I'll seek to suck a bit of pretense out of the thread (not that there is any really, BUT there could be!) with some self-deprecating humor.
Sometimes the seemingly non-technical suddenly becomes technical. At least for me it does. What should have been a nice pic of me crossing a nice little bridge became an ordeal that lasted several days and some sleepless nights.
The first couple treads of the bridge were missing, and it was totally my fault for not pulling up enough as I hit the first tread. Even though the front wheel eventually got up and over that first tread, an unfortunate chain of events was already set into irreversible motion. In this case, the moment that the true injury was preceded by the insult was captured here as the stem appears to have scored a decisive blow to an altogether underutilized part of my anatomy.
What you may not yet have noticed, is that my cat-quick reflexes managed to get a hoof, er. . . . . I mean. . . . foot unclipped and tried to stabilize the ship as she listed hard to her starboard side. What I did not know is that the tread I was stepping down hard onto was not secured well and was beginning flip up out of place, which only hastened to inevitable conclusion.
Over the bars and off the side into the creek I went. being the somewhat optimistic person that I am, I managed to find the good side of my misfortune in stride with the bad. The creek water did not taste as bad as I thought it might, and I was able to stand up quickly enough to keep the Blackberry Storm in my shorts pocket from being fatally saturated in the near stagnant creek. And, the creek bottom turned out to be almost entirely soft sand.
I say 'almost', as there was only one rock in that whole area. It was a triangle shaped rock about 4" x 6" with pretty sharp edges. I know it had pretty sharp edges because it cut my elbow open almost all the way to the bone. Luckily, we had a pretty good crew with us, and they irrigated to wound with fresh water to clean it out, and it was on the outside of my elbow where I couldn't really see what was really going on. It didn't really hurt (yet), and it was so early in our ride that I wanted to continue on with the group (a less than brilliant strategy in retrospect) since I had organized the ride and so many people had driven a long way to be there.
This happened well before noon, and we didn't finish riding until after 4:00 p.m. As soon as we returned to Aspen Glen to our cars, someone had some hydrogen peroxide in their car and we poured some onto the wound. It was throbbing pretty good by now. It was a Sunday afternoon in Big Bear, so other than the ER, I didn't have many options and decided to wait until morning to go to the local urgent care (I was camping up there).
No, that is not shaving cream, it's the foam from the hydrogen peroxide
Went to urgent care in the morning after a hellish night of trying to sleep. The Vicodin we had stashed in the trailer did little to help. The doc said I had waited too long, and he would not be able to close it with stitches. He ended up inserting a small section of hose in the deepest section of the would (to allow it to drain) and inserting a staple on each side of it, and writing a prescription for some fresh Vicodin (which was also largely ineffective for at least a couple more nights).
This last pic is about 10 days later after my home doctor had removed the hose several days prior.
