It was just a numbers game.
For the last few years I’ve been so focused on progressing that, I started getting used
to gambling with my body.
And it’s true, I’ve walked away from so many crashes that the working assumption was
that I’d always bail just in time.
After all, I’m Seth’s motherfreaking bike hacks.
Yes, I did suffer a separated shoulder which will look like this forever, but that was
soft tissue damage.
This is my first skeletal injury ever, and it actually could have been a lot worse.
Let’s talk about how and why it happened, and what its implications are.
On Saturday I visited Grapefruit trails as the first stop on my Florida trip.
The plan was to meet with Patrons for a really casual day of hitting jumps, grilling up hot
dogs, and having some laughs.
As you can see, things were going perfectly.
Grapefruit trails is a community freeride park in Palm Bay.
With really sandy soil and basically no elevation, the place has taken a massive amount of ingenuity
to build and maintain.
It’s an inspiration to any community that doesn’t have a place to ride.
In fact, the locals sometimes rely on better dirt trucked in from the outside.
While many of the jump surfaces at grapefruit are bolstered with carpet, the BMX jumps at
the back are as firm and grippy as any I’ve ever seen.
This is important, because I was riding my single speed hardtail.
I had it set up for singletrack, with 30 PSI in the tires.
And I should have been running double that.
While carving left on the lip, my front tire folded under.
This happens when lateral force is applied to your wheel.
If the ground doesn’t give, your tire will.
So halfway up the lip, I lost all my speed and smeashed straight into the backside of
the landing.
This is the hand that took most of the impact.
I knew I had hit the ground really hard, but I couldn’t tell if I was hurt yet.
We went back to the trailhead to grill hot dogs and take a breather.
Other than not riding, I was all but ignoring my injury.
After all, I would be back on my bike within a week—I was sure of it.
So after lunch I went back in to film the locals.
As the day wore on, I started to suspect that something might be wrong.
Although I could hold the camera with my right hand, my left hurt so badly that I couldn’t
even get my cell phone out of my pocket.
I decided to wrap things up and maybe get it checked out.
The fractures were in my radius.
That’s the larger of the two bones in your forearm.
One was hairline, while the other had a pretty significant gap, not quite big enough to require
surgery.
The doctor said I could return to jumping couches by 3 months, with light trail riding
a little sooner than that.
For now, I’m in a cast, and it’s itchy.
It’s also really difficult to type with.
When I shower I need to use this thing to keep it from getting wet.
I’m also going to need to rely on other activities to keep my strength up.
If I want to hit the ground running this spring, I’ll need to maintain my cardio and bone
density.
We might even see a little bit of Seth’s Hike Hacks.
As for the videos, they will continue on.
I can’t promise anything interesting next week, but once I get back to my shop it’ll
be business as usual.
I’m kind of excited for the challenge.
Since my instagram post I’ve been getting tons of support from you guys, sometimes in
the form of commiseration.
We all deal with injuries, some worse than others, and thankfully I’ll be making a
full recovery from this.
Anyway, thanks for all the well wishes and keep an eye on my instagram for little updates
about this.
Thanks for riding with me today, and I’ll see you next time.