Jason, Ryan and I are riding buddies as far back as my early 20s. We’ve logged thousands of miles on bikes together over the years and it had been around 14 years since we actually road together. So our trip to Colorado had some must check items on the list of to-dos.
Introduce Ryan and Ryder… they had not met. Check
Bring Ryder’s bike and go for a guys ride. Check
Get a few miles in on the dirt, just the 3 of us. Check (sort of)
That’s where it got wonky. I had brought my pedals, shoes, helmet, and some basic riding wear so I could use Jason’s Maverick, which is a space aged techno anomaly compared to the antique I normally ride. Not to mention, its about 2 sizes too small, nevertheless, it was close enough to try out a few miles on the dirt to relive old times. Knowing that I’m a flat lander now and way out of riding shape, I remained pretty realistic of what I should or should not be doing on said borrowed bike. Somehow, my plan for a casual ride still went south.
On the double track descent, which really wasn’t too technical, I chose a line around an obstacle poorly and it cost me. My shoulder and torso impacted the ground solidly leaving me in a heap in the stinky mud.
My self diagnostic told me my neck, head and extremities were good. I never lost consciousness, but breathing was extremely painful. My shoulder which was the first to meet Mother Earth was likely separated again (old hockey injury that a certain Jason was also involved in). This was not good.
I could get on my feet but was unstable with my labored breathing. Once I had stabilized, Ryan made the remaining descent and Ironman climb back to the cabin to retrieve the truck and let the ladies know of my misfortune. I slowly made my way to the bottom of the descent with Jason walking the extra bike and keeping my mind off of things with his incessant rambling and soon after I was back at the cabin talking things over with Kris. No time was wasted, it was time for the ER.
Check in, X-rays, pain meds. “It appears you have what is called a pneumothorax which is when a rupture occurs in your lung and air escapes into your chest cavity allowing your lung to deflate. You have a collapsed lung.”
F**k
Long story short (too late), I stayed in the hospital for two nights. In that lovely room with a nice view of Vail mountain, I had a tube inserted in my side that went between my lung and chest cavity to pull the air out between my lung and diaphragm. We had to reschedule flights back to the east coast and we were concerned about the pressure induced by flying. However the Vail Health Center docs assured us that planes are pressurized to around 7k feet. Vail is at approximately 8 thousand feet, so any stress induced by flying is not going to be as bad as what is occurring naturally at that altitude. However… don’t tell the airline this happened.
1 month update
My shoulder was wrecked pretty bad, but not really any worse than it had been done 16 or 18 years ago. The torso impact left me with upper body trauma that made me feel every one of those 42 years of abuse I’ve subjected this frame to. Range of motion was pretty good, but every bit of ligament and muscle was pissed. From the time I was in the hospital, I badly wanted a massage and I finally got one last week. It made a noticeable difference. I’m still a little short of breath occasionally when I need to climb stairs or similar, but overall I’m feeling pretty good.
