Donald Becker was pedaling his lightweight Italian Colnago with thousands of other riders in the 200-mile Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic as they swept through the streets of Centralia.
Becker, 58, a lean, muscular Fisher’s Landing resident, sported the number 9552 on his flag. The ride draws up to 10,000 riders.
He wanted to finish the ride in one 12-hour day, but he’d had an unusual three flat tires, one of them when he hit a pothole he hadn’t seen at the 30-mile mark.
“I was a little bit behind,” he said. “I was pushing it a little bit. I was at the midpoint, in Centralia.”
He had no way of knowing that a fate worse than a thousand flat tires was awaiting him.
Ahead, a loaded hay truck had paused at a stop sign and was just starting to go again. The hay bales were stacked a little wider than the truck’s flatbed.
“I tried to pass the truck on its right,” Becker said. “It just bumped me slightly, knocking me off balance.”
Becker said he fell, planting his right shoulder hard in the pavement. Then, somehow, the truck’s rear wheels ran over part of his chest.
It was about 2 p.m. on July 9, a Saturday, and a nearby police officer ran to help and called for an ambulance.
“I was in a lot of pain,” he said, “more than I ever remember.”
An ambulance quickly arrived and rushed him to a hospital in Centralia. There, doctors assessed his wounds, stabilized him and called for a Life Flight helicopter ambulance to fly him to PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center in Vancouver.
Meanwhile, Becker’s wife, Linda, was home wondering why he hadn’t called her as scheduled.
“It got to be 4:30 in the afternoon and I hadn’t heard from him, so I was getting anxious,” she said.
Her worries were well-founded. As she’d soon learn, her husband was heavily sedated with 18 broken ribs plus fractures to shoulder blades, collarbone, and part of a neck bone. One of his lungs had collapsed and the other was partially collapsed.
At PeaceHealth, physicians operated, using fairly new types of plates to hold his ribs in place. They kept him in a medically induced coma for a few days.
When he awoke, he said recently, “Everything was painful at that time.”
His three weeks in the hospital also included catching an infection. But he was released Aug. 4.
“I was so happy to be leaving the hospital,” he said.
Becker, who weighed 152 pounds before the accident, weighed 140 when he left the hospital. Thursday, he weighed 146.
He can walk, and he gave a firm handshake with his left hand because of his still-injured right shoulder.
And he was thinking of the future, and some positives, as he recovers from so many injuries.
He has the love and support of Linda and their three grown children, and his injuries were covered by medical insurance. The truck driver wasn’t blamed in the accident.
His legs weren’t broken, but were weakened during the long hospital stay and needed rehabilitation therapy. That took only five days, less than doctors thought, because his legs were so strong before the accident.
He said he faces perhaps two months of therapy for his broken shoulder. After that, he will likely look for a job. Two years ago he was laid off from a marketing job in a downsizing at Hewlett-Packard.
“I had a few job leads before this happened,” he said. “It’s not like the job market is humming along right now. Particularly for people our age.”
And after 20 years of road bicycling, riding about 200 miles a month to keep strong, he’s giving it up.
“I love the sport, but it’s just catastrophic when things go wrong,” he said. “It’s probably the closest I’ll come to death before it happens.”
All in all, it’s been a tough month for the Beckers, including Linda, his wife of 36 years.
“I feel like I want a vacation!” she said.
John Branton: 360-735-4513 or john.branton@columbian.com.
