Month: July 2015

London to Southend bicycle ride report.

Number and medal This year I rode the London to Southend charity ride in aid of the British Heart Foundation.

I raised a little over £300 for the charity and I had ‘fun’.

At a little before 6AM I arrived at the train station, not long after that, they allowed everyone in and we all crammed ourselves onto the ‘specially laid on’ train. I am not good at estimating numbers, there were perhaps a couple of hundred people with a bicycle each.

The train was due to leave at 06:20. At 06:19, they announced that the train was not going to leave as there was a signalling fault and perhaps we should take the City-2-City train from the other station. Much swearing happened. 

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Eleven Months, One Week, two days.

July 9th 2015 was eleven months, one week and two days since my crash.

It was marked by two events.

At 8:30AM I went for my weekly physical therapy session. Steve, the physiotherapist, is working wonders on my shoulder – I am not quite at the point where I can raise my arm vertically, but at least at the moment the range of motion that I have is about 65% of normal. The sessions are painful, Steve pushes and pulls on my shoulder and gently but firmly makes it move slightly more than it did the previous week.

Gains are slight and incremental. I might not gain an extra degree of motion each week, but each week it is slightly better than last week. I have a long and painful road ahead. But it is getting better. Slowly.

The second thing that marked this day was a letter from my solicitor that began, ‘please find enclosed a cheque’. Before anyone gets excited, this is not a ‘full and final settlement’, this is an interim cheque to cover some of the expenses incurred since the crash.

This has been the first actual acknowledgement from the insurance company that they have accepted liability. In order to even get this cheque my solicitor had to threaten them with court proceedings.

So this is a BIG THING, I have a cheque that covers some of my expenses to date, the insurance company are finally releasing funds, this may not be as big a fight as it felt it might become.

Finally things are moving…..