Wicked Shinner

Coming off a week of COVID-19, I wasn’t expecting much from this trials ride. I was taking it pretty easy – not only was I easily exhausted, I didn’t want to get hurt. I started slow on some simple lines, but actually worked up to some halfway decent lines. Until a brutal shin dig sent me to the emergency room! (Note: It’s pretty gross, but if you really want to see the bloody gore, go to my Instagram channel.)

After some simple (but apparently too challenging) gaps across single pallet stacks, I decided to refocus on doing some “other “cooler” lines before wearing myself out. So I started with a 5-pallet roll-up and drop gap. Feeling a little shaky, I decided to transition to some lines that were closer to the ground. My focus for the afternoon was trying to stay on the rear wheel. I managed to have a limited level of success, nailing some of the lines, having some sloppy successes, and in other cases, managing parts of the line on the rear wheel, but having to transition to two wheels. Regardless, I was actually fairly happy with my riding, doing some moves I wasn’t actually expecting to pull off, including some pedalups and static gaps up to rear.

In addition to what’s in the video, I also messed around with some lines that ended up looking kinda dumb. So not all of the lines made it into the video. Oh well, that happens.

Okay, so the elephant in the room: what actually happened? After doing all the rear wheel hops, I was inspired by a recent Ali Clarkson video to do a two-wheel drop gap from a stack of pallets to a single pallet, with a gap just big enough to reach across. It was all going well as I landed the front wheel on the bottom pallet and lunged across the gap. Unfortunately, the rear wheel came down a little hard and my strong (right) foot slipped off the pedal. If you’ve seen the Crank Brothers Stamp 7 flat pedals, you know they have some nasty pins. One of those beauties instantly sliced me open.

After uttering some… words… I put away the bike and asked my wife – who was busy in the vegetable garden – to drive me to the emergency room. She’s a good sport, so off we went. Eventually the staff sutured up my leg with somewhere around nineteen stitches. Yep, pretty special. Just in time to take our son on a couple college campus visits a week later, with a Frankensteinian wound on my leg. While it (fortunately) garnered less attention than I’d expected, I did see some glances at my leg by the tour guides and one mother who exclaimed, “what happened to your leg?!?” when she noticed the jagged mess. “Imagine parkour on a bicycle…”

Despite the annoying injury, I had a good time on this ride. Other than tearing open my leg, it was rather motivating.