Thursday 14 November.
My ride today was some of the Trails that make up the ride called the "Magnificent 7" That ride needs the service of a shuttle, so I planned to do a loop.
The area is on the way to two National Parks, Dead Horse Point State Park, and Canyonlands National Park. Here are a few pics as I drove to the start of my ride. WOW.
The stunning scenery continued at the start of my ride
The first trail was on a combination of slick rock and single track. It's easy to lose ones way when on the slickrock, so the trail is painted. This trail had green markers. The rest of the trail wasn't that noteworthy (relative to other rides), so I mostly left my camera in it's bag.
..but of course as soon as a worthy moment arose out came the camera. WOW
The following were on the rock at the location where I took the 2 pics above.
Ah ha! After about 10km of gradual climbing, I reached the end of the first trail, "Getaway", and the rode up the unsurfaced road to the start of the "Bull Run" trail, which I was really looking forward to ridng.
Now here's a view that I see when I've doubled over the handlebars gasping for breath. This unsurfaced road was steep and corrugated. Not ideal.
On the way to the trailhead for "Bull Run".
At the"Bull Run" trailhead!
…but I looked at the description of the Mag 7 system before I dropped in to "Bull Run"
WOAH. The first 60-90 secs of the trail was awesome, techy, but not too techy, fast but not too fast…and then I came across this canyon.
A wall
A close up of the wall
OK, let's not forget that we have riding to do! My bike is to the right of the pic
This was the section of trail immediately following the tree just ahead of my bike in the pic above. Chunky! Fun! Would have been FAST if I hadn't stopped to take the pics above.
Just a little further on, the chunk continues.
There were many little ledges to climb, and chunky areas of trail to deal with. In the photo immediately below the yellow paint is on the last step/ledge. These sections were tricky because they were approaches were "blind", blocked by trees/foliage or other rocky sections. Good challenges, good fun!
The views were still spectacular
What was the ground like?
There was more stunning as I came upon a canyon to my right.
a quick look to my left
before going through the gate
..through the gate, let's roll
Not more stunning scenes! I love the "funeral stone" like arrangement in the mid ground, I couldn't stop photographing it.
Ahhh, yes, we come to scene of my crash. I hit a poorly trimmed branch of the tree in the left of this pic with my right pinkie finger. This is where the biked ended up after the crash.
This is the offending *expletive deleted* branch
I went down hard, sideways. The right hand side of the bike slowed as my hand hit, but the left side kept going (just like a merry-go-round), but I'd lost balance, so the bike and I went down on our left hand sides. Just like the Titanic really. My left elbow and knee took the impact. Ouch. It was the kind of pain that one where one doesn't know what to do… walk around...sit down…lie down. I sat down. I wasn't happy. My left knee and right hand were screaming. My right hand felt a lot like it did when I broke the 4th metacarpal in 2010.
The rather good pic below shows the initial impact point on my upper pinkie (and this through the glove that I was wearing). You can already see the swelling around the joint and the knuckle…and the finger doesn't want to sit next to its friend…even though the pinkie is straight.
Obviously with my "Montana Mountain Man" toughness I was able to get up, take the pics you've seen, and think about what next.
Could I ride. How far was it back to the car? How long would it take if I had to walk? Would I make it before sunset?
Was my finger broken? Would I able to ride in Cleveland... I'd just spent $450 on airfares, though thankfully not yet on accommodation or a hire car. If broken, would I need to head back to Aus to have it fixed? - there was no point in having it dealt with in the US given that I had only 4 weeks left (let's leave the US expense out of it). It if needed to be fixed, would I have to fly back to Aus soon so I could see a specialist before he/she went on X-Mas holiday until end Jan??
Anyway, I had to get back to the car, so I set the suspension on my bike so as soft as possible, lowered the seat, and jumped on! After 20 metres I came across this chunkiness that had me walking. This was going to be a slow trip back to the car.
…but at least had amazingly beautiful scenery to take my breath away, and have me continually reaching for my camera.
back to riding…and here was another trail feature that had me walking, a climb that was rough and had steps and junctions between the rock slabs…arrgghhh
but wait… more stunning, stunning views...
A puncture, an *expletive deleted* puncture. A *different expletive deleted* puncture. *expletive deleted*. I tried to walk the bike for a while, but it was a chore, and ssllooww - my GPS told me that I had another 4km back to the car… and I didn't feel like walking. So, I manned up and decided to fix it. Fortunately getting the tire off and on was easy, and my pump is supported by ones foot, so my one and half handed change - led by my non-preferred hand - wasn't too bad.
New tube fitted. I consider myself fortunate that I had a good workbench available to me. Note that even though I was stress and uncomfortable, I still managed to have the tyre logo centred above the valve, and the valve was straight. These things matter.
Almost ready to roll
WOW. WOW. WOW. WOW. Most of the end of "Bull Run" is along the edge of this cliff. Cool.
Tree
Formations
Great, more uphill chuck that I had to get off and walk. It was much easier riding downhill on chunk - my hand could simply "hang on" - rather than have to do something as it would on a section like this. This feature would have been fun if I hadn't been injured. The "post accident" trail was easier than the first part of the trail, so my slow and cautious ride had me making good time.
This was the short section of smooth singletrack that takes one back the unsealed road that leads to where my car was parked.
Half a mile to my car
almost there…as the sun was setting
and…I was there.
Bike mounted and ready to head back to my motel.
My hand was throbbing, but my knee had stopped complaining at some point when I was riding. A good sign for my hand was that I was able to load the bike on to the roof relatively painlessly.
My finger throbbed as I drove home.
It throbbed like hell when I iced it for the first time at the motel. By this time my knee has started complaining. Not only had it bourne the impact with the ground (LHS), but the RHS of my knee had hit something on the bike on the way down, so both sides were complaining.
I didn't sleep well last night, and woke up early.
You can read about my day today (Friday) in a post that I've already written and will post soon. *smiles*
Writing this post has brought back to me what a wonderful day it was, despite the crash and my injuries.
Even more interestingly, as I was accepting that I may not be able to ride again this trip, and may even have to head home early if surgery was required, I was almost happy; that's depression for you folks…it messes with ones head. If I couldn't ride, then I couldn't beat myself up:
- if I wanted to ride the day before...but by the morning it was conceptually too hard or somehow unappealing, or
- if couldn't or didn't want to out of bed early enough to do what I was really excited about the night before, or
- because riding or doing other things seems/ed like a chore
So, what's on tomorrow (Saturday), you ask? There is rain forecast for the afternoon (which is when I tend to get out and be active). I may get up super early to see the sun rise from within one of the National Parks…but that would mean getting out of bed at 5:30am… Time will tell.
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