Big Creek Greenway

It's not like I didn't have options today. The Snake Creek Gap TT finale, a Cartecay Bikes ride, Yargo with Travis and Russell, probably could have even bailed on down to Douglasville for some Silk Sheets or something with my brother. But I had a few strikes against me too; my wife's in New York with her sister, I've got 2 little girlies to keep track of all day, and my rolling junk show reached the point of actual unusability after last week's shenanigans. You'd think with a week to find somebody to watch the kids and get parts to fix my bike, I'd have been cramping and puking on Dug Gap Mountain this morning, but remember who we're talking about here. I dragged out of bed at noon, picked up some parts from Reality, some more parts from Addictive and took the kids to the Greenway.

Sophie has trouble going straight. She made a lot of progress on that today.



Iz was just cruising around, loving the freedom.



Sophie had a hard time early on, getting in peoples' way and having trouble passing. She figured all that out, but near the end of the day, she caught her front tire on the edge of the pavement and got slung, face first, dead into the concrete.

Poor little girl, she cut the inside of her top lip and it bled and bled. All things considered, not a bad wound, but quite a shock to her. All she could say was "I want to go home", over and over, and a freight train of childhood memories came slamming into my little pickup. I had forgotten all about that feeling. It's kin to the hunger insanity, where you need to eat now, but instead you focus on getting to the top of the climb or the end of a lap. The wound needs attention, but instead, you focus on getting somewhere safe, usually home. When I was a kid, I remember falling out of a treehouse and running most of the way home before suddenly realizing I was unhurt. I stepped on a nail once too and ran halfway home in horrendous pain before I suddenly realized that it was the running that was making it hurt, and worse, making it bleed. The turning point for me was once I knocked the wind out of myself really bad in my backyard, ran inside, laid down on the couch, and still had the wind knocked out of me. Getting safe and comfortable hadn't actually fixed anything. Seeing the urgency on her face brought it all back and man, my heart went out to her. Poor little girl. I'm sure her mind was screaming against it, but she agreed to sit down on a bench and wait it out. So we sat, and waited, and applied a little pressure to her lip, and 5 minutes later she was fine, as if it hadn't happened.

Except for being covered in blood.



...which was a lot darker in real life.

We've actually had a couple of these kinds of incidents lately, though this was the only one involving a bike. It might be time to teach the girls how to roll when they hit the ground. There might be a separated shoulder in my future.

Devastating faceplants aside, we had a great time. Sophie made a lot of progress. Maybe we'll go back tomorrow.