Whistler Bike Park closing day - and emergency room visit

There are a many ways to end the biking season. Some are more painful than others... This weekend was the end of the biking season at Whistler's bike park, but that didn't stop me from ending my season with an injury.

Cheryl and I were lucky enough to be invited to stay with some friends from work. My boss's boss owns a share of a townhouse up in the village, so we had prime lodging!

We got into Whistler late Friday night, and Saturday morning the low of -5 C ensured a chilling start to our day:

A couple of the folks we went with had not ridden whistler before, so we decided to warm up on Crank It Up, and Ninja Cougar. Unfortunately, on our third run I blew out riding on flat gravel. I'm not actually really sure what happened, but my pedal snapped off, and I rolled pretty hard on the gravel - scraping my ankle along the way.

I thought it was a minor scrape, so I continued riding down the hill (without a pedal, derailleur, or chain guide), until I arrived at the next clearing where I looked down at my ankle. I thought I saw tendons, which freaked me out sufficiently that I decided to get off the bike and lie down. I got down right next to a person who took a look at me and said: "I'm an EMT, do you need any help?" which seemed serendipitous. They called the emerg folks, and started to bandage up my foot.

Here's me lying down waiting for the emergency vehicle to come my way:

Here's the EMT, Nishad, and Bernhard helping me into the truck:

Cheryl passing me my stuff after collecting all the pieces:

My bike sans pedal:
 

In the emergency room the doctor froze my foot. The nurse then went to town on it - cleaning it out very thoroughly. She was very impressed at the amount of dirt and rock she got out of my ankle.

The doctor decided it wasn't a good idea to stitch it together. Firstly there wasn't enough skin remaining in the area to stitch, secondly there was enough dirt that stitching would elevate the risk of an infection.

So, he put a bandage on the wound, and prescribed some painkillers and antibiotics.

Then it was back to the hill to watch people have fun:

My biking weekend was over, so first thing in the morning Cheryl and I decided to head back to Seattle to get some rest, and relax.

I do have pics of the ankle itself, they're not too bad, just bloody enough I didn't want to post them online. Email me if you're interested in seeing it :)