Tuesday, July 20, 2004

Tamburger Pt. II: The Pounding

Coming out of woods dark and primordial, the scent of bayleaf sticking to my sweaty gritty face, I saw open trail ahead of me - all downhill.  So much for my slow and steady days - I knew how to handle this kind of road.  I didn’t even pause to enjoy the view of the mountain face dropping 2000 feet to the impassive grey pacific - I just nosed out, stood on the pedals, sent my weight back and the bike forward.

I was rolling fast, feeling the machinery click and clatter under me, and I had a revellation: I was all alone; this beautiful wild country was, for the moment, all mine and no one else’s.  “Damn,” I thought to myself, “I am really completely by myself.  There is not a soul around for miles.  Just me, my bike and my mountain.  This feels absolutely right.”

It was at that moment that the trail on which I rode suddenly plunged, transformed into a twisting roughened ravine instead of a flat reliable roadbed.  Things happened fast.  I pushed my butt further back off the seat, tried to aim for some traction, a patch of dirt I thought I could trust; I tightened up on the brakes - gently at first and then more aggresively as the bike failed to slow down at all as I pitched down into the steep gulch.  I no longer felt like I was in control.  I could see how this might end up badly if I weren’t careful.  Carefully, then, I took a fraction of a second to evaluate my options.  I was heading into a deep rocky rut, one likely to deprive me of both steering and brakes.  My tires churned forward in a direction no longer of my choosing.  I was heading for the lip of the rut and If I couldn’t stop pretty much immediately, I’d go airborne.  Experience taught me that always hurt, so I pulled back hard on the brakes while I still had brakes to pull.

Something moved, and I moved with it.  My momentum lifted me over the bike’s handlebars, which I released as they twisted away under me.  I knew that the only option now was to try to land intelligently.  Luckily, I didn’t have too long to think about it.  Extricating myself somehow from the toeclips I tucked, rolled, landed on my right ass cheek, tumbled and slid down the hillside for a while.

I lay where I landed for as long as I needed to.  My breath eventually came back, and then the feeling in my extremities.  One bit at a time I tested my body for traumatic injury: nothing was broken.  Everything worked.  I was filthy - dirt was ground deep into my entire right side and dust lay thickly on the rest of me; my right knee was bleeding freely from a big deep serving of road rash, and my left elbow and arm were scraped up pretty good and starting to seep red too - but nothing was broken.  That meant everything was fine.  I slowly stretched myself back into vertical orientation and considered my circumstances. 

I then made two discoveries: I really was all alone out there on the side of the mountain; and the bike was now unrideable.  I had flown over the handlebars because they’d suddenly twisted 90 degrees in the headset and were now parallel with my front tire.  It was all messed up and I wasn’t prepared to fix it.  My helmet was cracked, too - I must have hit my head at some point.  I didn’t remember that.  That didn’t seem like a good sign.  However, my head felt fine.  On the other hand, my knee was bleeding pretty steadily, my whole body was astonishingly filthy, blood was starting to trickle down my left arm and my right butt cheek was profoundly sore.  An ache was settling into my joints and muscles.  The sun was now hidden by fog and my sweat was cold on my skin. 

Well what do you know?  This darn story still ain’t told.  Come tomorrow I ought to be able to wrap it up.  See ya then, I hope.  Today I have an out-of-office appointment.  Should be a real good one.  Wish me luck, past and future!