Too Clumsy for This

"Rhonda, you’re too clumsy to be doing this kind of thing."

"Yeah, Dad, I know."

"You need to start acting your age."

"Yeah, Dad, I know. What is my age again… 17?"

"No – 40!"

"Damn."

Perhaps my father is right… perhaps mountain biking is not the activity for me. I hope not, but I’ll let you be the judge.

Eight of us headed out for a quick mountain bike adventure at Jumpingpound Loop, west of Calgary in the Sibbald Flats area. I’m not much of a mountain biker. At the time I think I could still count on all my digits -- without taking my shoes off -- the number of times I’d been on a bicycle since I was 13 years old. And you know how they say, "It’s like riding a bike?" Well, riding a bike isn’t like riding a bike when you’ve barely done it in 25 years.

We all started out all riding together but it didn’t take long before the six guys decided Kelly and I were going to be left behind to form the "slow group". Before they left, my co-coordinator, gave me a challenge. Knowing that I was in competition with our pal Connie to see who could get the best scrapes and bruises, he jokingly added that he wanted to see blood on my legs by the end of the ride.

Jumpingpound Loop is a beginner/novice mountain bike trail. It is a short loop, shaped more like a figure eight than an actual "loop". The north section is a bit "technical" for a novice rider. I LOVE "technical". Navigating rocks, roots, turns… it’s all so much more interesting than boring old pavement. As I jostled and bumped my way along the trail, with its narrower track, steeper hills and sharper turns than I’d tackled before, I was having a great time, shrieking and laughing, my heart pounding, as Kelly patiently waited for me every few minutes.

Pedaling along the side of an easy hill, I slipped slightly off the trail onto the downhill slope… my ability to "colour between the lines" with a bike still needs some work. I toppled, slowly, off the side of the bike and went trippity-trippity-trip, down the hill, laughing as I went. There was a small tree to my left and which I grabbed to stop my momentum. I expected the bike to be lying above me on the hill in the grass. I felt something hit my right leg. I turned, and there was my right leg, wedged awkwardly in between the frame and handlebars of the bike. I grabbed hold of the bike and tried to pull my leg out, but as I pulled, I could feel resistance, and my leg stayed firmly wedged. I pulled again, thinking the bike was just caught on my pant leg, and then I could feel something poking out of my leg.

As it dawned on me that part of the bicycle had penetrated my leg and was now holding me to the bike, I called to Kelly for help. OK, so actually I freaked out and yelled incoherently to Kelly for help. Kelly, who’d proceeded on up the next hill to wait for me, came running back down. In revulsion, I grabbed the bike again, and pushed it forward to remove what turned out to be the ENTIRE brake lever from my right thigh.

Kelly didn’t want to leave me, but I insisted that it was more important that she go try to find the guys than to stay with me because I seemed to be, aside from a little impaled, doing all right.

Once Kelly left me I hobbled up to the top of the next little hill. When I got there I realized I had had the tremendous good fortune of having injured myself right at the intersection of the "loop" and that it was likely the guys would soon be crossing back through right by me. I mustered the courage, finally, to peel back my pant leg to see the open gash where the lever had penetrated, which you could look straight into and check out what cellulite looks like firsthand. There were flecks of what belongs on the inside of my leg now on the outside of my leg, and on my pant leg. It was fascinating in a horrific "I’m-sitting-out-on-a-biking-trail-with-a-large-open-wound" kind of way. I was pretty calm by the time the boys found me, and while my co-coordinator went to fetch his truck, a couple of the guys helped me walk out the short distance while the rest took photos of the scene and walked out my bike.

An important moral to this story: two people do not a "group" make. For safety, make sure you always have at least three people so that, if there’s an injury, one person can stay to provide care and first aid, and the other can go for help.