Wanting to take advantage of an unusual cool evening, Sofie Alexander decided to take a bike ride.
It was Friday, June 12. The end of a busy week for Alexander, who works as an electronic health records specialist for the Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas.
An avid cyclist, Alexander took the Southwind Rail Trail to Humboldt and then the “long way back,” via country roads home to Iola.
Alexander said she “thinks” she was turning left from Minnesota Road onto 1800 Street out by Allen County Airport when she was hit by a motorcyclist who was coming up from behind.
That uncertainty comes from going unconscious once she went down.
Her first memory is waking up about an hour afterward in the emergency room at Allen County Regional Hospital. From there, she was transferred to St. Luke’s hospital on the Plaza in Kansas City where trauma surgeons reviewed her scans. She was dismissed Sunday, June 14.
Alexander’s injuries are a concussion, a fractured pelvis, and a sprained wrist. For now, complete rest is the best medicine as her brain heals from the trauma, her bones knit themselves back together and the pulled ligaments mend.
She suspects the motorcyclist called 911, though she doesn’t know. He or she has not contacted Alexander since the accident. As of Monday morning, an official report had yet to be filed.
Her bike helmet, thoroughly cracked, sits on a coffee table.
She has yet to drum up the courage to look at her bike.
“Ben said it’s in the garage,” she said, referring to her husband, Ben Alexander. The couple own Iola’s Southwind Cycle and Outdoor as well as stores in Pittsburg and Lenexa.
ALEXANDER SHARED her story with the Register Thursday afternoon with the goal of stressing our responsibilities as pedestrians, cyclists and operators of motor vehicles.
In the last three weeks, three Iola cyclists have been involved in accidents involving motor vehicles.
As she sees it, the more powerful the means of transportation, the more one must look out for those on lesser means.
“The onus should be on the heavier and faster vehicle operator,” to not be a threat to others, she said.
As a child growing up in Overland Park, Alexander said she was taught the responsibilities of a pedestrian such as looking both ways before crossing a street.
