Momento

Momento , originally uploaded by Wooly Biker.

I have a theory about how some accidents happen. Let's just call it the "Parking Lot Theory". I've seen it over and over again, and it happened to me in Moab. This theory involves only sports activities at this point, but it may expand to other more noble endeavors if I can think of any. Let me explain:

We arrived in Moab after driving 17 hours through the night, and I slept only about an hour and a half. No big deal, we eat breakfast and head off to the slickrock. Ride several hours, eat, sleep, and repeat for 5 days. We rode the toughest trails we could find and had many great crashes along the way. But these were all accidents that we knew were coming, such as trying the desperate step-ups or technical boulder field moves. You knew you were either going to make it or going to crash. These kind of crashes are somewhat expected, and you can prepare for them. These are not "PLT" crashes. These are just crashes. They happen.

A PLT, or Parking Lot Theory crash is when you get safely back to the parking lot after the most heinous trail you can imagine and THEN crash, literally 20 feet from the waiting cooler of Polygamy Porter (you can't have just one). My crash is defined as a PLT because I was figuratively back in the parking lot, if not literally. The big rides were all over, and we were all packed up and ready to head home early the next morning. But just down the street a half block was a BMX jump track that we had sessioned the previous day, with pretty good results for a bunch of old guys. I wanted one more run at it before we left, so I strapped on my helmet (thank goodness), threw on the oh-so-cool messenger style knickers and my favorite skunk t-shirt and off I went.

What happened next is evident from the photo. I wasn't focused any longer. I had let my guard down. I was just goofing off and having fun. The trip was over, the hard riding was done, this was just childs play.
Well it caught up with me huh? I sprinted my middle ring for all it was worth for that one last jump, and just didn't execute the move. Didn't focus on the one thing that I needed to focus on, which was compressing the fork into the face of the jump so the front end would lift gracefully over the jump. Instead of a graceful jump I did more of a slow front flip, landing on my face and left shoulder from probably 8 feet. I bet my head was even higher than that before I started to flip.

Anyway, the outcome was unconsciousness, a broken helmet, a dented frame, a trip to the ER on a backboard, a cat-scan of my head and of course a concussion. Besides the obvious rashes and bruises, I lost my sense of balance for 2 weeks. I hit my head so hard that my ear canals were damaged, and I would get these shocking moments of dizziness if I moved my head too far in the wrong direction. The first time this happened was not until two days after the accident. I bent over to pick something up and it felt like the ground had just been ripped out from under me. In fact I thought it must be an earthquake because everything was moving violently back and forth. At night, if I moved the wrong way when sleeping, I would get terrible spins. I could feel my eyes jerking to one side over and over and I couldn't stop it. Fortunately this has corrected itself, and I'm pretty much back to normal.

I've been witness to several PLT accidents, including friends and family. Now it caught up with me. Maybe I'll have to elevate it from just a theory to a hypothesis, or whatever it is that comes after a theory. I'll have to ask a physics professor or some smart person about that someday.