In which I visit the EMT.

I raced my bike this weekend!

Poorly.

Mostly because I have barely ridden in the month since my last race at MRC Cross — which I still haven’t written a report for, but will shortly — and my fitness is non-existent.  And partly because right middle finger was a bloody mess.

Let me back up.

The first indication I got that this weekend wasn’t going to go well for me came on Friday after I finished cleaning my bike.  I set my workstand up in my driveway so I could wash the bike, and believe you me, it was sparkling.  I walked away for a few minutes to let it dry, and when I came back, the wind had blown the stand over.

With my bike still attached.

Sooo … it landed on the drive side, of course, and the rear derailleur hanger was now well and truly bent, the handlebar tape was ripped, and there was a big gouge on the saddle.

I’ve crashed hard at least three times this season alone, a couple of times last season, and suffered not the slightest bit of damage.  I put the bike in my workstand and it gets broken.

Ran to the shop, got a new hanger, fixed everything, packed up the car.  Got up Saturday morning, wife made me a great breakfast, enjoyed the short drive to the Londonderry Velodrome for the Northeast Velo’cross, found a parking spot behind the big building next door, grabbed my travel mug, hopped out of the car and shut the door and felt a sharp pain in my right middle finger.

Because it was still in the car.

I promise you I’m not exaggerating when I tell you, dear readers, that I stood there for a beat, staring at my finger firmly lodged betwixt car door and car frame, and said, out loud …

“You’ve got to be freaking kidding me.”

So, I set my travel mug on the ground, opened the door, and was greeted with the sight of a huge flap of skin ripped open, almost to the bone, on my at this point numb finger.

Delightful.

So, oh-so-very grateful that no one had seen me do this, I picked up my travel mug, took a long sip, and set out to find the EMT.  I almost felt bad about forcing them to get out of their nice warm ambulance, but they looked bored, so at least I gave them someone to make fun of something to do.

The young lady gave me a hunk of gauze to wrap around it and taped it on for me, then handed me a couple of band-aids for later and another hunk of gauze for good measure.

By this time the feeling was coming back. Since it didn’t hurt much, I knew it wasn’t broken, so I did what any intelligent adult would do after injuring their hand in such a manner.

I got on my bike and went out for a couple of warm-up laps.

When I got done, I discovered that I’d need to wrap that finger a lot tighter, because it looked like this:

Disgusting photo by Carlina Dupre

I got it wrapped up tighter back at the car, and was glad the weather had warmed up enough that I wouldn’t need gloves — and after riding gloveless for the first time at Providence in the blistering heat, I discovered that I prefer racing sans gloves anyway — so that helped.

And then I raced.  Poorly.  But I haven’t finished editing the bar-cam footage, so I’ll save the report for later.

In the meantime, here is me being heckled roundly by Evan Patten.