Derailed

May 24, 2022: Everything was going well. I had been in Thailand for about nine months at that point and it had easily been the happiest stretch of time in my entire life. Plans were going accordingly ( Although, I have to admit that they changed frequently but that’s normal given this lifestyle) and I was doing everything right in terms of being productive, disciplined, focused and goal oriented. But then it was time to go get supper, and that’s when tragedy struck.

All I wanted was some pasta. It had been a long day and you would have thought that the meal was well deserved but apparently not as the gods clearly had something else in store for me. It was sometime around seven p.m when I’d left my apartment and since the food court was only about ten minutes away, there was no good reason to wear a helmet, right? “The place is right down the road.”

Traffic lights in Thailand are different than in the United States. They have countdowns so that you can see how much time is left before the color changes whereas in America, you just wait

unknowingly (not saying that this is better or worse, but it is a subtle difference). Plus, they drive on the opposite side of the road as we do here which takes some getting used to (i.e - instead of turning right on red, you go left). Once again, I’d been in country for about nine months so I was well aware of these differences and had adjusted easily; this is just worth pointing out for the sake of the story.

With that being said, upon approaching this particular four way intersection, the light went orange and I was just far (or close) enough away to not only second, but triple guess whether to stop and wait or go for it. Of course, I opted to try and beat the light so after saying something along the lines of “wait…nope, go for it… no wait… fuck it!” I went full throttle. However, it just so happened that someone waiting at the intersection wanted to get an early jump so they started inching their way out towards the middle and that’s where things went terribly wrong.

I was forced to make a decision: either smash into this guy and both of us possibly die or go hard right and hope the best for everyone. This was an easy decision to make but the outcome was certainly not what I had hoped for (drive off, get the spaghetti and go home). Instead, I gassed it, mashed it, dashed it hard and crashed it...

Now, you’ll hear me reference this notion several times throughout my stories and that’s because it’s beyond fascinating and has been a game changer to me ever since learning about it: thinking of our brains as if they’re recorders. We’ll make it quick here… Time doesn’t “slow down” in times like these (near death experiences), our brains just take extra notes of everything that’s going on. Under normal circumstances, we walk around throughout our daily lives recording as we go- but in an “oh shit moment” our frames being recorded per second increases which is where that all too common misconception of “time slows down” comes from. Ok, let’s get back to the accident.

As I’m falling, I think: “Uh oh, this isn’t good... Matt has fallen… He is tumbling… Oh lord, it looks like his ankle is broken, we’ll find out for sure in a jiffy though…”

Thanks to the adrenaline and extreme embarrassment of having fallen, I immediately tried get up and run to my bike (didn’t skip a beat between falling, rolling and attempting to get up) but it turns out that my ankle was indeed broken so I fell right back down to the road and proceeded to scoot on my hands and butt onto the sidewalk.

Still in disbelief and trying to process everything that had just happened, I did a brief assessment of the situation and learned that things really weren’t all that bad. Yes, my ankle bone had shot out through the skin and the foot was dislocated but no one else had been injured and there were no further damages done to anything other than myself and the motorbike (that thing got demolished lol). Keep in mind, I hadn’t been wearing a helmet so the fact that all I got was a broken ankle and a decent amount of road rash was almost funny.

Conveniently enough, the accident happened right outside of a pharmacy so the workers started helping me almost immediately. This one lady had cotton balls doused with alcohol and kept them close to my nose to sniff on which helped take my mind off the pain while the ambulance came.. At one point she’d said to me “Don’t worry, you’re in Thai hands now” which was nice to hear; I smiled back and said “Cop - coon - crob” (thank you).

Eventually, there was a small crowd of bystanders circled around me, doing what they could to help while some recorded with their phones of course (it’s understandable). I was so embarrassed about everything that had just happened; you don’t ever want to show signs of weakness obviously so I did my best to make it seem as though this was no big deal. My number one tactic in these instances is to use humor as a means of disguising the misery so I kept cracking jokes pretty much from my first interaction with someone up until I had gone into surgery.

“I just need to walk this off haha… That’s just a little scrape, it’ll be fine by tomorrow ha… All this for a bowl of pasta! hah…” Literally no one person laughed at a single joke; talk about pouring salt on a wound... ha.

The accident happened within a terrible window of time; it’s a perfect example of Murphy’s Law ( Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time ) in the sense that:

1. My travel insurance had expired a few weeks prior so the surgery was paid for out of my own pocket

2. The accident took away part of my means of earning money as I could no longer walk

3. I was about two weeks away from a “major life upgrade” which didn’t end up happening due to the event

You see, as stated before, my plans change a lot. Earlier that month, I was supposed to have flown over to Cambodia and spend the next six months traveling throughout there, Vietnam and Laos before heading back to the United States for Christmas. However, at the last minute I’d decided to stay in Thailand so that I could focus on my projects. It was difficult to be productive in terms of building a website, creating and editing content, etc. while being on the move frequently so it made sense to stay put for a bit longer. Plus, by remaining in Thailand, I would have been able to further my skydiving and scuba diving licenses which is important for marketing purposes in my opinion. So the plan at that time was to get settled into a new apartment, extend my visa and then renew the travel insurance policy shortly after.

Instead, I ended up having a metal rod with thirteen screws permanently installed to my ankle,

inherited a gnarly hospital bill and had to fly back to Connecticut for physical therapy so now it’s back to the drawing boards. I’ve run through the entire sequence of events over and over in my head trying to figure out where I’d gone wrong. Normally, I’m pretty hard on myself and have no problem admitting or accepting mistakes but this time was different because it was just an unfortunate, unforeseeable occurrence that only could have been avoided in so many ways. I wasn’t driving recklessly or under the influence of any substances so this was just an honest accident. Besides, it could have been much worse obviously.

That’s what we try to maintain at the end of the day; all of this could have been much worse. In fact, this could be considered one of the luckiest moments in my entire life because it’s too easy to die, or get permanent brain damage, especially when you’re not wearing a helmet so thank god none of that happened. The doctors say that I’ll get back to 100% health once it’s all said and done which is what’s most important. At this point it’s been about four months since the crash so I'm starting to walk again; I’ll limp around for the next six months or so but that will go away eventually... Yup, I’ll be back to flying again in no time at all.