Far Out Son of Lung...

More Broken Bones

Thursday night I broke my leg. It's the little bone in the bottom or your leg, I think they call that a fibula. Whatever its called, its broken and it doesn't look like it wants to play games. There's a long crack (about 2-3 inches) and some extra bits and pieces as far as I can see in the xrays, but I'm no doctor. It does not hurt. Nope, I know that sounds odd but the thing is just sort of there.

Lee and I met with Danielle to ride the LB Houston trail. Lap one was fun, lap two was going great. Danielle flatted right off the start and left, but Lee and I kept going. I picked up the pace on the tacky surface and was really hauling ass through the woods when I got to The Dips section and something went wrong. I don't know how I crashed, I just did. Hit the ground with my shoulder tucked and my head down, but the impact was from the side and must have landed on a rise of dirt because I heard the bone go *pop* and there was no pain. I knew it was bad, I just didn't think it was broken.

Lee got there and we messed around with debating whether it was an ankle break or ankle sprain. I could still roll my ankle and flex it up and down, but in doing so there were also more popping noises from my leg. I tried putting some weight on it but that didn't work, and we needed to get me out of the woods somehow. So, I threw a leg over Lee's bike (his seat is lower than mine) and used my left leg (the good one) to push myself down the trail and out of the woods.

Back at his truck we played around and tried to determine the extent of the damage. I did the usual "this side is normal, this side... isn't" routine and could feel a variety of what I can only term as separations within my leg. It wasn't pleasant so we loaded the bikes and Lee followed me to the ER.

After a short wait I was in to get xrays and soon enough the ER doc was chuckling at my bedside.
"Looks like you did a real job on this one."
Excellent.
"From this angle we can see a hair line fracture running down here..."
Oh, that's not soo bad...
"But from this angle we can see that there are more pieces in there than there should be..."
Ooooh.
"And finally, from this angle... we can see that this portion might also be chipped..."
So, what now? Does this heal on its own?
"Nah, looks like they'll need to go in surgically."

Its like 2004 all over again folks. I thought I was done breaking bones for awhile when I stopped racing motorcycles, but now here I am snapping things on the mountain bike. Such is life.

What bothers me more though, and this is a rant, by the way, is the attitude people take toward me about it.
"So, gonna take up chess now?" or "Hey, we'll just call you crutch" or "Why won't you learn?"

You know what? Fuck off. Seriously, just keep your pussy comments to yourself. I'm living life the way I want to live it. Sure, I could do without the injuries but I'm thoroughly enjoying myself and I would not change that for anything. Motorcycle racing was a blast, but any time you get thrown off something and bounce across pavement at 100+ MPH, you have to expect a few things to go wrong. And, given the corner I crash in the first time around, I got away pretty damn lucky. I went into it too quickly (racing, that is) and that is what bit me. Most of the people I was racing had been on motorcycles and dirt bikes since they could walk. They'd ridden for 20+ years and had skill hones from years of riding and racing. Me?

I was on the track having learned to ride a motorcycle on 6 months previous. I took to racing on two wheels after doing quite well on four, and pretty much just ran with it. I wasn't Mr. Superfast, but I was certainly quicker than a majority of the folks I was racing and I picked up massive amounts of speed in a very short time. Then, it all went a bit wrong. Shit happens. Still, I came back and raced again and very nearly came into 2005 guns blazing... but Oak Hill really set me back financially and emotionally for a number of reasons, and I backed out. I still regret it, and I'm sure I always will. I want to race, and I want to race bad... but I can't. I need to move on and find other things to keep me happy and satisfy my desire to completely crush my opponents into dust.

At any rate, the cycling thing has been great so I'm not going to give it up. This was a freak accident and likely caused by my own desire to go a bit faster than I should have been... but I felt good that day and I was flying down the trail when it happened. Oh well. I broke a bone, damn. Life goes on.

12 weeks from now I'll be climbing at Stoneworks.

posted by GreSam @ 11:41