From my last entry I decided to go out midday and recover my house and mail box key. Midday a hot time out here today (102) and in addition to that we had a monsoon storm warning which means all river beds could flash flooding at any time. Realizing if I waited until tomorrow the keys would probably be washed away. So off I went at 70% of race speed through the sand washes trying to keep the bike hydroplaning and beat the thunderheads which were about to break. As I was about to maneuver around a tree I hit some extra soft sand silt which drove my front tire into the wash causing my front tire to turn and dive, not something I am not used to dealing with but this time since I was doing 45 MPH instead of 30 all the counter steering didn’t help and it was too late to bail off, a trick I was good at in my younger days. Having a choice between the tree and a rocky section of the wash I opted for the rocky wash and skidded into home plate and happy I had all my protective gear on except for my MX boots. So yes you guessed it, my right lower leg took the big hit between the rocks and my 300 pound Suzy. Fortunately I was wearing my hiking boots which saved my ankle but not without bruising the it pretty well. The only other damage was to my chest protector which was cracked and my shins and forearms which had rug burns from the protective gear which took the brunt of the hit on the rocks, and oh yes I did recover my lost key just before the wash was getting inundated with water. No time to assess further damage I hobbled back aboard the Suzy (thank goodness for electric starters), spanked the starter a few times to clear the fuel which had flooded the engine, then held the throttle open and she fired up and got me back out even tough I was unable to use my right leg to break or balance. Anyway I got home, got the mail and took a couple pictures of the damage which turned out to be just outer bruising and swelling from the impact but no spraining since my leg didn’t twist and although it was a hard hit the dirt unlike the pavement of a street absorbed a lot of the impact. I have crashed about 20 times in the dirt in my lifetime mostly as a young man and this crash was about a 6 on a scale of 10 but I must admit that at 49 I don’t bend and bounce as well as when I was 19 and I seem to swell more. Suffice it to say that in the scheme of trying to have fun it hasn’t been my first crash and it will probably not be my last. Lessons learnedare don’t skimp on wearing all your gear as I would have been much more injured had I not had on my body armor but being too lazy to put to ware my metal reinforced MX boots, it cost me not only a bit of pain but lost time riding.
All of life involves risk especially in sports but its important to mitigate those risks by making sure you have taken all the reasonable safety considerations training and knowing your limitations. In my case all of this was done except for the boots which cost me, and of course Gods grace which protected me.
