Rough week

Well I've had a pretty hard week. Mainly just a hard Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Thursday morning my brother was in a motorcycle/car accident. He was on his way to work around 6:30 in the morning. He was cruising down highway 412 into Enid when a pick-up pulled out in front of him. His bike hit the truck and flipped the truck on its side and my brother's face went into the truck. His face hit the truck and he bounced off and hit the ground. Brice tried to stop before impact because there were skid marks where he tried to avoid the truck. The guy in the truck was flown to OKC for internal injuries and Brice was taken to St. Mary's hospital in Enid. He broke his back and now has two rods on both sides of his spine and most of the nerve damage they think has been fixed. He broke both shoulder blades, numerous ribs, his left upper arm and both the radius and the ulna in his right wrist. The spent 8 hours reparing his face on Friday. He basically broke every single bone in his face. It took 10 plates and 50+ screws to put his face back together. His jaws are wired shut and he has a trach in so he can breath. They also had to put a chest tube in because the broken ribs punctured a lung. Tomorrow they are doing a skin graph because his right eye lid is gone. My mom, who is a nurse at St. Marys, said they are going to try to wake him up today and get him out of bed to see if he can walk. He is able to move his legs, so hopefully he will be able to walk again. It is so difficult to see him in that hospital bed. He is so swollen and black and blue. I keep thinking of all the times when we were younger and how mad I would get at him for always messing with me. He has two kids and is married. His oldest son is 15 and his youngest is 9. I know it is even harder on them to see their dad that way. The youngest one hasn't seen him yet. I have been amazed by all the people that came to the hospital to see how he is doing. People that we used to go to church with when we were younger and people he went to school with. Even his high school principal came by to check on him. At one point there were like 50 people in the ICU waiting room just for him. Alot of his biker friends are organizing a ride for him to raise money. My dad called my last night to see if I wanted to ride on the back of my uncle's bike. I cannot imagine getting on a motorcycle right now. I have ridden motorcycles since I was 5 years old, but after this accident, I don't think I can do it. I am not even sure I can ride my bicycle on the road anymore. I am pretty scared of cars right now. I think I can do it in a pack, but not by myself. Not yet anyway.

I raced (if you call it racing) 12 Miles of Hell yesterday. It was quite humerous. I have only been on my mt bike maybe 5 times in the past 2 years. But I got a good start and I was doing good on the climbs but the decents scared me to death. I think I braked the entire way down the hills. I would pass a ton of guys up the hills and then they would totally drop me going down. I guess I need to practice my decents. I crashed a few times, but it was mainly just tipping over. At all of the check points they said that I was the first female through, so I was pretty stoked. I crashed one more time after that and I bent my rear derailleur. I stood on the side of the trail for like 10 minutes trying to fix it. Carl came along and tried to fix it but he pulled a little to hard and broke it. He said sorry, just cyclocross it to the finish. So, I picked up my bike and took off running. The run didn't last long so I thought, I can probably coast down hill and then run uphill. I hopped on to coast and the derailleur got caught in my rear wheel, nearly making my crash again. So, I had to walk the last mile and a half to the finish. I also had to watch 4 women and about 80 men pass me in that last mile. It sucked!

I am pretty sore today from carrying my bike and from crashing on the rocks. And I have a handful of bruises to show. But I now that I am not even close to being as sore as my brother is right now. I guess when things like this happen, your entire perspective changes and in the big scheme of things a little mt bike race or road race is really not that big of a deal. There are so many more important things in life.

Here is a link to the flyer for the benefit ride for my brother. http://ironlivergoons.com/BRICE.htm. I am thinking about taking my bicycle and riding some of the route with them. So, if anyone is interested in riding for a good cause, let me know. I know it is mainly motorcycles, but bicycles face the same problems with cars as motorcycles. Plus, there will be lots of food, beer and a band after the ride.