I’d been wanting to express my appreciation to the good Samaritan who’d called the ambulance for me when i was lying in the street after my January accident, and i’d posted in the parklet a sign asking him or her to contact me, but had heard nothing.
Still, i cut a pretty broad swath here in San Francisco. I’m out on the Segway virtually every day, and i’m gregarious, so a lot of people know me. Last Saturday at the Noe Valley Farmers’ Market, i spotted my friend Steve and his kid Pablo, and when i went over to speak to them he told me that he’d heard about my accident from Bernie of Bernie’s coffee, which is immediately behind where i had decided i must have had the accident.
So thinking she might have some idea about who’d called the ambulance for me, i dropped by there that afternoon and bought a pound of their coffee, but discovered that Bernie wasn’t there. I dropped by again on Sunday and got a latte, which was absolutely delicious and i sure hope was made out of the same beans i bought.
Oh, but it gets better. Bernie came in from the back, and when i started telling her about Steve, she exclaimed that she didn’t recognize me without blood all over my face but that she had been leaving the store and had seen me go flying through the air and hit my head really hard, and that she’d called 911. She’d gone to my side and then had been joined by a passing driver who’d seen me airborne and had thought she’d hit me, and the two of them then joined forces to keep me pinned down against all my efforts to get back into the fray.
Is this a guy thing or what? You get your bell rung and you just automatically want to go right back into the game. Since i had a little concussion, i have no memory of anything until a couple of hours later and had assumed i was unconscious, but Bernie assures me that i could understand her and answer simple questions fairly coherently and that i definitely wanted to get back into the game.
Meanwhile, i went back in today for that delicious latte and to continue taking jars of my products to her. So far, the Feijoa Plum Chutney, Carol’s Little Bitter Orange Marmalade, and the Rodelle chocolate sauce.
And today, as i was leaving, i picked up a copy of the February issue of The Noe Valley Voice, a little neighborhood newspaper that has some capable writing and good coverage of local news. To my astonishment, they included mention of my accident (at the very end of the Mission Station police report).
I do have a couple of quibbles: first, i had a broken arm and hand in addition to the listed injuries, but second, i thought it was entirely gratuitous on the part of the cop who wrote the accident report to mention that the roadway barrier was “yellow-accented” so as to rub my nose in the fact that i shoulda seen the damn thing.
Here’s Bernie’s, just west of Whole Foods. Good vibes and delicious lattes: