Those of you who know Mike Tempsch, empeg meet stalwart and regular prize winner, will be concerned to hear that he has been involved in a road accident and is in hospital again with some serious injuries.

He was riding his (brand new) moped along a dual carriageway when an idiot turned across his path after not seeing him at a junction. Mike T-boned the car (an SUV) and sustained a broken arm and fractured pelvis. He also has a lot of lacerations: thank goodness he was wearing a good helmet.

He was walking wounded at the scene, and was taken to hospital. It's likely the moped has been written off: this is his second after the first one was stolen by some thieving t*** who didn't care that it was his only legal form of transport following his stroke, and subsequent recovery, two years ago.

He has been in hospital since last Friday and is today going for surgery to put a pin and plate into his hip to strengthen the break and speed his recovery.

To make matters worse, he has had to cancel all his credit cards since his wallet was lost at the scene of the accident


Whilst this sounds pretty grim, he is remarkably cheerful. After his stroke two years ago he has gone through a hell of disability, frustration and depression: he was unable to come to the last empeg meet for this reason. Since then, he has had a lot of care and support and with help has become far happier and confident. He was making progress at work and had started programming again, which he is very pleased about. So while he is injured, he should be back on his feet within the next two weeks and back in business before the end of the month.

However, the thing that convinces me he is feeling better after a long, difficult time in the shadows is that he is thinking of coming over to the next empeg meet in September - can't be much wrong, then!

Anyone wanting to pass on a message to him, please get in touch with me and I will let him know.

OMG! I'm really sorry to hear that

I'm sure Mike will know we are all thinking about him, but please pass on our thoughts.

I'm glad to hear he's still up for the meet this year, that's a really good goal to aim for. There will be beer a plenty waiting for him

Cheers

Cris.

Damn. Remind me not to stand not too close to Mike. Of course, at least we will both be able to be standing.

Please tell him we're thinking of him and hope he makes a quick recovery.

Very sorry to hear the bad news about Mike. Thanks for passing it along. Please do tell him that we're thinking of him and wish him a smooth recovery. Hope to see him in September!

I need to scan General more closely.

Warmest regards, Mike. Sorry to hear about this mismatch, but very glad to hear you stood your ground! We hope to hear from you soon.

Hi guys - it's me..

Just got the laptop and 3G-card delivered from the office by a colleague,
so here I am sitting at the bedside tapping away while waiting for the sadist^h^h^h^h^h^h physioterapeut

So, Thu 3 May on the way home from work I'm riding on a 50 kmh road behind 3 cars with reasonable spacing between the cars, I'm starting to fall back a bit more and had about 2x the distance between cars distance to the car in front of me, no cars immediately behind me.
Approaching a crossing (lights for crossing but separate exit to join our lane w/o light, essentially like a US right turn on red) I spot a car looking to join and get that feeling the "he might do something stupid...", so I keep extra tight watch on him.
As I go into the crossing I've dropped of somewhat, pobably just below 40 kmh, see the bloke in the car being still and noticing me, I open the throttle back up - then I see something white in front of me. Next thing I can remember is getting help to get extracted from the moped/scooter and limping away to a nearby tree.

I don't remember anything of the state of the moped, but that some guy had collected a few bits of plastic panels that he dropped off just as I limped away.

As to injuries: broken left arm just below the shoulder "ball" - clean break, no plaster, just a sling and wrap to keep it fixated.
Fairly deep cuts/scratches on both knees - looks like I broke off the ignition key with the right knee (stupily placed) and the left knee got gouged by the piece of the key remaining in the lock. Then some scratches on the lower left leg and just avove the knee on the right. This is all healing nicely.
Got a few minor bruises on the forehead and nose from the inside of the helmet but that was really nothing. REALLY happy I chose the full/enclosed/integral helmet even though the look a bit "race-y" on a moped/scooter...

As to the hip they couldn't at first see it on the X-rays, so thought te pain might just be from a banged muscle/lendon atachment or something like that.So with the arm in a sling and a crutch as support I'm going home from the ER.

About 5 hours later the ER calls and wants me to come in for further X-rays of the hip (2nd doc has looked at the original ones and thinks there might be a crack). Don't recall the technology used but the slices showed that a bit (about 1x1.5 cm) had cracked loose, bur otherwise remained in place at the rim of the socket.

Then comes a couple of days of confusion as to operate or not - as long as I didn't put any weight on the leg it would heal on its own in about 3 onths. But with the arm also out of action I couldn't use crutches to unload the leg, so it'd mean a wheelchair. That and the risk of a fall or something transfering in/out of
the chair smacking the leg and maybe worsening things/forcing operation anyway they decided to operate. So Thursday morning they did the operation, putting in a plate to fixate and reinforce.

Initially even the tiniest movement of the leg had me gasing in pain, but it's improving rapily. Can stand with maybe 40% of normal load on it, ake tiny steps manouvering around the bed/chair/toilet etc. Used a walker table to cross the room yesterday and it wen't much better than i had feared (the day before I'd been up and taken just 2 steps with serious pain)
So it's probably more of that today.
For the arm, I'm flexing the elbow and hand/fingers o they don't stiffen up. Will likely start today with exercises just letting the arm hang and sway to get some movewent on the ball/socket.

As for the wallet, it turned out that I had forgotten it at work.... But I'll still have to get new cards , and apparently they won't let me do that via internet banking (via personal phone service would have been OK, go figure, but I cancelled that a while ago since I never used it... ) So I'll have to go do that in person as soon as I get out of here.

So overall, bad thing to happen, but it could have been lots worse. Broken bones heal far better than broken brains.

Who's rambling? Couldn't be me, no way...

Anyways - will do my very best to appear at this years meet, hope to see y'all then!

Good to hear you're doing okay... after a fashion, I suppose. Sounds like you're in good spirits. Heal fast.

Here's to a speedy recovery.

Glad to hear you are on the mend!

We are still in the planning stages of this years event, but we really hope you can make it!

Cheers

Cris.

Wow, you can get to the toilet on your own? In a UK hospital that would mean you would be shipped off home ASAP!

Get well soon!
I'm glad you had a good helmet!

Good. I'm glad you're bad in town, podnah!

Keep us all in touch - there was a period where this BBS was something less than it used to be, "while you were away", OK?

So what new stuff are you building into the Peugeot for the meet in September?