Crash, Bang, Wallop

The Boy was unfortunate to fall off his mountain bike on the dustiest, most loose stone based section of our ride yesterday evening.

It all happened so quickly and I just avoided running him over myself as he tumbled right in my path. There are two approaches to the period immediately following a crash. One is to leap up like a temporarily stunned and floored prize-fighter and laugh it off even though there can be some considerable pain and discomfort. The other is to lie still and wait until the Medics arrive. The Boy was firmly in the former category even though his injuries did look nasty.

The enveloping, choking white powdery dust gave him the aura of a ghost. I had seen that whole look from archive films of the Paris-Roubaix Cycle Race when they had been run after an unusually, for Northern Europe, dry Spring and what would normally be thick gloopy mud would be stirred up into a fine particle suspension permeating into every pore and clothing fold.

A reddening could be seen on his top lip, chin, forearms and legs where the abrasive gravel had stripped away the skin. There was no actual flow of blood on the lesions. It had coagulated immediately in the dry warm early evening air and encouraged by the fine cementatious ingredients active in his own personal dust cloud. The mix would soon start to harden and give the sensation of a stiffening of the muscles and sinews.

The Boy stood up, bravely coping with obvious hurtings. It dawned on me that he was no longer a small child, likely to burst into justified tears but a young man with strength and determination not to be affected by such a traumatic shock to his system and his growing confidence on two wheels.

We all stood around not sure what to do. The bike lay partly on the track and amongst the granite boulders which separated the path from the bank of the Estuary. Just a few seconds before the crash I had been pointing out to The Boy a beige coloured house far away on the opposite side of the river which we had ridden past nonchalantly and innocently just 48 hours before. Perhaps this moment of innattention from a forward outlook had been a catalyst to his front wheel getting stuck in a long ugly fissure in the track where a few days of prolonged drought had cracked and ruptured the otherwise level surface into a treacherous groove from which there was no escape. There was no chance to steer out of the channel and the adverse camber had caused the dramatic spill.

From one moment of blissful outdoor activity we had been thrown into a state of complete disarray. One of our group volunteered to go for help and rode off back towards civilisation, a mile or so away through the buddleia bushes and early season brambles. The Boy started to straighten up and with a few grimaces and gritty spits was able to make a start on the long walk back to where the help would hopefully arrive.

I followed the walking wounded leading our two bikes by the handlebar stems. The track was now quite busy with riders, dog walkers and joggers and they upped their own speed upon seeing the gory parade of the injured and dismounted.

I was surprised that no-one asked if we were alright but then we were clad in our biking gear and looked  seasoned and experienced to an extent that falling off would be regarded as an occupational hazard to onlookers.