October second in the year two thousand. Dawn was already two hours past when my faithful Saab finished nosing up the long, slippery, unpaved hill that led to the Dorr Run trailhead. I was entirely alone; I had come here without my usual riding pals, and choosing a Monday morning meant that I would be solitary on the trails for as long as I chose to ride. I had given reasons to people; I wanted to check out some unexplored sections of the trail, I wanted to start the week with some exercise, I had to try out the new downhill bars fitted to my Klein mountain bike. All of these reasons, while not exactly lies, certainly weren't true; I was here for the safe run.
I should explain a bit. Return with me to the last time I visited Dorr Run, a Saturday evening back in May of this year. Dorr Run is part of the Wayne National Forest in southeastern Ohio, and consists of a variety of "double-tracks", that is, tracks wide enough for a four-wheeled ATV, running up and down the side of a small mountain (or large hill, depending on how you look at it). Long-time readers know that I took up mountain biking as a side activity back in 1986, but quit in '87 and didn't ride ATBs again until ten years later. I have used mountain biking as a way to bring my friends into BMX; typically, after riding ATBs for a year, they are ready to try something a little more competitive and interesting, and that's when I put them on a cruiser and show them how little riding around in the forest has taught them about bike control.
My riding crew for that Saturday was me, 35 Novice Douglas Madden, and two non-racing pals, Sidney and Greg. Greg and I had scouted part of Dorr Run a few weeks before and been impressed; plenty of downhills filled with natural jumps shaped by water erosion. You could ride for a few hundred feet and spend half of that time with your wheels off the ground, accelerating all the while due to the steep slope of the trails. We hadn't taken the biggest downhill all the way down, though, because that meant more than a mile's uphill ride back to the trailhead, on an unpaved road that was often steep enough to make Greg's minivan spin its front tires during the drive up. "Today," we said, "we'll do the whole thing."
The problem with doing said "whole thing" became apparent when we arrived at the trailhead. It had rained the night before, and the trails were a muddy mess. On our first run, Douglas bailed hard, hard enough that he decided to quit riding and just be a "ski lift", driving us from the trail's end back up to the beginning. I decided to put on my chest protector and BMX helmet, a decision that would later on prove to be the right one.
Our second run was terrifying. As we began accelerating down the first second of the long, winding downhill, we quickly realized that steering was more or less impossible, as was braking. The mud was thick and slippery. The only way to turn was to bunnyhop and lean the bike before hitting the ground, which would produce a shower of mud as the wheels dug again. However, the ruts at the trail's center provided a kind of self-steering track, and the berms at every turn helped us quite a bit... as long as we didn't push it. Sidney fell behind quickly, but Greg stayed glued to my tail, and we screamed like idiots as we careened down the trail, jumping, turning, and sliding at speeds well beyond what a BMX racer experiences.
It was getting dark as Sidney, Greg, and I began our third run. We rode hard through the first, milder section. As we approached the "ramp" for the big downhill, Greg spoke up.
"I want to lead this run."
"No way," I replied. "You know how we do this stuff; I always lead. I have more time on the bike that you guys do, and I have more experience wrecking. If you see me go down, you have some advance warning, and you can prepare yourselves. That's how we've always done it."
"I don't care," Greg said. "I'm in front this time." At that point, dear readers, I should have walked off the trail and forced Greg to do the same. Instead, I let my pride get the better of me. I had a plan; that I would pass Greg during the downhill, that I would use the steep, slippery sides of the trail to rail around him and shower him with mud, that I would once again assert the stupidity of trying to show me up. You see, dear readers, although I could stand to get a little faster on a BMX bike, I haven't been well and truly shown up on an ATB since Jeff Dein came to visit me three years ago and demonstrated his ability to hop 30" logs on a full-suspension bike. So, I decided to let Greg get ahead of me.
"Sure, go ahead,", I said. Sidney looked at me with mild displeasure, and then said,
"Hmm, sure is getting dark." And it was, it really was - the trees were blocking the evening sun, and the trail was becoming impossible to see clearly. I had my doubts for a moment, but then Greg took off down the ramp, and it was on, so to speak.
