Now I can give an account and some perspective on that time I crashed my bike. I had recently gotten a used, full-suspension mountain bike. I had fixed it up, cleaned it and tweaked it, and was eager to ride. The friend I sometimes ride with on Sunday mornings was not available, so I went out on my own. Stacey was to be in Church all morning, so I had three hours or so to have fun. The Quincy Mountain Bike Group has created some great, well-groomed trails in Gardner Park on the bluff, so I left the car with Stacey at her church and rode down there. I got in from 5th street and hit some fun and easy trails. I had only been riding 20 or 30 minutes when I saw these two drops in "The Web" part of the trail. These were wooden ladder-type drops that drop you into a slight downhill. I took the right hand one without difficulty, then rode up the hill again to take the left hand one. That's where it all went wrong. It happened pretty fast, but I'll try to account for as much as I reasonably can.
I went off the drop and immediately knew things had gone sideways, literally. I was leaning to the left in midair, which I now know is the "dead sailor" effect. So I was going to go down as soon as the wheels hit the ground. Indeed, I was falling to the left, and preparing for my body to meet the Earth when the next thing I knew, my head hit a tree, pretty much stopping all forward motion. I did not see the tree coming at all. I felt the left side of the helmet hit, then the side of my face, which went numb. I got up and shook myself off. As I began to self-assess for injuries, I saw a drop of blood fall from the left side of my face. I couldn't see or feel it, so I took a selfie with my phone.
I went into their bathroom. With one look I could see that my ear was shredded. No more fun riding for me that day. I rode about 10 blocks to the walk-in clinic at Blessing Hospital in Quincy. I parked my bike in the waiting room and called Stacey. She was done with regular church service by then, and drove down to meet me. While we were waiting in an exam room I went to the mirror and took my earring out. The bead was missing from the hoop. It was at this point I realized that the little hoop, which I've worn for many years, had caught the rough surface of the tree and nearly been ripped out. There was a thin flap of skin holding it in. The physician (Dr. Joseph Lane) shot me up with Novocain, spent a lot of time rinsing debris out of my wound, and sewed it up with 9 sutures. I loaded the bike on the car, we went to lunch and home.
Other injuries include the visible scrapes on my cheek and neck, and a bruise to the side of my jaw. I took a hard pedal strike to my left calf, which I didn't really feel until the next day. I also jammed my right thumb, spraining the big joint. It still hurts a month later, and provides a reminder of my mortality every time I use it. (still hurts a year later).
In retrospect, it was lucky that I wasn't going very fast off that drop, but if I had, it's more likely that I'd have landed straight. I've also since watched videos on how to take a drop, and I definitely wasn't doing it right. I've now practiced a bit on small ones. It's not hard.
I bought my first bike helmet in college, a Skid-Lid that I wish I still had. Then I bought a Giro, the type with a dense foam body and fabric shell over the top. After that I think it was another Giro with the plastic outer, but that cracked when I dropped it. I bought the green Bern that I now use for most road rides. About 10 years ago I bought a Tony Hawk signature Bell helmet for skateboarding, as I was learning to have Big Guy pull me around on a longboard. It had been scratched up, so a month ago I repainted it with a giant schnauzer theme. That's the one I was wearing, and it saved my ass. Or head. In 40 years of wearing a helmet, I've never had a serious bike crash of any kind, much less one with a head impact. I'm sure I would have had to have a scan of some kind and a hospital stay if I hadn't been wearing a helmet. There's a complacency that develops, in which some part of you believes that a type of event cannot happen if it has not ever happened. I'm over that now. I was lucky in many ways. I'd rather not crash a road bike and have many square centimeters of road rash. If I had hit the tree straight on, I'd have broken my nose and jaw.
