October 20, 1999
Crash course in choosing the right word
By GARRET LEIVA
Herald editor
Five weeks later and I'm still embarrassed to say the word out loud. After all, it seemed such a strange, cartoonish exclamation to utter when your left anterior cruciate ligament separates from your shoulder. Only Charlie Brown would go "oomph" after face-planting on the VASA trail.
Luckily my blockhead was strapped into a bike helmet - oomph would be an epitaph hard to live down even in death.
Pedaling on the single track mountain bike trail off Supply Road that overcast Wednesday afternoon, I hoped for one thing: a two hour rain delay to complete my ride. Unfortunately, all I would need was 10 minutes.
Equally bad timing was the fact that I had recently returned from a Colorado vacation that included mountain biking on trails with machismo monikers like "Bear Creek" and "Prospect Basin". Suffice it to say I had my "Do-the-Dew, Gen-X-Games-You-Da-Bomb" mojo working.
Sadly, like the $9.95 toe clips keeping my feet on the pedals, that attitude was about to be ripped apart.
Just past the four mile mark, negotiating a right dogleg decent, I bit it. It all happened in a slow motion montage right out of a summer blockbuster movie with a budget almost eclipsing that of a large tub of buttered theater popcorn. My 5' 10" frame went northeast over the handlebars, the 19.5" steel frame bike flew south. I stuck the landing but the bike came out the winner on this dismount.
So now the question was this: if you took a header and fell in the woods and no one was around to hear it, would it help to make a sound other than oomph? Silently I began walking the bike back up the trail; my mind racing with doubts of reaching the trailhead or the bone sticking half an inch above my shoulder ever returning to normal.
While I had only traversed the VASA single track a half dozen times, this was hardly new territory for me.
Ever since my off-road tricycle days, bikes have been an accident waiting to happen. Banana seat single speeds, BMXs, ten speeds; you name it, I've crashed it. I even managed to give myself a gravel road facial after tumbling off a ten speed - on the way to a driver's training class no less.
Obviously, I've come to count on the kindness of family, friends or, in this case, a stranger riding a seat post suspension mountain bike.
He introduced himself as Tom, although we had already met. The next few miles he pushed both our bikes back to the trailhead as I staggered ahead. We talked about bike suspensions, Colorado, the new outdoors television channel and a possible trip to the emergency room. I thanked him profusely before he dropped me off at the clinic. He said simply return the favor to someone else one day, then he drove his mini van off into the cloud soaked horizon.
It has been five weeks since I last uttered that word out loud. During that time it took several days before I could type with both hands - the left side still being a tad slower and prone to typing misrakes. It only took hours, however, before I realized why the stranger who saved me looked so familiar; after all its not everyday you take a picture of someone's face next to a mushroom the size of a basketball.
It has been five weeks since I last uttered that word out loud. Given all that Tom did for me that afternoon a word of thanks is worth repeating.
Herald editor Garret Leiva can be contacted at 933-1416 or e-mail at gleiva@gtherald.com.