Worst ride ever

It is a strange and twisted coincidence that couple of weeks after writing here about the best ride ever, I got to experience the worst one ever. Well, as much as I love biking I must stay true and report the difficult times as well.

It was our regular "mom's on bikes" weekly ride. We decided to do Arastradero preserve again, which we were all well familiar with. On that day, only 3 brave women arrived, M, O and of course my lovely who has never missed a ride.

Lovely's power climb

We started with a different route then usual, just to make the ride a bit more interesting. The ride started great, the weather was wonderful and the 3 brave ladies were willing to take on some new riding challenges. Bravely off course. We had few glitches along the way: About 20 minutes to the ride, my bike chain broke. Not a big deal, I quickly fixed it and moved on. Then (still rather usual for these rides) we almost hit a rattle snake that was warming up in the sun right in the middle of our trail. Could that have been a sign that the ride was not going to end as smoothly as we all thought...? We took a picture of the snake off course and moved one.

After a short snack stop (no ride is perfect without a snack brake) we reached the "Bowl". the "Bowl", for those of you who don't usually bike at Arastradero, is a deep hole, shaped like a "Bowl" where riders usually decent very fast from one side and climb on the other.

Minutes before...

We've seen the bowl before but this time I decided to go down, with full intention to go back up and no intention for the brave mamas to follow me. Do you think I could present 3 courageous women a challenge and ask them not to take it? Not really...

M was the first one to take the plunge (no pun intended). She wanted me to video tape her and so I stayed down in the "bowl" making sure history is documented. O was the second one to give it a try. It seemed they really liked it. Probably were afraid as hell, but still liked it. Believe me, it was a scary one. Last one to go was lovely.... It did not feel right to me. I was too scared when I saw her wanting to go down. It just felt wrong. After some hesitation, she took the decent and made it almost all the way down when she suddenly lost control and crashed. At first it seemed like an simple, not to big of a deal crash. Off course I dropped everything and ran to her.

When I got there, she was lying with no movement. I thought she is just closing he eyes with fear so I called her name. M suggested to call 911, "Leave it" I said, she will wake up in couple of seconds... After a few times of calling her name with no response I realized that it was not a simple crash as I thought. Fear crawled up my spine. Lovely kept lying there, her eyes closed as if she soundly asleep....

... Head injury...thats not good.... Ok, call 911 I told M, while asking O to get me some water,

After few minutes (which seemed like eternity) Lovely opened her eyes, "Where am I?" she asked, "What day is today?" she seemed very confused.

M started to explain the 911 operator where we are, I checked the GPS for trail crossings, and about 10 minutes later a ranger got to us and brought some oxygen. I think at that point I needed oxygen just as much but since I was not the one with a head injury I didn't dare to ask...

As the minutes past I realized that Lovely lost her short term memory. She was going in and out of consciousness and when she was awake she was very confused and disoriented. I then heard the ambulance sirens from distance.

5 minutes later another ranger arrived, carrying 5 Paramedics that couldn't go off road with their vehicle I imagine, They took over, deciding to call a Helicopter for evacuation. They started to take care of Lovely and we could all soon hear the Helicopter arriving.

The medics told me I wont be able to get on it. "ok..." I thought, "I have to get to the hospital ASAP". I jumped on my bikes, got a map from the ranger who promised to keep Lovely's bikes, and was already on my way to the parking lot...

The parking lot was minutes away but it seemed like the longest ride ever. It hit me how bad the situation was and how terrible it could end. Then the guilt came. big time. And then... what do I tell the kids... ? There were so many thoughts while riding the fastest I have ever ridden..."I should slow down before I end up like her" was the most rational thought I had at those moments.

Reached the car, dropped my bikes in and then off to Stanford hospital.

I guess I was driving really fast because I reached the ER with the helicopter around the same time.

"Your wife is in the trauma room, but we don't know anything..." the wait in the hospital was definitely a traumatic experience. one of many that day.

It took about 30 minutes until got some information about Lovely's situation, 15 more before they let me in. The scariest 45 minutes of my life so far...

To make a long story short, Lovely was OK. She suffered from a severe concussion, shoulder sprain, bruises everywhere but no permanent damage to her head or spine.

We are all very lucky!

She did lose her new biking cloths in the process (did you know that the paramedics just cut them all?) and wont be able to mountain bike for a few good months... but the main thing is that she is OK and she is still lovely. Can't ask for more.

So the morals of this story and my own 2 cents to all my dear blog readers, while I'm at it:
If you do not feel comfortable about taking a certain risk, no matter what are the circumstances, just don't. Listen to your gut. Lovely did not want to take that decent but she did it anyway. We all know it could have ended much worse than it did.

Stanford hospital Trauma Room, this is where
Lovely was treated in the first few hours

We are now waiting for the helicopter bill to arrive :-)