Thunder Mountain breakdown

RED CANYON, Utah—Someplace about halfway into our ride on the Thunder Mountain trail, perhaps our most favorite place to ride a bike, we had joked about how the skin thins and the body gets a little more fragile as the years wear on. A few miles down the trail I proved my point.

If you've never ridden Thunder Mountain, you should.

We take it for granted that mountain biking is inherently dangerous. We really do. Riding around town is far different than riding on unfamiliar trails far away from home. If something goes wrong out here, a person is left to rely upon his own wits and resources. Contrasted with riding on your home turf—where every bail-out point is well known, every water fountain nearby, and nearly every technical feature of the trail is well rehearsed—riding out in the wilds does present a modicum of danger and risk. But we weren't thinking about that when we hit Thunder Mountain at midday for a nice ride.

We are on the backside of our vacation journey. We were out here ostensibly to celebrate my passing into the second act of life. Such a thing sounds sad and staid when I commit it to the page, but that is not the idea at all. Every stage of life is wonderful! There is still much mystery to be had, adventure to endure...life to be lived. Being out on the road, riding bikes in exotic locations, trying new things. Aging doesn't relegate us to reliving safe prior experiences and ceasing to live. For us, we feel as curious and rebellious as we did when we were two-year-olds testing the surface of a hot burner with our fingers or teenagers exploring the boundaries of free expression and good taste with our words and deeds. We are full of life and relish each new day as if it were a cold glass of water drawn from a good aquifer or a fine cut of Country Fried Steak like the one we ate last night at the Bryce Canyon Pines Inn.

Blood on the ground is never good.

Backing up a bit, I didn't feel like that so much when I was writhing on the ground at the bottom of the Thunder Mountain Trail while crimson droplets of my life essence were pouring out of my arm onto the crazy orange rocks that had shattered and torn me open. I had taken a turn too fast. The sound and feel of my rear wheel washing out barely registered in my head before I found myself on the ground in a dusty heap. The last thing I heard before I felt the sickening rush of pain overwhelming the right side of my body was a loud report—like two big rocks smacking together or a pair of bamboo rods colliding. 

When I looked down at my arm, I could see a deep hole with some white sticking out. A wave of queasiness rippled through me. I asked Caroline if my bone was poking out of my smashed forearm. She answering in the negative. I moved my arm around, searching for the characteristic hot pain that accompanies the fracture of a calcified frame. Thankfully it was not there. 

But there was plenty of blood, and a giant fissure about the size of a quarter that was cradling the giant flap of torn skin and meat that had been ripped by the jagged rocks when my speeding body was rudely hurtled to the ground.

We have learned from experience that it's always good to have a first-aid kit in our Camelbaks when we are riding away from home. But we had gotten rusty. Tragedy was a fuzzy dot in memory past. The last few years of riding conservatively and a boost in our skills have made such things irrelevant in our world. But as the rocks below were stained by the big dark red drops pouring from my damaged arm, we suddenly realized why they were there. Although Caroline's backpack had been emptied of its first-aid kit, mine still had one. And all of its contents were in good shape.

Kissing rocks remind us that love is the greatest good.

Caroline rinsed the wound with a generous amount of water and we covered it with gauze and tape. We still had two miles to go. My knee and shin had also taken the brunt of my fall, and truth be told, my leg hurt a hell of a lot worse than my arm. Needles of fire tormented my lower extremity, as if someone were going to work on it with a red-hot Brillo pad.

Shock and adrenaline are our body's way of helping us get out of danger. But their effects are temporary. I was able to remount my undamaged bike and ride back to the car under the close watch of Caroline. But once we got back to our starting point, I was racked with confusion and pain, and I circled about uselessly back and forth, unable to concentrate on necessary tasks like changing out of my bike clothes and getting the bikes up on the rack.

The Nice Ranger at the Red Canyon Visitor Center pointed us toward the hospital in nearby Panguich and we drove there mostly in silence. The buzz of pain was all I could really hear inside my head anyway.

At the Garfield Memorial Hosipital, Dr. Colin Marshall and Nurse Susan cheerfully treated me while I spewed wisecracks pretending to be brave and robust. Everyone should be thankful for excellent medical personnel in small, unfamiliar towns. Conversation lagged a little bit as the doctor took his needle and injected the giant hole—which was about the size of a bottle cap and probably just as deep—with numerous doses of topical anesthetic. Yes, it hurt as badly as it sounds. And no, even lidocaine doesn't make debriding a deep, jagged wound any more pleasant. 

Although I felt stupid at needing to go to the emergency room for a mountain biking boo-boo, Dr. Marshall made it clear that we had done the right thing. The wound required five stitches in the meat below the skin and five more at the surface. When all was said and done, my little corner of the otherwise empty emergency room was home to a good-sized pile of blood-soaked gauze and wisps of the blue monofilament that had been used to draw the edges of my wound together.

Even the hardest climb is surmountable.

It sounds bad now, but about 45 minutes before the crash, Caroline and I had proclaimed ourselves the luckiest people in the world as we stood at the top of the trail overlooking the insane orange hoodoos that dot Red Canyon and the outstanding ribbon of swooping singletrack trail ahead. And I still believe that.

What is life without adventure and crashes and pain? What is life without triumph and passion and love? What is life without fun? 

Long after the pain has subsided and my scar has mellowed into a barely recognizable aberration of my skin, I hope to be living with as much gusto as I have enjoyed during this first half-decade, and I can only hope that Caroline and I have many more adventures to share.

See you on down the road.