Last Night I Crashed

Last night I crashed. Riding my touring bike for the first time in a while, I allowed the bike to get ahead of me, went into a curve too fast, missed the brake lever when I grabbed for it and augured in to the sandy soil along the trail side. I got hurt, the bike got hurt, I ended up in the ER and the bike will go to the shop for a handlebar transplant in the very near future.

I had a couple of things going for me in this incident. First, my bike GPS is a Garmin Edge Explore 1000 with crash detection mode. If I had been knocked out, or otherwise unable to call for help the Garmin would automatically trigger text messages to my wife, one of my Wilderness First Responder friends, and ultimately have called 911 if I had not reached over and shut it off after doing a quick self – assessment for injuries. Second, I knew what to do. The first thing I do anytime I'm hurt, including with my TBI five years ago, is to assess my level of responsiveness, breathing, circulation, and check for any severe bleeding. "Level of responsiveness" is actually more than that statement implies. When I check my LOR, I am also checking to make sure my fingers and toes still work and everything in between, that I can see out my eyes and hear with my ears and speak, oftentimes like last night, something not to be said in mixed company or the presence of small children. After checking those things the next thing I need to find out is if I can bear weight on my legs and feet. That being good, do the same with my arms and hands, check for any non-serious injuries, and THEN check my bike.

Initially, last night it looked like my Bianchi Volpe had taken the worst of it, but that was not be the case. Evidently when I went down my inner if I hit they handle bars and started to turn one side of them into a figure 8. As you can imagine that kind of an impact is not something the inner thigh is designed to absorb. What started as a uncomfortable feeling in the groin quickly morphed into an egg sized lump, that by the time I got home some 20 miles away, had grown to almost double that size. When I was younger I probably would have toughed it out overnight to see what developed. But since turning 60, and since the head injury I mentioned earlier, I am a lot more cautious. I called our insurance provider's nurse helpline and the RN on the phone recommended I go to the emergency room and get it checked. So at 11 o'clock last night, my wife drove me up to the local hospital ER.

Basically, the ER doc said I had done everything right. As soon as I got home I started icing the bruise, cleaned up the few abrasions I had, and called the nurse helpline. He advised me that it would get larger, it would take as much as two weeks to go away, but would probably not hurt any more than it did right then.

What really galls me is that for the past 26 years as a Park Ranger, I was really looking forward to having the Fourth of July weekend off for the first time in a very long time, and getting some good riding in. Instead, it appears I will get some good writing and TV watching in, at least for the first 48 hours that I have to put ice on the injury every three hours.

As I said earlier this week in my personal blog, "Until the Last Tall Pine Falls", when faced with a potential emergency you need to know what to do. My WFR buddy was initially going to ride with me last night, but his car wouldn't start so I rode solo. Park Rangers and volunteer trail patrollers can't be everywhere all the time. You need to know what to do when you are the first responder…or the victim. If you live in Minnesota or Northwest Wisconsin, the Backcountry Trail Patrol (through Emergicare Medical Training) and the Cuyuna Lakes Mountain Bike Patrol (through Cuyuna Regional Medical Center EMS) offer first aid training to mountain bikers. Carry a first aid kit with you; it doesn't have to be huge, but should have what you might need in it. And unless you ALWAYS have a WFR riding buddy, know how to use it!