Taken down by Isis in NC

 As far as riding days go, it didn't get much better than the sunny and mid-60's weather of March in NC.  Departing Charlotte toward Hanging Rock area in north-central NC, I stuck mostly to back roads and avoided Hwy 29 when possible.  The GPS was set to bicycling mode which often takes shorter routes or those with less of an elevation change.  It was this rerouting that let me down N. Yadkin Ave in the small town of Spencer, NC.  The 20 mph residential street was busy with a car stopping to talk to the neighbor. Slowing, I was waved past the car and then continuing uphill at about 20mph.  I see two women talking in the driveway ahead on the right.  As I'm coming to the corner of the sidewalk in this shot, I see movement and notice two dogs running toward me out the opened gate of the driveway.  In less than 15 feet, the larger of the two dogs, a stocky pitbul named Isis, ran perpendicular from the driveway toward my front wheel.  The enlarged eyes, snarling jaws and deep barking grew ever larger as the vicious dog charged at my front wheel. Before I had any opportunity to veer left or slow down, for speeding up is not an option going uphill on a loaded Ruckus, a solid thud rocked the front of the bike.  In a fraction of a second, my front wheel struggled to roll over the meat and bones and I can still hear the squeal and whine of the dog lodging between the front wheel and frame.

So forceful was the initial impact that I later found dog excrement exploded on the front of my floorboard.

The front wheel immediately was butted to the left by the impact of the hefty dog.  When the back wheel hit the body, it stopped the bike cold and I was catapulted forward over the handlebars.  Leading with my head, the right side of my helmet impacted the ground as my shoulder slammed into the mirror and bent over the windshield. My next memory is laying on my back in the street with the blue sky overhead and music still playing in my headphones. Reaching up with my right hand to turn it off, I noticed I couldn't get the hand up to the helmet. I reached down with the arm to lift myself up but had no support and a searing pain in my shoulder. OUCH!  I rolled forward and looked for traffic before notcing the two women who had been in the driveway running toward me in shock.

They helped me lift the bike up, something I quickly realized I could no longer do without the use of my right arm.  Lifting the bags from the roadway brought intense pain so I unzipped my Aerostich jacket and felt my collarbone.  Pointy and nearly sticking through the skin. Not good.

I knew I was in shock but I had to let that pass before I could assess the level of trauma and damage.  In the mean time I had a casual conversation with the two women while reattaching luggage and single-handedly repairing broken mounts with zip ties and gorilla tape. Ever try to tear Gorilla Tape with one hand? Ha! They suggested I go to the hosptial and not ride away on the bike so I assured them that was where I was going. 

The pitbull I hit was nowhere to be found.  When I questioned the home owner as to whose dog that was, she claimed she had never seen it before and didn't know where it belonged to. Maybe the neighbors up the hill?  I noted the house number, took a picture of the sign and intersection but without the dog around, there wasn't much else for me to do here.  I soon learned that riding with a broken collarbone is no walk in the park. Easier than riding with broken ribs but painful nonetheless.  It was somewhere around the city line that I realized I should head back to get the name and phone number of the home owner just in case. Returning, I knocked a few times before a younger woman answered the door, the grand daughter of the home owner who had helped me back to my feet earlier.  When asked about the pitbull, she seemed crestfallen and admitted that the dog was named Isis and it was her pitbull.   It hadn't returned yet and we all feared for the worse.  I handed her my journal full of travel stories and on a blank page she reluctantly wrote down her and her mother's name and number.  With great difficulty I remounted La Tortuga, found a level of blissful paint tolerance and cranked out another 2.5 hours of riding 55 miles to my friend Jay's house.  

The only text I had sent was to my buddy Matt to mention I had the wreck.  I'd wait to alert the folks once I knew how bad it was.  Pulling up at Jay's, he and his wife, Alli immedaitely came outside. It was clear Matt had texted them.  Once I stood up, my slumped right shoulder was an easy tell that I had broken my collarbone.  The bone nearly poking through the skin was the confirmation.  I slumped into the bolstered bucket seats of Jay's BMW 328is for a twisty ride to the E.R.  Alli's background in radiology meant I had another professional eye on the whole image but even a child could see that my clavicle was fractured.

Non-union fracture with butterfly fragments

I left La Tortuga in Jay's basement at his homestead and was fortunate my parents could drive down from VA the following day and snatch me up.  All this before an impending snow storm pressing down from the great lakes may blanket the region in snow.  Between snow events, I made it over to the UVA Medical Center in Charlottesville. On Mar 23 I underwent surgery to install a stainless steel plate and titanium screws into the bone and fragments to reposition and support the clavicle. An hour and half of surgery and 26 staples later, I came to from anesthesia and was released to go home.

Recovery time is approximately 3-6 months with no lifting and limited mobility of the right arm for the first month.  The return to Virginia was something I had been looking forward to for quite some time but this is not what I had imagined.  The next few months of recovery and healing will offer opportunity to visit with old friends and hike with my parents around the Shenandoah Valley.   The 2018 Ohio River -> Gulf kayak trip will be moved back to July sometime if my shoulder is ready.

Thank you for all the support and kindness over the course of my Ruckus travels. The bike will be taking a parked role for the upcoming year or so while I focus on kayaking more. There will be an update to the website bringing it into WordPress and I'm not sure what the future of this blog will be exactly.  I'll keep it interesting...stay tuned!