Every year in September, Mark rides the MS150. This is a two day biking event to raise money for multiple sclerosis, and as the name implies it is 150 miles. The starting point is twenty miles away from our house, so for him it is two days, 150 miles, and an extra twenty thrown in at five a.m. on day #1 because he is muy macho.
He has been doing this ride for about fifteen years, however, when he started he was under the age of 50, and things have changed a bit since then. Now he is knocking on Medicare’s door and 150+ miles in two days isn’t quite so easy. Unlike years ago, though, he doesn’t push it or isn’t trying to finish day #1 in record time. No, these last few years he is content to take his time on this ride with a more leisurely pace and chat with his fellow pre and post Medicarers.
The first day of the ride ends in Lawrence, Kansas which is about forty miles away. Mark used to bring a sleeping bag and a change of clothes and camp outside but he came to his senses about that few years ago. Biking all day and then sleeping on a cot? No, not any more. This year he ended up at the Days Inn and called me about 4:00 to tell me he was checked in, all was good, he didn’t push it, no problems whatsoever, and he was going to a dinner gathering for all the riders and would be going to bed soon after.
Considering the upbeat call the day before, I was a little unprepared for what I saw when he walked in the door on Sunday afternoon. My husband looked like he’d been run over by a truck. It turns out that the night before his legs started cramping up. They woke him up out of a sound sleep and that is something that in all his years of biking had rarely, if ever, happened. He got plenty of fluid in him in the morning and he was fine, but, that man was worn out.
He started some laundry and laid down on the couch in the basement, where it is cool and dark and just how he likes his sleeping quarters. He was down there for a long time and said he never slept but he was so tired that I was sure he must have dozed off. When he finally came upstairs he headed straight to the shower which lasted nearly as long as his non-nap.
At 9:30 that night he flopped into bed with his usual sleeping gear – ear plugs in each ear and a black sock over his eyes. He was sound asleep in seconds. I came to bed later but was abruptly woken up by a thud in the middle of the night.
My husband had fallen out of bed.
He had fallen out of bed, hit his face on the nightstand, thudded onto the floor, and was stringing a litany of curse words together.
I bolted upright and said, “Did you just fall out of bed?” And he said yes and that he was bleeding and there was an added bonus of about twenty five ef bombs between the yes and the bleeding part. I asked him how he fell out of bed. The short pissed off version was that he had a dream that somebody was in the house trying to get Will and he was trying to stop them. By this time he was in the bathroom saying his goddamn nose was bleeding and he had to stop it and then go downstairs and get a goddamn band-aid.
And I’m wide awake at three o’clock in the morning wondering how in the hell my husband could fall out of bed.
After a few minutes he came back upstairs with his green earplugs sticking out of each ear and trusty black sock in his hand to mask the night vision. His second attempt at sleeping didn’t last long as he was still mad about the dream, the falling out of bed, and the bleeding nose, and so he decided he would sleep downstairs. As he pulled the bedroom door closed behind him he hit the back of his foot with the door. That launched a whole new string of ef bombs.
And I’m wide awake at three thirty in the morning wondering how in the hell my husband could fall out of bed and then hit his own foot with a door.
The next morning he got up and looked worse for the wear with his beat up body from biking 150 miles over the weekend and a bandaid covering his bashed up nose. “I didn’t sleep very well last night,” he said, which might have been the understatement of the year.
Later that day when he got home from work (which he biked to and from) he told me more about the dream and how he was trying to grab the boogie man who had been hiding in our closet and was trying to get to Will which is why he hurtled himself right out of bed. I told him it was a good thing that we have a lower bed now or he could have banged his face up even more. Nope, he said, it’s that low bed and that Ikea nightstand right next to it. That was what did it. That Hemnes nightstand. It was a pain in the ass to put together and a pain in the nose when you smack your face into it. I didn’t really buy into any of that but I wasn’t about to argue with him or his band-aided face.
Thankfully the next night was uneventful – no dreams and no falling out of bed. It was a blissful night’s sleep. In the morning I noticed that my husband had taken some extra precautions the night before to prevent a Hemnes attack leading to further injuries.
All these years I have blamed the kids as the reason we couldn’t have nice things around here.
Turns out I was wrong. So wrong.
