Henry: "Jay, do you trust me?" I thought, "of course, with my life." Which was good because I was flat on my back on a gravel track in the middle of nowhere staring up at the Utah sky and had no idea what had just happened.
But let's back up. Rexy, Queen of the Desert is a point-to-point gravel ride from Moab to Downtown Fruita, Colorado. Two hundred miles, one way. My daugher's boyfriend Henry, his friend, Evan, and Evan's dad, Tim, had signed up to do the 200 mile race. After I rode SBT, I realized there was this gap in my experience in this different way of riding gravel than as a roadie. I thought riding with these guys would help hone my gravel skills ahead of the actual last race I had planned— Big Sugar— taking place just days before the scheduled surgery. I wondered, "Is that too close to Sugar?" It was. With the clarity of retrospect, I probably shouldn't have even considered it. But, since I was trying to jam in as much riding as possible ahead of my surgery, what's one more, right? I decided to meet them in Cisco and ride just the second hundred.
When my friend Marc heard I crashed, he knew exactly what had happened and where. The course has crazy, punchy little rolling hills with these v-shaped ruts at the bottom that lessen your traction before pitching you up over to the next roller. Tim and Evan and Henry had figured out how to ride them after taking them on for the first hundred miles. Me, notsomuch.
I'd ridden through a couple and didn't like the loss of my momentum but I got through. It wasn't pretty, but it was ok.
But then this one I decided to take a little faster. It grabbed my wheel, jerked me toward a boulder I really thought I was gonna miss. But I didn't. I hit it. The next thing I know I'm looking up in the sky at Henry.
"Jay, do you trust me?"
Henry wasn't the ony hero that day. Bobbie, Evan's mom/Tim's wife got me to the hospital and to the Air BnB. She even made me a pizza!
Thankfully the guys were able to get back out and complete the course, getting in after midnight. They knew that part of the course was going to be ridden in the dark just probably not as late as they ended up.
The reality is, I had been riding one armed and on borrowed time the whole year. I was now headed to two surgeries. One to replace my shoulder, and another to knit my broken collarbone back together. Something that my doctor, despite working in Boulder where he sees lots of broken collarbones, had never before had the opportunity to do both at one time.
Apparently I'm as adept at breaking norms as I am bones.
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