Saturday's race was held in beautiful weather, on a fast, long & skinny course in a residential district. There wasn't really anything to split the pack up; breaks never got more than about ten seconds up the road. The pavement on the backside was kind of sketchy, and when eighty guys are going into the final two corners six abreast at 30 mph...well, let's just say that my teammate Mike Orlet destroyed a nearly-new Zipp rim. Somehow I hung on for nineteenth...making back my entry plus eight bucks. Yippee! Enough for dinner! We had some of the most incredible stuffed pizza I've ever gorged on, then descended on a teammates house for the night...
Sunday's race was in downtown Lancaster, sandwiched right between the
'hood and a quaint shopping district. When we awoke, it was cloudy, so
after finishing breakfast, we reflexively snapped on the Weather
Channel. Damn. There's a huge storm front moving directly towards
Lancaster. We're gonna get wet today, boys.
We arrived at the course three hours before race time...fortunately, the rain had held off so far. After battling traffic down the alleys of downtown Lancaster and parking, I picked up my number and sat down at the third corner to watch the 3-4 race.
Sunday's course is one of those courses that they use only because they've been using it for a dozen years. The start/finish stretch is pock-marked with potholes, cracks, manhole covers, and God knows what else. The second stretch isn't bad, but the back straight is gently downhill into the third corner, which is off-camber and narrow. To make matters worse, the last 100m of the back stretch are cordoned off by orange cones because of construction. The last stretch is a short uphill into another bad corner; there's a section of very rough pavement right in the middle of the corner, and then you're back into the awful pavement of the start/finish stretch.
About halfway through the 3-4 race, I feel the first drops of rain fall. This is the worst thing that could possibly happen -- although rain the previous night had washed most of the oil off the course, the riders will insist on trying to go through the corner at the same speed they did when it was dry. Sure enough: one lap after the first drops fell, CRASH! right in the third corner. From that point on, nearly every lap brought additional riders down; I think we counted ten crashes in that corner alone in the last twelve laps.
After the 3-4 race finishes, I meander back to the car, pump my tires up, pin my number on, and get dressed. I figure, "It's raining...no sense in putting on a skinsuit. I'll just wear a jersey and shorts." What a fortunate decision that was...
Fortunately, there's a parking garage at the start finish, so I ride inside for some dry pre-race warmup. We go flying down the spiral like a roller-coaster a few times, then it's time to find the start/finish and get this thing underway.
After the vet's race finishes, there's a celebrity race and a children's race before the 1-2-3 event. Most of us just try to find a place to stay warm before bolting to the start line to get a front-line spot. Sixty guys shivering on the line...waiting for the officials to get there act together and say "Go!"
Finally, we get underway. By now my legs are cold again, and the attacks go from the gun as everyone wants to get away to avoid crashing. Within the first five laps, a lone breakaway rider has a significant lead on the pack, leaving the rest of us to eat pack spray. The third corner claims a few riders each lap, but somehow I manage to avoid each of the crashes. I'm sitting about twenty riders back, not really feeling very good, watching breaks go up the road and come back.
"Ugh," I think. "My legs just aren't going to get up and go today, are they." Damn...this is a 45 lap race and we've still got 20 to go. It's gonna be a long day yet...
OK, OK. Now there's a group of four gaining on the lead rider. If I want to finish in the money, I've got to get up the road. Best start moving up...
Fly down the start/finish. Avoid the manhole cover. Slow up...there's so much water on my rims now that I'm having trouble exerting enough hand pressure on the brakes to slow up enough to go through the corner. Catch back up on the back side...ok, set up for the third corner, move over....
Oh, no. Someone else is crashing about half way between the third and fourth corner. I've been in several rainy crits already this season, and this isn't the first time I've had to avoid a crash. Make a judgment: right or left. Well, the crash looks like it's going to move to the left, into the pack, so I'll go to the right, which is the outside. Then I'll take the corner wide and get back into the pack... maybe even make up a few spots in the process.
I'd raced around this stupid course twenty-five times already, in addition to the 45 laps I did last year. I had no idea there was a ventilation grate on the road. I should have known, but I didn't.
When I veered right to avoid the crash, I discovered The Ventilation Grate: Slickest Substance on Earth. I remember looking down, seeing my front wheel going sideways, looking up, and seeing the parking sign coming at me. I don't remember separating from my bike, but I did. (Some of the mounting screws got ripped out of my cleats, I discovered later.) My head hit the parking sign square in the helmet, right above the forehead. I don't know if my helmet fell off immediately or if someone took it off me. All I knew was that my head and back hurt. That's when I started screaming profanities...
