Dave tells me that the day after Valentine’s is Black Day in Korea. It supposed to be a day for singles, but I think its a total different meaning for the poor bloke we came across on the trail up St. Louis. Literally. Late this afternoon met up with Kevyn and Scat and shuttled up to the park. We were figuring on two runs, so cut to the right outside of mainline and took the nice little tight track. It was quite dry and conditions were getting a little sketchy, my back tire was getting quite skittish, but it was fun! We pop out in the middle of the jump zone, just before “Lawsuit”. Scat says something and then comes to a stop. I catch something white in my eye, then see it’s someone on the ground as I cruise by. I come to a stop as I hear the words “broken collar bone”. Uh oh. I see middle ageish caucasian dude is on the ground. I didn’t even realize that I had ridden between where his bike had stopped and where he landed. It’s a dually, he’s not set up for hardcore DH, he is with his young son. He’s quite coherent, knows what’s going on, and is quite calm. Which is good, for everyone, and I think really helps his young son, being all of seven years old.
Just minutes before us, he had taken the second jump and landed badly, OTB, and into the dirt with his shoulder. He was now collected enough that we helped him up, and figured he could walk it. Thankfully it was mainline so the hike out was not too bad and easy to push two bikes. We made it out to the parking lot, and considering everything, Joe collarbone (yes, his name really was Joe) was in pretty good spirits. He was able to joke around. We helped load up his and kids bikes and made sure he was ok. He had already called his wife, who conveniently, or maybe not, heads the ER at St. Francis. He called for an ambulance since he wasn’t sure if he could drive. It looked like things were under control, so we gave him our best wishes and headed back for the trails.
We’d eaten some time, and things like this tend to make you a bit gun shy, so we decided to make it one run. We dropped into dumps, which again I was finding pretty sketchy. My semi-knobby rear was all over the place. Just as we came to the pause at the drop into the wood bridges of lower Dumps, we heard the ambulance, so we knew Joe was going to be taken care of. It was down to Dumps we dropped. I was scrubbing a lot of speed, being pretty cautious. I caught sight of someone who said something to someone out of sight which diverted my attention so I detoured around the rock jumps near the end of Dumps. We climbed back up to Mainline. The sun was blazing but getting low in the sky so was finding riding into the making for some challenging visibility. Turning off into the cover of Tacos was better. Continued through the twists down Ant Hill. Then headed down to the exit of Agave and took the Tank exit. From there it was onto the short section paralleling the concrete road, which was as sketchy as always. A brief rest at the concrete road, and then we finished the trail out. It was a decent ride, but the earlier events had kind of muted the feel of the ride. Thankfully all was good, and the kid was going to have a story to tell all his buddies at school tomorrow!
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