Any Other Tuesday

This particular Tuesday starts at 07:00, with mountain bikes in tow. My twin brother and I set off for my father's house to go mountain biking at the famous Blankets Creek, a mountain biking park off of Sixes road known for its well kept trails and technical terrain. The three of us arrived at around 08:30 at the park, ready to hit the trails. It was a cool morning as we watched the sun crest over the trees; the night before it had stormed where we lived about thirty minutes away, but the trails were surprisingly dry, with only a few patches of muddy dirt and puddles. Hoping on our bikes we rode out for a warm up on a trail called Mosquito Flats, a beginner trail with lots of technical sections, such as wood beam bridges and rock crosses to get us ready for the day.

After the successful completion of the trail, the three of us decided to do a trail we had never done before, called Van Michael. After reading the trail card and deciding that it would be an intermediate trail perfect for us to work up a good sweat. The very unskilled trio, thought this would be totally doable and set off upon the trail.

We began the ascent up, which was steeper than all of us expected, but we forged ahead regardless, knowing that eventually the trail had to go downwards, filling us with hope for an awesome downhill ride. About twenty minutes into the ride we got to a flat section where my father stopped to inspect his knee, which he had hurt in a Jiu Jitsu accident years prior. It had popped out of place, and he was attempting to put it back before going on yet another ascent farther up the hill. After five minutes of pushing, prodding, and pleading with his knee, it finally went back into place, and we once again continued.

Thirty to forty five minutes later with my twin Ryan a ways down the trail because I am a slow and inexperienced rider, my father and I decided to try and switch bikes, because he wanted to try mine out. But my father decided to change gears before giving it to me, and just as I stepped on to begin riding the older but superior bike, we heard a pop on the back tire and then the bike refused to move.

My father and I turned around to find out that the derailer on the bike was caught in a tire spoke, and that a piece of chain had popped out of its socket, rendering the bike unusable. The vintage Gary Fisher bike which the family had owned since I can remember, with a seized front shock and vintage gum wall tires, had finally given up.

Despite this unfortunate setback, my father and I were only halfway done with the almost 4 mile trail, and with my brother long gone, it was up to us to fix the broken bike. After twenty infuriating minutes attempting to force the derailer out of the spoke by hand, I remembered that I had a Leatherman multitool in my backpack, and utilizing the pliers, brute force, and a plethora of colorful language, we got the derailer out of the spoke.Then, it was on to how to fix the chain link enough, so that we could get the bike off of the trail and back to the car. Squeezing the pliers on the chain, we bent it enough in order to allow us to coast the bike down the trail.

My father trailed me on the broken bike while I rode ahead in case he needed any help, but nor more than twenty minutes after fixing the bike I was going too fast on a berm and clipped a tree with my handlebar, throwing me off the bike and putting a cut on my knee and shoulder and hurting my wrist was swelling up quickly. When my father finally caught up to me and assessed the damage, we began wandering aimlessly with the bikes down the trail in order to get back to the cars and go to the hospital.

After wandering for what felt like an hour we stumbled upon a man named Rob, a 31 year old man who was scouting for chanterelle mushrooms for stew who guided my father and I through the maze of trails and back to our cars where we loaded up the bikes, cleaned a little bit of blood off and went to Kennestone Hospital.

At the hospital, I waited for an hour before getting put in a hall bed with a nurse who took vitals and sent for a doctor. After about forty five minutes and a few x-rays later, the doctor finally saw me to tell me the x-rays hadn't come in and that he wasn't sure I broke it. Another forty five minutes passed and he came back to tell me that my wrist was too swollen to say for sure if my wrist was broken or not. So he decided to put a cloth brace on it and told me to hang tight and wait for a nurse to help clean up my bleeding wounds. An hour passed and a nurse finally came to clean my shoulder with a wet wipe, and then discharged me.

The next day I went to an orthopedic surgeon to get a follow up and determine if my wrist was broken or not. My appointment time was for 1:30, and it took almost 2 hours before I saw a doctor because they were so busy. After I finally saw the doctor, he determined my wrist was broken, and now I have a cool purple cast. And that is just another Tuesday.