In the world of dirt bikes, there are a lot of obstacles. Some of them are bigger than others, most are easily overcome with the right technique and a bit of luck. And then there are those that just jump out at you and break your 3rd and 4th metatarsus.
If you couldn't tell, I experienced the latter a few weeks ago.
My dad, brother and I all went for a ride the first weekend of my semester at school. After driving in a general direction of Swan Valley, we decided to ride a trail that I professed to never go back on a few years prior, but I was a weakling back then on a tiny bike. Things could change, right?
Wrong. It still sucked, but for even more reasons now.
You see, Pritchett Creek is a nice ride for the majority. It's a loop, so you never see the same terrain twice, unless you go backwards through it once you're out the other side, but the first few miles going in and the last few miles going out are pretty torturous. Rocks everywhere, and it was kinda muddy as well.
I can handle that most days. It was this one little rock that really ruined the ride... and a is still ruining me as we speak.
You see, between these gnarly patches, Prichet Creek is nice. It's a single track trail, winding through a canyon with a (usually) small creek in the bottom. You get some nice flow going through a lot of it, and it's enjoyable. That is until there that one rock I was talking about.
This friggin rock pops out of nowhere on me, my front tire catches it and my left side foot peg decides to make a straight line right for my left foot. No prob. I got motocross boots. Plastic and composite will save me. The guys at Fly Racing did there homework right? Yeah.
But that's not going to help. This foot peg nails me right in the top of the foot going about mach five.
I get the bike picked off of me and put some weight on the foot. Feels bad, but I've been through that before. Whatever. Pain ain't no thang.
So I ride another like... 20 miles with what I figured was just a sore foot. Get back to the truck and pull the boot off. Still nothing. No bruising, no bones sticking out of my foot. It's all good. I'll be better in the morning.
Well, fact of the matter was that I couldn't walk straight... well I can't walk straight normally.... I really couldn't walk at all. I hopped around my house. So I went back up to lovely ol' BYU-Idaho with crutches. I got through that Sunday and that night bruises started to show up as well as some swelling.
"Cool. Well. I think things might be broken at this point." I thought to myself after I posted a photo to Instagram of my nasty foot.
The next day I rode my bike to the Smith Building with crutches bungee'd to my backpack and went on with my day. Tuesday, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland came to speak at devotional, and my mom came to see. I figured that day was a good day to get X-rays.
Yup. Them broken toes. Normal toes don't have a 40 degree bend to them at the end.
Well, technically it's my metatarsal bones. #3 and #4, so it's my foot. Foot sounds cooler than toes anyway.
So a week after the X-rays, I was sitting in my good buddy Dr. Huntsman's office. 4 weeks in a boot keeping all weight off unless not moving. Yay. Not only do I have to keep off the foot, but I have to reduce myself to crutching around campus instead of speeding around on a bike. My arms were hurting just thinking about it.
The weeks went by faster than I thought. Now, I'm sitting here with no boot and a prescription for knee braces to keep me from killing any more of my legs will riding. So I guess it's not all bad.
BUT WAIT! There's more! With the effort my left foot had to put forth, it now hurts arguably more than actually breaking the other foot because of being constantly worked for the price of two feet. But, things are slowly getting better.
Watch out for rocks folks. They'll screw up your riding season.
