Down

Here is a pretty stinky news update.

On a Sunday near the end of October of 2007, my wife and I were riding the last few sections of a favorite local cross country loop back to the parking lot. It had rained and most of the leaves were finally down. We were literally "just riding along" on some flat double track near Second Hill when my back wheel broke free and I fell toward the right side rut. I fully expected to land in the mud and come up laughing, all gooey looking like the Swamp Thing, like I have 1000 times before. Instead, I landed on an embedded boulder, whacking my right femur just below the hip. And that, as they say, was that. I knew I had done something nasty right away because I could not move at all without shattering pain. My wife, bless her, ran back to me and un-clipped my bike from my still clipped in right foot and got the bike off me as I lay face-down in the middle of the double track.

In the next moments, things began to improve greatly. Within a minute some lost ATVers came upon us. They had cell phones with coverage (as did we) and they called for an ambulance to meet us. We directed the ATVers out to the nearby gravel road to meet the ambulance. One guy stayed behind and gave me his warm clothes. He kept making me laugh so I wouldn't fall asleep/succumb to shock. The rescue folks eventually showed up with ATVs, a backboard, and helpful narcotics. They got me out to a 4 wheel drive pickup which then got me out to the road to the waiting ambulance. They took me to a local hospital where I happen to know an orthopedic surgeon (not that I do this kind of thing very often!) and the following night I had surgery to add some plates, pins, and screws in the right femur to "reduce" the 2 breaks. 24 staples closed it up.

Now, I am home and recovering well. PT comes every day and leaves me swearing in a puddle of sweat.