Despite the fact that I had crashed twenty feet from the ambulance, it took the EMT's a good five minutes to get to me. They put me on a backboard, and then wheeled me around in the rain for a while. I was put on a stretcher, and waited for another ambulance to come for me.
So here I am, trying not to pass out in the ambulance, and this lady's pestering me to decide whether to go to Lancaster General or St. Joseph's hospital. Uhhh...no. Can't make that decision.
After what seems like an eternity, we get to the hospital. Oh, good. This place's got really cool ceiling tiles. I hate hospitals, particularly those with crappy ceiling tiles. I'm still wearing wet shorts and a slimy jersey, but all I really want is for someone to take off my squishy shoes.
"Can I get you anything?"
A new head, perhaps? No, wait. "Could you take my shoes off?"
"Sure."
Click. Hmmm...I knew buying these Sidi shoes was a mistake. The attendant tightens my shoe a notch. "Nope, that wasn't it. You've got to press in on the upper part of the buckle." I'm sure I'm mumbling incomprehensibly, but I keep trying. Fish are probably growing in my shoes by now.
Click. If I could only get up... Turns out he had the bottom lever up, which those of you with Genius shoes will recognize as the one position that attaches the shoes permanently to your feet. Finally, he gets them loose...
A steady stream of people start asking me "how I'm doing." Hmmm. Need to develop a stock answer. "I've got a headache the size of Houston, but other than that I'm not too bad." It's a lie, but it works.
About this time I remember to ask how my bike is. Three hours elapsed between crash and inquiry of bike condition: this is a serious crash. Fortunately, my bike is fine. It's had a flat, and the "Dura-Ace" dustcap is missing from the right brake/shift lever. Whew, what a relief.
A doctor comes over and starts prodding me. "Squeeze my fingers." What is this, Beavis and Butthead go to the hospital? They wheel me in to a stall and this doctor (I swear this is the same guy who plays on Chicago Hope. Dead ringer.) puts some stitches in my forehead. "We're going to take you in for some X-rays, but we think you'll probably be alright." A few dozen ceiling tiles later, and the want me to voluntarily crawl onto a cold metal table. Sure, anything in the name of medicine. They sit me up to take some more X-rays of the neck and upper back. Sitting up hurts a lot. More than those damn uphill intervals, even. Right between the shoulder blades. Somehow, they wrench my soaked jersey off my body, take some more X-rays, and push me back to the emergency room. They want me to lay back down, and that hurts almost as bad as sitting up did...
My teammates come in and try to console me. I'm trying to hold an intelligent conversation with them, but my semi-functional right eye doesn't help much. Doesn't matter, they're wheeling me off again for some CT scans. I think that's probably a bad sign, but my head hurts so much that I don't really care.
At least the CT scan gurney is warmer. More wriggling. "Shallow breath, hold it. Shallow breath, hold it. Shallow breath, hold it..." More ceiling tiles; back to the emergency room.
Now the Chicago Hope guy comes over, looking worried. "You've got a compression fracture of the T4 vertebrae, and simple fractures of the T3 and T5 vertebrae." Umm, broken bones. Swell. Can I leave? "We're going to call a neurologist and an orthopedic surgeon." That's a no on the leaving, I guess. It's six hours after the race and I'm still wearing wet shorts. The bacteria are going to start biting my butt soon.
Eventually, "Vinny" shows up. I can't remember whether Vinny's an orthopedic specialist or a neurosurgeon, but he is a character. He's wearing a purple silk shirt open to his stomach. Great, all the doctors in the world, and I get the Italian Mob guy. Still, I trust him absolutely. Vinny tells me that the fractures in my back are quite serious and I'm going to have to wait in the hospital until they can get a brace for my back. That'll be "Probably Tuesday, but maybe Wednesday morning, since the brace shop will be closed on Memorial Day." Half-drunk, I implore Vinny to get me out of the hospital by Tuesday. Heck, I've got to get back on the bike! Not to mention a thesis to write. I'm going to have to be in this brace for six weeks, but at the time, that didn't seem like the thing to worry about. Little did I realize what I was about to go through...
So I'm admitted to the hospital. Aha! An elevator! No ceiling tiles! Being basically anal, I try to figure out where they're taking me, what my room number is, and who my neighbors are, but it's not too easy when your only clue is the ceiling tiles and you can't move. We get to my room, and I wriggle on to the bed. I'm sure that I look like some kind of bizarre fungus, writhing from stretcher to bad, but my back still hurts like hell and it's better for me to move myself. It will be three days 'till I get out of that bed. One of the nurses helps me out of my shorts and puts on a hospital gown. I'm presented with a pain pill and a urinal. My teammates, who have been with me the whole time, wish me a good night and depart.
