So I went biking with Dimitri and my friend Steve yesterday.

We were about 5 miles from where we started out, when we decided to traverse down a hill to a pond down at the bottom of this ravine. We were almost to the bottom, where there was a small (estimated by Steve at 12 feet) cliff. It was actually more like an 8 foot cliff, then a little ledge, then another 4 foot cliff after that.

Well, I was riding along the ledge, and about to hit a stump, so I turned slightly more downhill to avoid the stump, which shifted my weigh just enough to make it impossible not to go flying off the fucking ledge. So I tried to kick the bike off, in the hopes that I could get down to the ground quick enough that I didn’t follow the bike off the ledge. I almost accomplished that, being that I actually did hit the ground at the top of the cliff. But I had some difficulty with my right toe-clip…I think. I’m not really sure what happened, although I did hit the ground at the top of the cliff, I didn’t stay there long. Anyway, the last thing I saw was the bike sailing over the edge…then I felt myself hit the ground, then a little freefall, then hit the little ledge, slide, and fall another 4 feet, where I landed on my backpack, complete with a Nalgene bottle lodged under my left shoulder.

Either from the right toe-clip not letting my foot out, or due to some other part of the accident, my right ankle ended up twisted and sprained like a bastard…and I have a nice bruised and sore shoulder from where I landed on my Nalgene bottle. But other than that, and a few assorted scrapes and bruises, and I came out OK. I’m way less injured than you would assume someone who had just fallen off of what I fell off of would be. I was looking at the cliff after I fell, and couldn’t believe I was actually OK enough to even stand up. At least I didn’t land on any rocks, or branches that could have impaled me.

The worst part was that I then had to climb back up the hill with a screwed up ankle, and then ride 5 miles back out to the car.

So I came home, iced and elevated the foot, and drank some margaritas. So at least the day ended OK.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 31st, 2005 at 9:09 am and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.