A Widow's Ride

Remember about a month ago I wrote about one of the two most outrageous adventures that I have had on the TW200.  Well, I think it’s time I tell you the story about the time I earned the nickname “The Flying Nun” by my fellow T-dubbers.

It was my birthday weekend about 2 years ago and a group of us decided to go camping in Borrego Springs, CA.  This town is the home of the largest desert state park in the United States.  The park encompasses more than 600,000 acres.

So we decided to ride up the South Coyote Canyon Trail and that where the adventure began.  Here is the story in Russ’ voice:

I gotta do some bragging on my wife here. Bad as it turned out, up to this point she displayed her finest riding to date in negotiating this rock pile. Then, for some inexplicable reason the bike made a full-throttle left turn off a rock, then launched off the trail. She let go of the bike just before it went over the side, then performed a perfect pile driver head first from maybe 10 feet or so above into the smaller boulders (beneath her bike in the pic). From our vantage point I was fairly certain I had become an instant widower. The get-off looked bad. Real bad.

Our new friend Don and I were watching from maybe 100 feet below. We scrambled up to her location, and she was not moving. I started taking inventory, not allowing her to move, insisting that she operate first fingers, toes, etc. Finally I asked her if she could move her head. A bit irritated by the question, she said “No!”, and my heart sank.

What she meant was “No, Jerkweed!. I can’t move my neck because my helmet is wedged between these two rocks! Are you blind? Quit playing paramedic and get me outta here, you idiot!”

Both the worst and the best moments of my life within seconds of one another. We extricated her helmeted noggin from its “wedgedness”, she got up, walked it off for a while and got on with life.

Her knee’s gunna be a little jacked for a while and major portions of her anatomy are presently the same hue as her bike ( which was spared once more by the grace of TCI) and the story had a happy ending courtesy of these fellers:

I have to add my 2 cents to this story and to tease the guys a little bit….when I crashed there were 2 other scenes unfolding as well. On top of the trail was Ronnydog and Jimbo doing a re-enactment of the Abbott and Costello comedy scene of “Who’s on First” but instead with the First Aid kits. Then Lizrdbrth and Don on the bottom of the trail were doing a re-enactment of the Chariot of Fire scene where they’re running on the beach in slow motion. The guys felt like they were running in slow motion to catch up to me as it was going down.

Ironically, while looking for pictures for this blog post, I found a picture that Lizrdbrth has mocked up on this crash but never posted it in the original ride report on the TW200forum website.

 The moral of the story being fully geared (AGATT) saved my skins and the only that was bruised were my knees.  The next day they were in the lovely shade of blue, purple, and green.

I still had the best time that weekend and I love these guys.  We have had many great weekends; camping and putzing around on our TW200.  I’m looking forward to our 2nd Annual SoCal Lizrdbrth Memorial Ride in Joshua Tree National Park where we all first met back in 2009.