Funny how my brain works. At least it’s funny to me. Then again, most things are funny to me.
Laying on my back in the middle of the road, cradling my left arm with my right, my helmet squarely resting on the pavement where it smacked down with authority, I’m amazed at how time works its cosmic dance.
No question pain gains momentum en route to me like a tsunami. Yet my brain refuses to be interrupted. First we will take injury inventory.
My shoulder moves, my elbow bends, and I can lift my head. OK, it’s not so bad. Which, of course, means the brain can unleash the pain. Just to make certain it has my undivided attention, my brain decides to jettison all air from my lungs to kickoff the next steps.
Aside from pain, anger washes over me first. My chain dropped as I attempted to accelerate to get past the damn crazy dog that always charges at me in these back hills of Tennessee.
My preemptive effort sends me ass over handlebars onto the road. Enter the dog and the old man (see Hey, Just Ride 47).
The bottom line: Despite the pain, anger and frustration, I’m overcome with laughter. Again, I find it all funny.
So it goes with my bad days. Scouring my memory, I believe I understand how I got this way.
My first venture into Punt-Pass-and-Kick came around age 8. I’m one son removed from an All-Conference Homecoming King football star, but the difference in years might as well be a generation. I’ve basically learned the three football skills on my own. My official entry began when I topped the ball so terribly on the kick that my total (distance minus the feet off the straight line) was minus yardage. I couldn’t even look at my Dad. What followed was only marginally better. I did make it into positive territory. Overall, I’m not sure I made it to double-digits.
On the way to the car my Dad put his arm around me and began laughing. When Dad started laughing, it was impossible not to join him. I was laughing with tears.
“At least you ended up on the positive side overall,” he said. “The totals don’t matter, I’m still proud of you … it takes a lot of guts to go out there and do something like that.”
Of course the laugh made me think he was saying it takes a lot of guts to go out there and suck so much, which made it all the more funny. It eased the pain more quickly than any lecture could have.
So when I attempt to remember what has been my worst day on a bike, they all end with laughter.
That time I got lost in the Pisgah National Forest fearing I’d spend the night alone in the woods? I laughed my way to barely getting out before darkness fell.
Leading my wife into the Idaho wilderness on the Fisher Creek Trail, quietly taking inventory of our water and food while she began to bonk long after mine began because I gave her what supplies we could spare.
Crashing in my teens and standing on someone’s front porch leaving a puddle of blood before getting stitched up in ER.
Oh, there are others. But even the worst days somehow haven’t created bad memories. Only chuckle memories.
This week’s question: What’s your worst day on a bike?
I can remember a lot of really hard days on the bike, many of which I’ve written about here, but as I’m paging back through the memories what sticks out for me is that I’ve turned them into good/funny stories in retrospect, like I have some sort of Stockholm Syndrome for the bike. Anyone else feel that?
I definitely agree with Robot- most of my worst days are now epic stories and I’m sort of glad that I had them.
Worst would be all the times I’ve crashed and hurt myself and/or come close to not walking away. Other than that, when I was 17 my mom was driving somewhere further away and I told her I would ride there to meet up. I got 2 or 3 flats and didn’t make it. This was long before cell phones. I found a pay phone and called security where my mom was and also called home. Eventually messages connected and I got picked up. I still feel really bad about it, which is probably a big reason I now carry enough tools/supplies to make it through unexpected messes like that.
I dabbled in DH racing in recent years which gave me a huge thrill until, like a light switch, it didn’t. I showed up to race and promptly crashed hard on my first run on practice day. I recovered from that only to crash badly on my first warm up run on race day. I couldn’t wait to get my race run over with and go home. I haven’t swung a leg over my DH bike since. That was very disappointing, but telling this story is helping push it into epic story territory.
Bad experiences if they do not kill you at the least give you a good story. It was my last run of the day down one of the local DH runs that we’d push our bikes up or slowly winch up if we wanted to pedal. This run finished with a large table top jump called the bone breaker which had a sign with hash marks indicating riders that had in fact broken bones there. It was hot so I was wearing a sleeveless jersey. I had hit this jump already several times that morning and while I was no great jumper I had cleared it. However, upon take off this time I was off pitch and knew I would go off the side if I tried to land it. I stepped off the bike and rolled so no big deal. The bike had other plans though. It bounced, launched skyward and then came down fork pointed at me. I was still balled up but the blackened hot front rotor in a split second grazed my exposed right deltoid leaving a four inch long cauterized burn. I’m pretty sure I yelped and of course cursed. That scar remains more than twenty years later and I still never wear sleeveless jerseys.