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Hey gang!! Guess what? Yep, I weaseled my way into the Knolly bikes test riding crew on the weekend! Wow, was the weather great!! Definitely the most beautiful weekend of 2004 for the Vancouver area to date.
So, we did a couple of days riding. Knolly bikes blah blah stable blah blah blah handling, blah nimble blah blah blah. It's all been said, right? Everybody needs to run out and buy one. Yeah even all you singlespeeders, weight weenies, cruisers, 29ers, 49ers and 69ers.
I even managed to get one pretty decent photo of Penny (red) getting some light under the tires, although we were having too much fun to stop for pics very often.
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On Sunday, I showed up again for another quick lap on a test bike. Now, I was actually on a different bike than on the first day, and it was set up a little differently than the other. Just minor things, like the stem was a little higher, it has an 888 fork and the brake lever reach was set a little longer. Nothing major to prevent a great riding experience.
During the initial descent, I was having a little trouble lofting the front wheel on the drops, so we made some adjustments mid-ride. Once we were moving again, all seemed well.
Moving along, we came upon a ladder to drop that I've done several times in the past. It's probably the toughest move on this medium difficulty Shore trail with about 4ft of air into a fairly jumbly bunch of rocks. Since I was on a new bike, I figured I'd ride up to it and commit to the move only if I felt really balanced and comfortable. There's a bit of a slow speed left turn on the ladder that you need to clean before the drop and that's the last chance to bail out.
Well, I got onto this thing and quite frankly, I've never felt more solid, balanced, stable, etc. going into this move, so I let 'er rip! Yeehaw and all that!!
The next memory I have is of me lying on my back with the wind knocked out of me, trying to communicate with my friends that nothing's broken and able to produce nothing but a pathetic gurgling sound. Apparently my front wheel plummeted to the ground so fast it looked like a magnet sucked it down. After getting assessed from head to toe (I think it was DaveK holding my head in the c-spine position), I decided it was time to move. Also, the rock poking against my ribs was getting pretty uncomfortable.
There were definitely a LOT of sore body parts yelling for attention, but all I could do for the moment was sit up and let my vision clear up. That was a nasty one! I did some more self-assessment and decided to walk out. It was only about 5-10 minutes back up the trail, then a fairly easy double-track back down to the cars.
At a clinic, the doctor thought I was okay, but I should go for some spinal x-rays just to be safe. Since I managed to crack a DH helmet with the top of my head, he figured there could be a spinal injury somewhere. So, off to the hospital for a full set of spinal pics, all the way along, front view, side view - must have been at least a dozen x-rays taken. Chest, too, cause I took a pretty good impact against the stem.
Well, as it turns out, I did in fact hit pretty hard and caused a "wedge compression" of my L1 vertebra. I got scheduled to go back to the hospital the next day for a CT scan, to make sure there weren't any other surprises hiding in there, waiting to crack open the next time I turn my head.
On Monday, got the CT scan and it was good news. No other complications, the compressed disc is stable and my only problem now is that there'll be a few weeks of intense pain until the healing process moves along. So, looks like I'm off the bike for a minimum of 4 weeks, then light spinning only. Doc says 6 weeks for complete healing of the disc.
Looks like I'll have a little free time to surf MTBR!!
See y'all,
Kn.
So, we did a couple of days riding. Knolly bikes blah blah stable blah blah blah handling, blah nimble blah blah blah. It's all been said, right? Everybody needs to run out and buy one. Yeah even all you singlespeeders, weight weenies, cruisers, 29ers, 49ers and 69ers.
I even managed to get one pretty decent photo of Penny (red) getting some light under the tires, although we were having too much fun to stop for pics very often.
.jpg)
On Sunday, I showed up again for another quick lap on a test bike. Now, I was actually on a different bike than on the first day, and it was set up a little differently than the other. Just minor things, like the stem was a little higher, it has an 888 fork and the brake lever reach was set a little longer. Nothing major to prevent a great riding experience.
During the initial descent, I was having a little trouble lofting the front wheel on the drops, so we made some adjustments mid-ride. Once we were moving again, all seemed well.
Moving along, we came upon a ladder to drop that I've done several times in the past. It's probably the toughest move on this medium difficulty Shore trail with about 4ft of air into a fairly jumbly bunch of rocks. Since I was on a new bike, I figured I'd ride up to it and commit to the move only if I felt really balanced and comfortable. There's a bit of a slow speed left turn on the ladder that you need to clean before the drop and that's the last chance to bail out.
Well, I got onto this thing and quite frankly, I've never felt more solid, balanced, stable, etc. going into this move, so I let 'er rip! Yeehaw and all that!!
The next memory I have is of me lying on my back with the wind knocked out of me, trying to communicate with my friends that nothing's broken and able to produce nothing but a pathetic gurgling sound. Apparently my front wheel plummeted to the ground so fast it looked like a magnet sucked it down. After getting assessed from head to toe (I think it was DaveK holding my head in the c-spine position), I decided it was time to move. Also, the rock poking against my ribs was getting pretty uncomfortable.
There were definitely a LOT of sore body parts yelling for attention, but all I could do for the moment was sit up and let my vision clear up. That was a nasty one! I did some more self-assessment and decided to walk out. It was only about 5-10 minutes back up the trail, then a fairly easy double-track back down to the cars.
At a clinic, the doctor thought I was okay, but I should go for some spinal x-rays just to be safe. Since I managed to crack a DH helmet with the top of my head, he figured there could be a spinal injury somewhere. So, off to the hospital for a full set of spinal pics, all the way along, front view, side view - must have been at least a dozen x-rays taken. Chest, too, cause I took a pretty good impact against the stem.
Well, as it turns out, I did in fact hit pretty hard and caused a "wedge compression" of my L1 vertebra. I got scheduled to go back to the hospital the next day for a CT scan, to make sure there weren't any other surprises hiding in there, waiting to crack open the next time I turn my head.
On Monday, got the CT scan and it was good news. No other complications, the compressed disc is stable and my only problem now is that there'll be a few weeks of intense pain until the healing process moves along. So, looks like I'm off the bike for a minimum of 4 weeks, then light spinning only. Doc says 6 weeks for complete healing of the disc.
Looks like I'll have a little free time to surf MTBR!!
See y'all,
Kn.
