diary of an Endorphin Junkie

The morning practice was fun. Lots of dicing through traffic. Unfortunately I always seemed to end the front straight in a pack, and they were always going slow through Sunset. That meant I didn't get a good drive down towards the Mazda Gap.

I finally came down the straight and saw nobody in Sunset. I railed through the corner and hard on the gas. Upshift twice to 5th, dragged right knee into the Esses, the flipped it up, over the candy stripe, and hard on the gas, left knee down railing into the Mazda Gap at ~110 mph carrying my maximum lean angle.

All of the sudden the rear tire swung around. Holy sheeeeet. I'm getting a helicopter ride for sure. I roll lightly off the throttle and try to bring the bike upright. Gentle, slow moves. The bike straightens up. I have to get hard on the brakes now, so the rear is airborne and fishtailing around - but the bike is upright and in a line so I'm confident and bring it through the corner and onto the back straight.

Oh my god. I don't even bother getting on the gas, I'm just breathing. I plan to rotate around the track and go into the pits. I have a (virtual) load of crap to remove from my pants. woah.

Coming into the Bus Stop I notice my rear wheel sliding around. Did I completely frag the tire? Wow, I didn't think it was that bad. Maybe I should pull off here and wait for the session to end. Naw, they'll yell at me for being in an impact zone. I'll keep rotating around and bring it in. Bad choice.

I roll over the wheelie bump and into the Grapevine. At the first apex my rear wheel skids right, then left, then right then catches traction and *snap* I fly up into the air. The bike and I both tumble off the track.

The rear wheel was covered in fluid. Given that no oil was on my boot or in the belly pan, it was either the rear brake resevouir or a very weird engine problem that dumped fluid back but not down.

The "good news" was that I was rotating around at ~60mph when it happened. The first slide would have been much much worse.

This morning the finger hurts less, the foot not at all, but the searing pain when I take pressure off my right leg remains, so I took a taxi to St. Lukes.

They've ruled out hip, so they're talking broken pelvis now. The X-ray machine will tell all.

Pelvis fine, hip fine, foot fine. Left pinky finger broken. Now we're trying to determine why the leg hurts so much...

So no problems visible in the xray but lots of pain and vicodin did nothing. So they brought me in for a Catscan and found a small fracture in the acetabulum leading right to the hip joint.

hm. crutches for 4-6 weeks.

But since it doesn't appear to affect rotary movement just weight I'm trying to determine if I can hobble to the bike and do my 1 hour for next week's endurance race.