I sleep erratically; my back and head both make sleeping difficult. About four in the morning, a nurse comes in and shines a flashlight in my eyes. Another pain pill helps me sleep until morning.
Later that afternoon, the brace man shows up to measure me for the brace. He's spent the weekend on the beach in New Jersey, and he apparently crashed his motorcycle, breaking his collarbone. A joke about "the blind leading the blind..." starts to form in my mind but never quite coalesces. He's going to have to order some parts from Florida, so the brace won't be ready until Wednesday. Great, another day of lying in bed slurping down lousy hospital food.
About the time he leaves, the pain in my back starts getting out of control. It's only been two hours since my last Percocet, and it hardly made a dent. I try to ease it by moving my legs and arms around, playing with the tilt of the bed, anything, but none of it helps. Finally, night comes, and I ask for a sleeping pill. Thank God for drugs.
Sometime during the night, the muscles in both my upper arms cramp up. This wakes me up, and the sleeping pill leaves me disoriented. For some reason, I think that my arms and legs have detached from my body and that my torso has become a ray of bright red light. Oddly, this does not bother me.
Tuesday. Somehow, breakfast doesn't seem so appetizing this morning; I eat the cereal, drink the juice and a little coffee. I'm telling you, you haven't lived until you've had coffee through a straw. I remember that the Lancaster pro race is today. If only I could stand up, I'd go watch. Instead, I flip through the TV channels. I've got this ancient remote, which doesn't make matters any easier. It consists of one button: you press it once to turn the TV on, once to change the channel (up only), and when you get to the end it turns off. Alright! MacGyver! After that, though, it's right back to sleep.
Mr. Miller is the guy in the room next to mine. He sounds to be about 80, with severe senility. His wife brought him in because she just couldn't deal with him anymore. Mr. Miller spends most of his time moaning, "God damn it, somebody help me!" I overhear preparations being made to take him to a hospice. I think that I would rather die in a bicycle wreck than end up like Mr. Miller. Somehow, this makes me feel better.
I've been given a double room, which has been empty until now. Mr. Witherspoon now joins me. Mr. Witherspoon is 45, and he's been smoking for 33 years. He also works in a foundry, where he elects not to use any sort of dust mask. He seems surprised by his inability to breathe. They give him some medicine, he feels better, and starts insisting that he be allowed to go home. Apparently, his logic works like this: Since he works in the foundry, there's no real reason to quit smoking; and since he smokes, there's no real reason to wear the dust mask. I spend a good half an hour considering the beautiful circularity of his logic. Mr. Witherspoon reminds me of a character in Catch-22. At night, he snores like a freight train. When he wakes me up at two in the morning, I get kind of perturbed and start surreptitiously tossing little pieces of ice in his direction. Eventually, I hit him, he wakes up, rolls over, and stops snoring. A small victory, maybe, but an important one. I wonder what he thinks in the morning when he finds the wet spots in his bed.
2:30. The brace guy arrives. He and his broken clavicle start adjusting this medieval thing to fit me. There's a aluminum stave that attaches a chin rest to the brace, and Andre (the brace guy) puts a mean bend in it. It still hits my neck, so he bends it a little more...SNAP! Andre has broken the stave. Now he has to go back to the office, get a new stave, re-bend it...In short, he's not going to be done until 4 P.M. By then, physical therapy will be closed. The upshot is that I get another tasty hospital meal, another night of crappy TV, and another night of Mr. Witherspoon's sawing. I think that if my back wasn't broken in eight places, I'd get up and kick Andre's keester.
At least I'm allowed to get up Wednesday night and walk around the hospital for a bit. It feels really good to move around. I'm dizzy, and I'm glad to have someone to point out obstacles, but being out of bed again is a great feeling. I tell the nurses that my walk was "better than sex."
Finally, Thursday. I get my X-rays taken, then it's off to Physical Therapy. PT consists of someone telling me that I can't see below my arms, and walking up and down the hall. Oh, yeah, stairs too. There's a guy who looks like he should be a bouncer at a bar following me around, even though I can't imagine falling down. For this, I'll probably pay $200...
And so, with some parting instructions (including "Don't ride" (DOH!)), I leave St. Joseph's hospital. I crawl into my car, and a friend starts the two and a half hour drive back to State College. We stop at a convenience store halfway home, and I get a Coke and a Hershey's Chocolate Eclair ice cream bar. I bite into the ice cream, and it's the most amazing thing I've ever tasted. Dozens of taste buds that have lain dormant for four days suddenly spring back to life. I almost make the guy driving me go back for another.
a comminuted fracture of the body of T4 with extension to the left parasagittal posterior cortex. At the point of posterior extension, there is mild buckling of the cortex with slight posterior displacement of the body measuring approximately 3mm. There is a fracture of the superior endplate and body of T3 with no evidence of posterior fracture displacement. There is a mildly comminuted fracture of the body of T5 with no posterior cortical extension identified. There is a fracture of the left transverse process of T5.I've been told that this is a really bizarre injury; how I managed to fracture the thoracic vertebrae, which are relatively strong and well supported, without damaging the relatively weaker cervical vertebrae is still a mystery. (If anyone out there actually saw me crash, I would love to talk to you. Please send me e-mail.) Had I damaged the vertebrae any closer to my spinal cord, I'd probably be at least partially paralyzed.
