and met people I'd never have otherwise seen or met, and did so in a way and at a pace which was conducive to finding the unfiltered nature of a place and its people. As far as adventures go, I couldn't really ask for more.
