Cross Country Downhill

I now understand why downhill mountain bikers wear armour.

So I headed up to Winterpark yesterday with Andy, Jason, Tara and a couple of Jason and Tara's friends, Rex and Courtney. I'm a cross country rider. I have a hardtail bike. This means just a little suspension in the front and none whatsoever in the rear. Did this deter me from hitting the jumps and riding fast? Pfft, of course not! I did, however borrow a full face helmet from Tara. Thank god I did. Well, riding the lift up was a pretty sweet gig, and the trails down are pretty much fast flowy single track. Perfect for a cross country bike. The washboards, jumps and drops, however may have had me wanting a bit of suspension. I road 4 runs with the folks and on the last one, near the bottom I got separated. Took a wrong turn at a road intersection and missed Andy and Tara who had stopped to wait for me. Not knowing if they were in front or behind, I continued on with a stop and wait here and there because they are both faster downhill riders than I. Well, I got to a really nice wall ride and did about half of it. Waited at the bottom for Andy and Tara and decided that if they were at the bottom, they could wait another minute, if not, I would probably run into them here. So I hiked back up and wanted to hit the wall ride all the way. Oh yeah, and it was raining a little bit.

INTERMISSION! (insert Monty Python worthy intermission music. and a llama.)

Well I picked up a bunch of speed and laid into the wall. Everything was going GREAT until I saw the last 1/4 wet with rain. Shit. Well, I was committed so I hit it and, predictably, my bike immediately slid out from under me. I was thrown onto the top of the wall, which had started sloping down, slid on my left hip and knee as my left ribs slammed into a small tree which, thankfully, collapsed under me. This rolled me over and my right arm scraped along something. Probably a tree to judge by the wound. I then slid the rest of the way down the wall on my right hip. Oh, and somewhere along the line, I think my full face helmet contacted a tree, though not hard. Ouch.

I picked up my bike, twisted the handlebars back to the correct orientation, reseated my rear derailleur cable and checked for any additional damage. Slight bend in the saddle, but nothing structural. Whew. All in all, f***ing lucky. With the speed I was carrying and the lack of armour, I would have been heading to the emergency room with broken ribs had it not been for the tree falling over.

I limped my way down and Andy and Tara came down shortly after myself. Luckily it was the last run of the day anyway so I lost nothing and got an interesting story out of the mix.

The moral of the story? Wear armour.