Impaled

I was channel surfing and saw a title of a show called “I was Impaled”.
So I bit, and checked it out.
There was a vignette about a lady who tripped in her yard and got a wrought iron hook through her eye socket into her brain. Pretty gross, but it just missed a big brain artery by millimeters and she not only survived, but maintained most of her vision.
I was going to move on (Jeopardy!), but then they teased for the next segment after the commercial “New Zealander Kevin Mayer on the other hand, understood the risks involved every time he rode his mountain bike on treacherous trails.....”
So I hit record and came back to it later.
It was a nice segment about a typical obsessed rider, showing his wife rolling her eyes at his obsession, and showing him riding on some beautiful, lush, forested New Zealand trails. Some exaggeration - “you can get to 100 kmh=60 mph”
It had him stating “I thought it was going to be a lame crash”.
On the last run of the day, he took a dive, and impaled himself on the brake lever. From below the wrist, through his palm.
They detached the hose, and took him to the hospital with the whole lever still impaled.
Surgery removed it, and the lever was restored to the bike (yea!). He is back to riding.

My impalements have been:
-stepping on a nail and having it go through my shoe as a kid
-yucca spike from chantry in my shin. I STILL have a bump there many years later. I suspect there is a bit still there.
-a backwards pointing branch that hit my biceps on a ride, and then bowed until the tension got too great and it threw me and the bike sideways and down. I still have a good scar there.

and you?

 

Scary stuff.
I remember meeting a guy at the Floop years ago- a friend of a friend who said he'd taken a year off the bike after his stem caught his, uh, fellas and torn the soft flesh during an otb.
That story gave me nightmares.

 

Manzanita spikes and cholla cactus. That cactus effed up my hand for about a year... felt like arthritis in my hand and just couldn't close it tightly. Good times.

This wasn't that memorable event, but you get the idea...

 

Bummer. I read something about riding in AZ (Phoenix/Tucson) and they recommended carrying an afro pick to remove cholla.

 

Those things are nasty... a pick and some tweezers, or maybe needle-nosed pliers are needed!

 

One of my friends is a PA. So of course she carries a stitch kit with her, right? Oh, also an a distance runner. She impaled herself with something cactus related while out on a run (before I met my GF). Pulled out her kit, removed the item with a scalpel, then sewed her wound closed. Of course, then finished her run.

 

I too have had the common impalings, such as nails, cholla, bee stingers, yata, yata, yata.

I witnessed @Faust29 get impaled several times yesterday by those lovely yuccas on our ride.

 

Looks like you got a mutant Tribble on your arm there.

 

Mirror universe tribble!

 

Blue Agave Needle ... Deep into the arm... PCE Of Course!

 

OUCH!

 

My impalements have been quite lame but the best I saw was actually in NZ when on the national tour. A bloke in the downhill race had a good stack and taught everyone there the importance of having the ends of your bars covered. The medical crew at this race were volunteers from St Johns Ambulance. Two lovely old ladies sitting in their tent knitting away. Bloke comes back from the hospital and these two grandmas are getting him to take the dressing off to inspect the gaping hole in his side

I would see 70-80 km/h on my giant hardtail in the mid 90's so I'd quite easily believe 100 is possible in some spots on dirt in NZ on todays modern machines.