The gruesome crash thread! WARNING: photos

I crashed my bike. Thought I'd write it all down for shits and giggles, and so you guys can learn from my mistakes and NEVER CRASH.

:idea: Photos are below. Don't look if you're at all squeemish. Yes I will be wearing body armour in future.

Bike: Cannondale Jekyll
At: Ashton Court, Bristol
Damage to bike: None whatsoever
Damage to me: cuts/bruises all over, plus lovely auger of right arm
Number of operations: 1 under local, 2 under general anasthetic

I was riding at top speed through the rocky/switchback/jumps section at Ashton Court, trying & succeeding at disappearing from my mates who are SLOW and LAME (and unharmed..), and went so fast over a double rock launch dropoff that because I landed at a slight angle I didn't have any space to straighten up for the 2nd jump, so landed straight on it ; bike went one direction, and I did the mid-air breaststroke for ages (probably about 20cm but it felt like 20 feet), before landing on rocks that are set into the ground (so they don't move..).

So my arm got pretty augerred - the problem at A&E was that there was so much grit/shit in my arm they couldn't clean it up without opening my arm up AHAHAHA argh bleurgh. So the first op (next day) under general, they cut out all the lacerated gack and cleaned everything up, but it was too big to stitch so they booked me in for plastic surgery op a few days later to see if the plastics guys could manage to close the wound, and they did! Hoorah! It's all clean now and just looks like a single seam, instead of a crater (see pics below..)!

So there we go. I've been milking the injury for days and days, hasn't really hurt but I've just been knocked out from all the anesthetic drugs, and have slept for like 18 hours a day! It's awesome*


*is not awesome, don't do it


A few months back, having just built the bike and sprayed the forks to match the frame. Lovely, innocent little beauty.





:!: WARNING: the next photo is the grossest, it's after they've cleared it all out and there's just a big crater down to the layer of shiny stuff that covers the arm muscle.

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And here it is after being stitched up properly.. and with green gack! Awesome :mrgreen:

Re:

Cool! what did the major damage to your arm?

The main thing is that the bike was unharmed

Yeah exactly! First thing I checked was the bike, before I realised blood was dripping down my shorts!

The thing that damaged my arm was rocks - I hit them elbow-first and skidded a while, which is why it took so many operations to clean and close it all up!

O U C H

I did something similar to my left knee at 25mph on loose gravel when I was 12. My friends took care of me though. One pulled my bike and me off the road, flagged down a car for a lift to the local A&E *Casualty as it was back in the Victorian era* and slapped the other lad across his chops when he started panicking at the state of my leg

Ow, knees hurt like crap too. It's amazing how much blood your body can expel in a few seconds eh. Fortunately I was with mates too; they didn't do much, just stood around and said "oh, um ouch dude. We've got to take a photo!" but then they did take me to A&E so can't complain

Re:

Ho Ho

The amazing thing about any crash is how time slows down.

Went over my handlebars when I was 13 broke both wrists. But the thing I remember was it seemed to take forever to hit the ground.

Any way one thing leads to another...... when I was finally out riding again I can assure you that I was very cautious about everything... So on the first ride out it was with my big brother.... I had loads of stick from him in the preceding weeks about my accident and that I was a stupid little boy etc.... He rode of ahead of me then turned round to goad me on to go faster.... whilst he was looking back at me he rode straight into the back of a parked car.... Bending his front forks....

Sorry silly story but just had to tell it.

Re:

Hmm, hopefully you're healing ok.
My recent off left the bones in the wrist badly dislocated and my little finger hanging off at a right angle to my other fingers. Sadly no one was on hand (as it were) with a camera. It was one of those injuries that you don't really want to look at - made me feel a touch woozy.

My wife wrapped my hand on her sweaty arm warmer and called an ambulance. By the time it turned up 45 minutes later I think shock had kicked in and I was insisting that I would be fine to drive myself to hospital...

Yeah shock does a lot of good work. I'm fine now thanks - it was a few months back so my arm's fine now (still hurts if it knock it on something, but it's fine).

In fact I revisited the place where I crashed last weekend and filmed it - video is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HytBnlXT4Pw
^ the double drop-off at 2:54 is where I stacked last time, rolling over it with no probs felt gooooood

samc":tb0j2z61 said:

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Wow. This accident must have been really bad - because you've obviously been in hospital since 2000, that being the last time that wearing your underpants higher than your jeans was in fashion.

Anyway - kudos at getting back on the (very pretty for an fs) bike!

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surealneil":10h30eih said:

Ho Ho

The amazing thing about any crash is how time slows down.

Click to expand...

You think it's made-up bad-thriller-writer bs until it happens to you, but its quite amazing - when I flew off the bonnet of a car on Oz I had about half an hour to philosophically reconcile with the prospect of death and plan how I was going to roll when I landed. And then I founded a new religion. Busy, busy, busy!

I also remember hitting diesel in an off-camber slope that was also a severe bend with a huge truck behind me in a tropical rainstorm. Did crash, but I had about 1/4 of an hour to make the corrective wiggle of my ass when the rear wheel went crazy. Probably the best riding I ever did - and it whatever the rear wheel was doing must have been pretty obvious because I heard people on the pavement gasp and someone just sort of start a scream and then stop, when I wasn't mushed.