Thicker bones

I realise I may have never mentioned mountain biking on this blog. This is a serious omission, as I've spent pretty much all my free time this year pursuing my new sport. The problem is that I don't tend to stop on my rides to take photographs, and who wants to read a post that's an intimidating wall of text. But today, I had my camera along.

It was another glorious day of sunshine to tack on to an already spectacular fall. The forecast calls for proper fall rains to commence on Tuesday and end in April, so I dashed out to ride Pipeline on Mt. Fromme. The conditions were perfect, not too dusty, not too muddy. I rode the tight steep upper corners with ease, finally had the nerve to ride the super-fun triple rock roll, and I was sticking to the bridges like glue. The next little bit of trail didn't look intimidating at all:


But sure enough it was evil. The secret is that handlebar-height bulge in the tree guarding the entrance to the bridge. 99% of my body rode past the tree. The baby finger on my right hand did not. With a sickening crunch I was tossed from my bicycle. "Golly gee darn it," I said. Then I taped my fingers together and rode down to the hospital. There the x-rays showed that I had indeed broken my baby finger. So the nurse made me a splint that I'll need to wear for the next 4-6 weeks:


Yikes! Don't let the Republicans see this. Apparently the hospital was out of proper tape for making splints, so I got less useful waterproof tape.
Including the ribs (which I never blogged about) that's two broken bones in just one season of mountain biking. Surely any sane person would give up the sport. But I'm just thankful that winter is here so that I won't miss any more good riding days until spring.