AUGUST 27, 2006
Having successfully defended my Ph.D. dissertation mere days before, it was clearly time to get on the bike and have a spectacular set of injuries to show for it.
I was riding a nice creekside singletrack somewhere near Fairplay with some friends, one of whom was luckily behind me for the downhill. A fairly innocuous trail, narrow with a few rocks and a slight dropoffto the righthand side. At some point, there were a couple of rocks in the center placed together to form a V -- put the wheel in the center and roll down the 4", standard stuff.
Not so standard today! I somehow managed to hang up my front wheel in the V, and after a little bit of squirrly handling I knew I was about to wreck. Thinking to myself "low speed, not a problem to be thrown off the bike, this won't hurt" I managed to stay loose and not fight the wreck. But low and behold, the bike veered to the right and I became draped over a rather substantial boulder, feet near the trail pinned in my bike frame with my torso pointed down and my head wedged into a hole between a dead tree and a rock. Huh. The helmet did its job, brain intact, so I just rested on my head (3' lower than my feet) while waiting for the pain in my leg to subside.
How to get out of this literal and figurative hole? As fate would have it, Keith rolled up shortly afterward to find me butt-up and struggling to get out of my hole. After freeing me from the bike and providing a helping hand to rotate out of the hole, we discovered a large branch protruding from my right leg. Oh shit, this is the kind of wilderness first aid you hope to never encounter. Fighting the sinking feeling in our chests, we peeled back the leg of my shorts and ... bloop, stick fell to the ground. It had gotten wedged under the band of my shorts, and had only gouged out a not-so-deep scratch in the leg. Excellent.
The boulder and dead tree scraped off a fair amount of skin and bruised my right hip. I also sprained my middle finger, which now largely resembles a sausage. Bruising has developed nicely, as you can see in the bonus pictures below.
