Singletrack

In the clearing, Matti, our guide, takes over, he’s
the one on the clock so the lads let him do his job.
The gash on my elbow is concerning, but it’s soon
wrapped and patched. I have a severe pain in my
left arm and ribs feel tight, but there’s little point in
delay so I groggily push on, hope of improvement
far outweighing expectation, and totally dashed
as I manual off the first drop and feel a white-hot
shock of pain tear up my bicep. I’m off and walking,
karmically close to the spot where I smugly burned
off yesterday’s downhillers. At that point agony
overrides soul-searching, but I’m already dimly
aware that there will be many repercussions.
Eddie kindly props me up as we walk the last
few hundred metres to the waiting van, head faint
and legs like Bambi. We pile in, an unscheduled
drop-off explained as another victim requires an
early bath. Matti looks gutted for me as we shake
hands, demonstrating the true empathy essential
in our line of work as fellow guides. I wave to the
boys and commence a funereal stroll back through
the beauty of the walled town, past the world’s best
ice cream shop and hundreds of smiling tourists.
Everything for me is cast under a cloud of worries
about hospitals, missed work, races I might not
compete in, and the abrupt and untimely end to the
main reason for my holiday.
And so I sit here in silence. The slow tapping
of finger on keyboard and dark thoughts my only
companions. I feel lonely, stupid and pissed off,
old enough to understand where fault lies but not
mature enough to pre-empt and avoid this error. I
was caught in the moment, driven by animalistic
desires of enjoyment, skirting the extremely fine line
between pleasure and pain, and ultimately landing
the wrong side. I’ll take a shower, check for further
damage and then sit down and work out how to
salvage the best from my remaining holiday as
well as how to limit monetary loss from cancelled
guiding work.
Take my experience however you see fit. You
can heed the warning and back off as you ride,
guaranteeing you’ll milk the last minutes from
your rare riding holidays, or you can play the odds,
stretching the limits to breaking point, knowing
full well that it may end in tears. I’m in no position
to lecture; I’ve done this before over 20 years ago,
memories of staring out of a Chamonix hospital
window unable to move my crumpled body. With
age comes experience, but sense comes from a
different source.
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