Death-defying dismount a bike move I'd rather forget

Me, all I saw was gravel.

Gravel was on the surface of the single-track trail I was riding. It was my favorite trail, above my favorite lake, not far from my home at Escrow Heights.

It was dime-sized, jagged gravel and, as it turned out, fairly loose, resting deceptively atop a firmer layer of smooth, dry earth packed by years of feet, hoofs and tires. At the bottom of a short, minor hill with a slight left turn at the bottom, the gravel was a couple of inches deep.

Bad combination.

But I never would have noticed the gravel if it hadn't been for the dog.

It was a brown dog. It appeared in the middle of the trail, about 10 yards ahead of me. I hadn't really noticed him.

Tooling along on a mostly uphill course on my trusty 29er bike, I'd been engaging in deep thought about some life-critical subject — like what, exactly, I would say to the inventor of the Consta-Tip (patent pending) 2-liter soda bottle, should I ever find him.

Also, I was wearing — and I mean this literally, not metaphorically — rose-colored shades at the time, and in this deep-woods environment, it was fairly dark.

Bottom line: Didn't see Muttly until it was too late.

Looking back, of course, you would do things differently.

"Why did you try to stop?" my better half, Emjay, would ask later on, as I stood hydro-blasting chunks of gravel from the gaping lesions in my leg and elbow with a spray nozzle attached to a garden hose.

"You should have just hit the dog."

Good point. Or, more likely, seeing a Volkswagen-Beetle-sized lump of rolling Lycra and Capilene coming at him at a good clip, chances are said canine would have just scampered out of the way.

But I had no time to consider all that, so I just reacted.

I must have hit both brakes at once — clearly too hard. The bike has disc brakes. They're great brakes. I usually try to go light on the front brake. Because when you hit the brakes hard, the wheels ultimately will lock up, even on a good downhill run on pavement.

It didn't take much to get them to do the same on this Fruity Pebble surface.

The rest is a blur. My bike, doing the smart thing and doing as instructed, stopped cold, in place. My body, however, did not.

Launching over the handlebars in a full end-over, I remember seeing the wall of gravel rushing up to meet my face at an extraordinarily high speed. My mind flashed back to an e-mail from my mother, who, upon hearing that I had taken to mountain-bike riding, had written: "That's the stupidest thing you could do. You're going to break your arm." Or some encouraging words to that effect.

Before I could even feel the dread of realizing she might have been right, impact occurred.

Instinctively raising one arm to cover my face, I landed simultaneously on my left elbow, left knee and lower leg. Those contact points proceeded to skid, about five feet, over the gravel, leaving bits and chunks of flesh along the way and accepting replacement parts made of grit and stone.

The term cheese-gratering comes to mind.

I cannot recommend this particular dismount.

The impact wrenched my shoulder and knocked the wind out of me. I opened my eyes to see the owner of the frozen-in-its-tracks dog looking down at me in horror.

"Oh, my God!" she said. "Are you all right?"

"Great," I said, spitting out a chunk of inner cheek. "I think I'll just lie here and ... bleed for a while."

And so I did for several minutes. I finally staggered to my feet, shook my head clear, checked out my bike (no damage!) and then rolled, gingerly, toward home.

This skinny teenaged kid on a bike saw me coming out of the woods. Looked at my leg and saw the shiny river of caked blood going all the way into my shoe. Reacted in a way that, in some bizarre fashion, took away some of the sting.

"Dude," he said with a nod of approval. "Nice leg!"

It's not exactly how I envisioned being a role model. But I'll take it.

Ron Judd's can be reached at 206-464-8280 or at rjudd@seattletimes.com.

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