Last weekend, after a day of riding bikes, we were able to get up to Squaw Valley Ski Resort for a movie premiere: a tribute to Shane McConkey... a professional freestyle skier/base jumper who called Squaw Valley his home. He had a sense of adventure like no one else on this planet. He was probably best known for his ability to ski off cliffs... do a backflip... drop his skis... pull a parachute... and calmly float back down to earth. Tragically, he was killed during a jump that went wrong.
The venue was perfect. We sat outside in the freezing cold with heaters and fire pits all around. The screen was below the Squaw gondola and they had "THANK YOU SHANE" in lights on the side of the mountain. The movie was a touching tribute to his life and legacy. He lived his life to the FULLEST and I think everyone left with a new excitement for their own lives (within reason of course... I can find excitement in life while keeping both feet firmly on the ground).
So this weekend, we decided to live our Tahoe lives to the fullest by going for a mountain bike ride. I'm still very new to mountain biking so I need all the practice I can get. We decided to stay close to home and rode the Tahoe Rim Trail up to "the bench," a man-made wooden bench at one of the peaks of the trail. The ride up was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life challenging. It was just very technical... lots of rocks to climb... so I ended up walking my bike quite a bit.
Finally, the trail mellowed out a bit and we ended up here:
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| I've never worked so hard to get to a bench. |
The views were worth it.
Zater came along for the 12 mile ride. He may be getting older but he's still full of energy. Now, he'll sleep for 2 days straight.
On the way back to the truck, we decided to skip the single track trail and rode a 4x4 road down. It's all gravel/rock/sand but we skied it a few times last winter and we knew it would take us back to the truck.
As we were riding down, Zater cut across the path directly in front of Mike. To avoid hitting Zater, Mike slammed on his brakes but his rear brake is a little faulty so his front brake stopped him and his forward momentum took him over the handlebars and directly onto his right shoulder.
When he sat up, it was pretty obvious that his right shoulder was hanging a bit lower than his left. He took a nasty hit to his right knee too and he couldn't even move out of the road because of the pain. So, I continued riding down... got the truck... put it in 4 wheel drive... and headed back up to get him (thank God we were on a 4x4 road).
After some x-rays in the ER it appears he has a grade 3 AC (acromio-clavicular a.k.a. top of the shoulder) separation. He's in a sling and needs to follow up with an orthopedic specialist to determine if he did any other damage and whether or not he'll need surgery (hopefully not... technically a person can function with an AC separation... you just have a bump on the top of your shoulder and hopefully regain full range of motion/strength, etc).
I had planned on celebrating Mike's 30th birthday this weekend... his actual bday is in a couple weeks but we're busy the next 2 weekends. I bought him a jacket from REI and we needed to exchange it so he called the closest store and they informed us they were having a "garage sale" that they had not advertised. Seriously??? Discounted gear and no one knows about it??? JACKPOT!!! So, since he's all busted and can't play outside, we headed to Reno and scored big time deals... including a GoPro... so next time I can get his crash on video!
