It's inevitable when biking across the country with 31 people that someone is going to get some road rash. Well that happened for the first time the other day and I have to say that it was one of the scariest things that I've experienced. Fortunately, I was the one that fell, but I saw the while thing play out right in front of me.
It started like any normal ride day. We get up early, ate breakfast, had route meeting, and set off to a new town. It was quite a pleasant ride, we only got chased by one group of dogs as compared to five the previous day. Just about when I was starting to hate dogs as a whole, we came across a litter of puppies. There were at least six of them and they were the cutest little guys. It made for a great morning.
Moving on, we came across a beautiful lake. We considered swimming but it was too early in the day to get wet and have to ride in we're chamois, it just makes for long uncomfortable afternoon. We instead decided to just have a photo opp.
Later on we came across a water tower. My riding buddy for the day, Will, saw me eyeing it up and told me that we were going to climb it. So we did. It required a bit of monkey skills but we were able to hop the fence and get up onto the ladder. It was a bit nerve racking as we went higher and higher but overcoming the fear and getting to the top was well worth it. We enjoyed the view for a while, Will, Kevin, and myself, and them we climbed back down, hopped back on our bikes and rolled out looking to get lunch soon.
Not five minutes later, I'm coasting after just riding down a nice sized hill, I see Will do a bunny hop over the small rumble strip, and as he lands his tired slip out from under him and he takes a tumble.
I ride up to make sure he's okay, I first thought he just scraped up his knees and elbows. He got up by himself, I got his bike off the road, and we crossed the street into a clearing so we could sit and clean himself off. Turns out he did a little more than scrape up his knees, he dislocated his shoulder. I was a lot freaked out having never experienced this before and especially when he asked me to help pop it back in. The two others, Kevin and Chloe that were riding just in front of us heard the commotion and came back as well. His shoulder wasn't popping in like it normally does, so we decided to call the van... This is when the story gets interesting.
None of us had service. We knew we were relatively close to lunch (where the van is parked) but relatively could mean 5 miles or 10 miles. So after a minute or so of trying to call with no luck I decided that I would get on my bike and book it as fast as I could to lunch, tell the leader, and have her go back and get him. So I rode off flying, I was clocking 20mph for a good 4 miles when I started to get winded. I didn't know how much longer I could keep it up, but I knew I had to keep going because Will might not have said it, but his face was telling us that he was in a lot of pain. So to get to lunch as fast as I could, I saw a pick up truck stopped on a side road ready to pull out in the same direction I was going. I rode over to them (Barb and Bill were there names) and asked if they could take me the rest of the way. They told me to hope in, I threw my bike in the back, and we drove off to find the van. Turns out it was only another half mile, so I could have easily done it, but again, it could have been another 5 miles.
Upon arriving, we unhooked the trailer from the van and the leader, Casey, and I rode back to pick him up. We are almost at the spot where I left him and what do you know, he's back on his bike riding along. He had clearly popped his shoulder back into place. Against our advice, he decided to continue for the day. I encouraged him to at least van it until lunch, but he refused.
Those few miles of sprinting to lunch allowed me to think of all of the negative things that could have happened. What if it doesn't pop in, we'll have to take him to the hospital. What if he has to get surgery, he won't be able to finish the trip. But in the end he was fine. Sure he was in a little pain, but he powered through it like a champ!