My helmet was broken into four pieces. The plastic ring that is supposed to keep the helmet together upon impact was broken over my right eye. I have no doubt that had I not been wearing a helmet, my injuries would have been much more serious. The helmet, a two-year-old Specialized Sub 6 that went across the big pond and back with me, is now a trophy on my wall. As I write this, a little more than one week after the crash, my right eye is still somewhat swollen.
The brace I was given is a Jewett brace with a cervical extension, and I have to wear it any time I'm out of bed. It's kind of like a disciplinary device from a late-nineteenth-century girls finishing school: it forces me to maintain perfect posture, with my chin quite far up. Let me assure you that the human body was never meant to have "perfect posture." It has a pad that goes across the sternum, another just below the navel, and one on each side of the rib-cage. There's a chin rest attached to the sternum-plate, and another piece holds the back of the head forward. There are half a dozen straps and some screws holding everything together; when I still had stitches in my forehead, I swear I must have looked like Frankenstein.
The brace is fine for walking around, but reading, sitting in most chairs, and watching TV are all uncomfortable. In order to take a shower, for instance, I have to lay down, take off the brace, take off my undershirt, put back on the brace, take a shower, dry off, lay back down, take off the brace, wash and dry it, put a fresh undershirt on, then put the brace back on. I'm down to about half an hour for the whole process.
When I was about 12, I started riding my bike partially because it was an instrument of independence. When I was on my bike, I could go wherever and whenever I wanted; I didn't need someone to drive me around. I find it ironic that now the bike has now taken back some of my freedom and independence, by making me slave to the brace for the next five weeks.
I wonder often about whether I will race again, even though I know I will. I can imagine myself not being in school; I can imagine myself not being an engineer or an acoustician; I can imagine myself even not being a computer-geek. But I can't imagine myself not being a cyclist. I guess it's just been a part of me for too long. Already, I look at my bike and long to take it outside; the doctor says I can start riding the trainer at the end of this week, and I even look forward to that. I doubt that I'll be doing any rainy crits anytime soon, though. I'm expected to make a complete recovery, although I'll be about an eighth of an inch shorter. I find it hard to decide whether I was extraordinarily lucky (I could have been paralyzed!) or extraordinarily unlucky (no one else who crashed that day had anything more than road rash.) So I suppose I'll just order myself a new helmet, try to heal my back, and then start training for racing again. See you on the road!
The first day out of the brace, I get on the bike and go for a 45 mile ride. I know this is a mistake, but I don't care that much. The next day, I go on a fifty-mile group ride. By the time I get home, my back is so tired that I can hardly stand up long enough to throw a frozen pizza in the oven for dinner, but I'm happy, high on the various neurotransmitters that my body has got to be addicted to by now.
The following weekend, I go to a little road race, ironically just a few miles north of Lancaster. My only hope is to finish the 35 mile race. Unfortunately, one of my teammates crashes just four miles into the race, and as I come to a complete stop, my only thought is, "I don't care if I have to get off and walk for half a mile. I am NOT going to crash today. Of course, after doing so, I don't have the power to work my way back up to the group. Dr. Stansbury, my doctor, comes flying by me a few miles after the crash...it's taken him down too. The irony of this is not lost on me. So I and one other guy ride the remaining 31 miles by ourselves; my teammates friends and family cheer for me on each lap. I'm later told that the race announcer somehow learned of my story and told it over the PA system. Great, I've been racing for seven years and my greatest fame (my only fame) comes from nearly killing myself.
It's now been nearly three months since my crash, and I have nearly returned to normal. I can do just about anything I want, and with the exception of some of the muscles, tendons, and ligaments occasionally getting tired, I really don't notice the injury much anymore. I know that it could have been a lot worse. Stories of Christopher Reeve (who fractured his neck in a horse accident just a day after I fractured my back) and Fabio Casartelli (who was killed in the Tour de France just a few days after I got out of the brace) remind me of the risks involved in not only cycling, but also anything that gets me out of the house. I'm not saying that the benefits are not worth it, because they are. I'm just saying that I'm a lot more conscious of the fact that anything worth having has its associated risks.
That, and I'm a eighth of an inch shorter.