Good deed for the day

[vernon]

Today was a one of the rare occasions when I ride my mountain bike and I met up with some colleagues in some woods that offered plenty of jumps for the fearless and moderate trails for more timid souls like me. A couple of teenagers tagged onto our group and a young Romanian proved to be almost fearless when taking on my colleague at some of the jumps until it all went horribly wrong....

A straightforward jump followed by a berm proved to be the undoing of the young un and a horrible sound of a high speed tumble followed by a wail had us all scurrying over to the source of the noise. He was lying in a heap with blood all over his face and his immediate concern was whether his good looks had been ruined followed by an appeal to find his missing tooth. We gave hime a quick health check before allowing him to stand up and the gap left by a missing incisor was not a pretty sight.

A scramble around the leaf mold and dead leaves unearthed his tooth while he rang his parents and tried to arrange to be picked up. We washed his tooth off and took him to his parents via a garage to get some milk to put his tooth in having decided it was easier for us to find them than for them to find us in the backwoods of Adel. Having reunited him with his parents I then guided them to the emergency dentist and I've just heard from his father that there is a very good chance that our prompt actions have save the tooth.

Turns out the boy is a Transylvanian - I thought they needed their teeth and preferred to imbibe blood rather than donate both in the pursuit of a perfect jump.

Still it made an interesting afternoon more action packed than was planned for.

 

[twentysix by twentyfive]

Crikey - that is action packed.

I once asked an off-roader why he didn't ride on the road. His answer - it's too dangerous

 

[vernon]

Crikey - that is action packed.

I once asked an off-roader why he didn't ride on the road. His answer - it's too dangerous

I prefer roads to trails and jumps. My colleagues would like to send me down the runs first to clear them of trees and any other obstructions that my considerable frame might displace. I leave them in no doubt what my sentiments are on the matter.....

I can only aspire to do half what my colleagues do - they have no ambitions whatsoever to take up long distance cycling.

 

[Keith Oates]

Off roading is fun but on road riding is just perfect!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[postman]

A discussion on which is the most dangerous .Off road or on road .

Thats something to get your teeth into .

 

[PaulB]

I have a 'mountain' bike (never been near a mountain with it, like) but very rarely find it under me when cycling as I much prefer the roadies. I once fractured my sternum smashing my chest into the handlebars of an MTB which was rammed into the ground. That smarted. And another lad told me that he'd hit something on an off-road epic and shunted forward off the saddle straddling the top tube. He had numerous problems 'down below' until it was discovered he'd ruptured his urethra and so needed a urethroplasty to make things right. He needed to make wee wee through an opening which came out behind his clock-weights

Not nice.

Things like that affect me. Just before we left school, we were shown a video highlighting workplace injuries, intended to give us an appreciation of what might happen (a lad a year older had three of his figers torn off on a laithe a few weeks' earlier!) if we weren't careful in the workplace environment. The injuries shown were nasty and graphic. The one that had the most influence on my mind was of a goal-keeper on an amateur football team who'd de-gloved all the skin and muscle on his left hand. He had a wedding ring which caught under the hooks on the back of a goal-post as he jumped up to hang the netting and as he dropped to the ground several inches below his stretched feet, his hand stayed behind. I'm often asked why I don't wear a wedding ring and that's my answer.

 

[vernon]

I have a 'mountain' bike (never been near a mountain with it, like) but very rarely find it under me when cycling as I much prefer the roadies. I once fractured my sternum smashing my chest into the handlebars of an MTB which was rammed into the ground. That smarted. And another lad told me that he'd hit something on an off-road epic and shunted forward off the saddle straddling the top tube. He had numerous problems 'down below' until it was discovered he'd ruptured his urethra and so needed a urethroplasty to make things right. He needed to make wee wee through an opening which came out behind his clock-weights

Not nice.

[snip] nasty bits [/snip]

Thanks for the unwelcome reminders of the video nasties that I was exposed to as a school boy. There were quite a living testimonies to industrial accidents in the industrial community where I grew up. There was many a chap with bits missing or huge scars from encounters with fast moving, hot and heavy bits of metal in the heavy engineering plants that surrounded Rise Carr in Darlington. The most gruesome accident that I was aware of was the father of a pal of mine who died when he fell from a gantry into a vat of very hot beef dripping at a rendering factory.

Back to the hapless youth who lost his tooth.

He was very calm apart from the initial fussing about the loss of his good looks with a tooth. The only other sign of distress was when he asked for a hug - my colleagues retreated as he was slathered in blood and drool. I gave him a hug and let my t-shirt soak up some of the gore. Had it been me as the victim, I am sure that I would have passed out at the sight of my own blood. The lad's mate had suffered a few face plants when stunting with his BMX but it had only made him a little warier of doing crazy things.

Attempts to get me to take on a jump or two were met with refusals as saw the attempts as a ruse to get me to be a tree clearance tool and crater creator when things went wrong.