This time, there was no simple sitting back and enjoying the ride. We each pedaled hard, shifting up through the middle ring and onto the big one, jamming even as we frantically shifted from side to side trying to keep our bikes in the safety of the trail's center ruts. Coming out of the first long turn, I was temporarily unable to straighten my bike, and I had nearly a full second of heart-stopping 35MPH sideways slide - until a rock smacked my rear wheel and set me straight.
The trail leveled for a moment, and I used my deep-squatting quads to close the gap on Greg, who is smaller, lighter, and therefore better-equipped to "surf" the mud in the downhills. This was my chance to blow by him. He looked back, wide-eyed, just as I came close enough to touch his rear tire - and then the trail dropped again, this time for a long, jump-filled section.
It was too black to really see the trail. My eyes were focused on the shifting mirage of Greg's orange VooDoo as he slid, pedalled, and popped the smaller humps. Every two or three seconds he would look back, and there I was. No way I would let him pull away. And it was like this, locked in combat, sliding and washing at the highest speed we could muster, that we came to the end of the section.
The high berm that marked the turn must have come into view for Greg just as he hit the first of the two launch ramps carved into the trail. He shot up four or five feet into the air and nose-dived. It looked perfect, but his speed was way too high. As I watched from twenty feet back, his front wheel clipped the peak of the second jump, and he flew two car-lengths in the air, past the berm, and into a group of large rocks. As he hit, I thought I heard his spine snap.
I pulled the first jump hard, landed on the backside of the second, and, with both wheels locked, unable to stop or even slow down, jumped the berm into the forest. I let go of the bike in mid-air, curled up, and fell to the rocky ground below. My head hit, and for a moment it was all gone.
Then my vision cleared and I rolled over. Unable initially to stand, I crawled to where Greg lay. He made no sound, didn't appear to be breathing. I didn't know what to do. I immediately thought that he had broken his neck, just as I did twelve years ago, and my friend Raul Ruiz did this past year at the Christmas Nationals. After what seemed like forever, Greg began making horrible gurgling noises. I heard noise and saw Sidney heading down the trail towards us. I began screaming.
Sidney was going too fast to stop, but he elected to jump off the bike and slide into the berm feet-first, after which he ran to us and started checking Greg out. "He's aspirating," Sidney stated. I should mention that Sidney has about five emergency medical certifications. "Get help." And all I had to do at that point, dear readers, was complete the downhill, as quickly as possible, in the dark.
I'll cut what happened next short. After a frustrating forty-five minutes debating with local authorities over exactly which county the accident occurred in, an ambulance arrived. Sidney had stabilized Greg and carried him out on his back. The final diagnosis, delivered some hours later, was a massive concussion and a permanently separated shoulder. Apparently, when Greg hit the rocks, his body went into shock, and the concussion didn't help. Four months later, Greg is just fine, except for some permanent pain and loss of movement in his left shoulder and arm. I'm fine, too; the helmet and Sinisalo chest protector saved me from the rocks, and I never worry about losing a moment or two of consciousness...
On October second, I suited up with the same gear I'd worn that day, and I set off down the hill. The first rush of acceleration caught me off guard, as it always does. I rode cautiously, since the center rut that had kept us safe in the wet had become a dangerous trap in the dry. The wind whistled in my helmet as I jumped and landed, over and over again. The last two jumps and berm appeared before me. I locked up both wheels, jumped, rode up the berm, and once more had to dump the Klein, which hit a tree and bounced back my way. There, in the field of rocks, were the twin scars of where Greg and I had landed, and where I had crawled back to attempt to help my injured friend. In a way, it was my pride that caused it all; Greg confirmed weeks later that, looking behind him, he had realized he was "holding me up" and that he had ridden well beyond what he knew to be safe, just so I couldn't make fun of him later. That could have killed him, and it could have seriously injured me. I believe that pride might occasionally be worth dying for, but it's not worth killing for - and it's not worth losing a friend forever.
I reflected on this for a while, and then I got back on the
battered Klein and completed the ride. The memory is gone; the demons
are exorcised. Greg's alive, and I made the safe run.