Diablo (Dr. Johnny Spinal Chord Injuries F**king Match)

So, we were supposed to ride Thursday and Friday at Diablo, then drive up to Windham for the final round of the World Cup on Saturday and Sunday. The plane that was supposed to leave at 6:20 a.m., left at 11:50 a.m. By the time we got to the bike park, we figured out that they were renting nothing but Jamis bikes, and we don’t ride Jamis bikes, so we had to go up the road to Biketopia, where we had our choice of Cove or Brodie products. By the time we figured out it was going to cost us $176.00 each for bike rentals and lift tickets for less than two hours of ride time, and we still had to change pedals and raise the noses on the saddles, and take a dump, we said “Fuck this.” and went to the Irish Cottage Pub in Franklin, the town just up the road from the bike park. No riding on Thursday.

(By the way: Fuck staying at the resort. The place is stupidly expensive and filled with uppity hillbillies. Stay at the Days Inn in McAfee, about ten minutes from the park, and about three minutes from the Irish Cottage Pub. The Days Inn is freshly renovated, and full of employees trying to please the guests.)

Friday, trying to make up for lost time, we were burning up everything in sight with a local named Chuck, who showed us all the real shit, not that weak-ass shit normally served to tourists. Two thirds of the way down “Alpine” I stopped to catch my breath, shake out my arm-pump and wait for my bud, Carlos. After several minutes, another rider came down and stopped.

“Are you from Florida?”

“Yes.”

“You’d better get back up there. Your buddy went down pretty hard.”

The crash site was at the bottom of step-down three of three after a fifteen-foot-high bermed left-hander after a long, straight, steep chute. Carlos was lying in the middle of the trail surrounded by three or four guys. His legs were on the top of the step-down. His head was downhill and covered with blood. The bike was still on top of him when I got there.

I started to get the bike off Carlos when a very official looking forty year old fucker dressed in all matching shit started barking.

“Don’t move him! Don’t move him! He could have spinal chord injuries!”

“Whoa, dude, I am just trying to get the bike off him, relax.”

After another round of “Don’t move him! Don’t move him! He could have spinal chord injuries!” I gave Johnny Match a look. He said, “I am a physician. I am an anesthesiologist. Don’t move him!” I picked up the sled and dragged it into the bushes, then got back to my standard post gnar-looking crash pseudo-medical exam.

“Can you move your hands?” Check.

“Can you move your feet?” Check.

“Take a deep breath.” No gurgling sounds, check.

“Follow my finger left. Follow my finger right.” Check.

“Stick your tongue straight out.” Check.

“Run your finger around inside your mouth to make sure your teeth are where they are supposed to be.” Check.

“What really, really, hurts?”

When Carlos said his hand hurt worse than anything else, I was ready to get him up and walking down the hill, but Dr. Johnny Fucking Match was having none of that.

“He’s going to the hospital! He’s going to the hospital! Don’t move him! Don’t move him! He could have spinal chord injuries!”

“Yeah, yeah, spinal chord injuries. I got it. What are we going to do, wait for divine intervention? Some Angels to waft him down to the parking lot?”

“I’m going to get the paramedics. Don’t move him.”

“O.K. O.K.”

As soon as Dr. Johnny Spinal Chord Injuries Fucking Match was out of sight around the corner, I got Carlos sitting up, got his helmet off and started looking for the source of the blood that had covered up his face and was beginning to fill up his helmet while Dr. Johnny Spinal Chord Injuries Fucking Match was bitching and mincing about. Looking at the damage to the helmet, it was obvious that he had face-planted going pretty fast, and that the lower front part of the helmet had cheese-grated his bottom lip against his teeth. The wound was pretty nasty on the inside, but looked way worse than it really was because, while he was upside down for so long, a lot of highly oxygenated bright red blood had run down all over his face.

By the time I got most of the blood cleaned-up and began to check out his hand, which was already swollen and blue, Dr. Johnny Spinal Chord Injuries Fucking Match came prancing back up the hill with a bike mechanic/first responder and a chubby chick in tow. They were dragging a backboard, a cervical collar, and an oxygen cylinder. Suddenly, I was out numbered. They cut off Carlos’ brand fucking new Sombrio jersey, put the collar on him, strapped him to the backboard and put the oxygen mask on his face.

The bike mechanic/first responder said: “We are going to need your help carrying him down to the truck.”

“I’m not carrying that fat fucker down the hill. Someone could get hurt.”

The chubby chick said: “I thought you were his friend.”

“I am his friend, and I have seen him crashed-up worse than this and still ride out. You’ve got a collar, so you want to use the collar. You’ve got a backboard, so you want to use the backboard. You’ve got oxygen, so you want to use oxygen. You should have brought a fucking liposuction machine up here. We could have actually put one of those fuckers to good use.”

I helped them get Carlos down to their truck and then bushwhacked back up to the crash site, picked-up all of the debris, got on his bike and rode the rest of the trail with two helmets, two sets of body armor, four gloves, et cetera.

By the time I got to the bottom and found the first aid station, they had Carlos in an ambulance. The cop outside said that he was refusing to go to the hospital.

“You’ve got handcuffs. Put them on that fat little fucker. Once you get the cuffs on him, you and I can hold him still while the medics jack something real into his blood stream. I’ve seen this movie before. Once he’s doped-up, we can do pretty much whatever we want.”

The cop got a concerned look in his eyes and said: “I can’t handcuff him. He's got a broken hand.”

“Jesus, I was just kidding.”

After listening to some frightening stories about the hospital in Vernon, I drove him to the hospital in Warwick. The doctor who sutured his lip more/less back together and told him his right hand was broken gave us another bit of info.

“You are lucky. You are the second guy in here today from the bike park. A man was brought in here just before lunch with a broken neck.”