What happens when a roadie tries mountain biking?

Well, if he is not accustomed to disc brakes, he will hit the front brake too hard, do an endo and end up on the ground. At least that's what happened to this inexperienced mountain biker.

A quick warning: If you are particularly squeamish, you may not want to scroll down to the picture. Chad, you might want to skip this post.

Today was our friend Jon Nienhouse's birthday, so for his birthday a group of friends gathered at the Betasso Preserve up Boulder Canyon. There is a great picnic shelter there where we all had a wonderful meal in a beautiful location. It is also the trailhead for one of the favorite mountain bike rides near Boulder. Jon, being an avid mountain biker, wanted to do a ride with his friends for his birthday, so this was a great spot for it. After dinner three of us: Jon, myself and Sean Prag, left to ride the three mile loop. A short way in I took a tumble and landed on some rocks. I paused to make sure everything felt okay, and kept going. A little further down the trail I realized that I felt something on my arm and expected it was probably blood running down from my elbow, so the next place we stopped I looked at it, and sure enough I had a pretty good gash on my elbow. (Dad, it was pretty reminiscent of when you fell off of the horse in Honduras.) Fortunately Jon is a nurse. I squirted the wound with my water bottle to wash off the dirt and figured I would have Jon look at it when we got back. We finished the ride and arrived back at the picnic shelter where there were three other people besides Jon that were medical professionals of some sort, so I was in pretty good hands. We got it washed off (a fair amount of blood had been running down my arm by this point), and they each took a look at it to see if they thought it needed any further treatment.

To make a long story short: After the party finished up, Jon found a set of sutures in the first aid pack in their van, so they followed us down to our place where he put in three stitches. He didn't have a full suture kit, so he used the tweezers from our Swiss Army Knife, sterilized in a candle flame, and a pair of little scissors he had with him. Here is a picture of Jon finishing up the suturing while I'm lying on the girls' bed:



Anna was very interested in what was happening from the beginning and wanted to watch while they were cleaning it and while Jon was stitching it. Josie was quite bothered by it and had a hard time (I think she must take after her dad). She really didn't want to come near me before the stitches had been put in and it was all done. We got some good time to reconnect and talk about it as she was going to bed, though.

Here is a picture of Jon's wife, Jennifer, reading to the kids while Jon was stitching me up in the other room. The two on the right are their kids, Ellie Grace and Ben. Our friends Michelle and Nora were also here at the time, but Nora just missed being in this picture.


Many thanks to our friends for taking care of us once again. Jon, I don't know if this was how you wanted to spend your birthday--giving somebody stitches after your bike ride, but we are grateful you were willing to make the house call.