The view from the seventh floor

I popped round today to see “Crash” Crandall and his wife, Kathy, and am delighted to report that the Old Town Bike Shop honch’ seems very much like his old self, albeit with a few broken bones, some hardware installs and plenty of sutures, all overlaid with a thin veneer of hillbilly heroin, a.k.a. Oxycontin.

John is doing three hours of physical and occupational therapy a day in the Memorial Hospital rehab unit, entertaining more visitors than the shot-up Don Vito Corleone, and contemplating the complexities of chaos theory. (Dude is not your average shop owner. But then if you are acquainted with John, you already knew that.)

I laid a few silly gifts on him: an XL Mad Dog jersey to replace the one the medicos cut off him, quipping that by the time he gets back on the bike he’ll need an XL like the rest of us fat bastards (yeah, right; I rock a XXL and a fat John Crandall is gonna be something like an M); one of my old bike-racing medals (doctored to read “Sticking the Dismount”); and an itty-bitty toy bicycle given to me at Interbike one year by (I think) the infamous alien lobbyist and apologist Gregg Bagni.

When the medicos send John home — perhaps in a week, says Kathy — it will be to a house augmented by a wheelchair ramp, as broken femurs take a while to heal, and the busted shoulder and wrist make crutches unlikely for a spell. But I doubt he’ll need the ramp, chair or crutches for long. John’s a tough ol’ bird, and I’m certain he won’t stay grounded.