My Wild Weekend of Dude Debauchery: Bikes, Buds, Blood, and Wyoming

Now one of the roles of a best friend after a divorce is to get your pathetic backside out there and have a good time. This is what one of my oldest friends, Rod Savage, proposed to do this last weekend. Go to Jackson Hole, camp, mountain bike, and just be guys. Perfect!

Now I know what you’re thinking.  What would most newly divorced guys do on a weekend out single?  You would expect some picking up on women at the adjacent dinner table, some over-excess, maybe some inebriation, perhaps stumbling around until one of the guys vomits in the gutter, a little public exposure, maybe a sponge bath, one of you would be asked to strip, and overall a weekend you would never forget -  but might just want to.  But would family-man Brett have this kind of weekend?  The answer apparently is a resounding yes, but only in the way Brett would do it (Yes, I referred to myself in the third person there.  Twice.  Deal with it).

The weekend started late on Friday with a road trip up to Jackson Hole; manly talk, a stop for bullets, loud music, junk food, and even caffeinated drinks.  Starting on the wild side.  We talked sports, family, divorce, old friends, and whatever else we could to kill the six hours.  Once arriving in Jackson, we learned that our campground was actually an hour north of Jackson Hole in Grand Teton National Park. Well after dark we arrived at our cabin/tent hybrid… a "CANT" perhaps?    Not ready for bed, but not wanting to drive back into town, we opted for a moonlit walk down to the shores of Lake Jackson; yet another perfectly romantic moment wasted on a dude. I really need to stop doing this. I’m single now for heaven sakes.

Making it through the night, we set out on our true adventure - mountain biking at Teton Village.  Renting a couple of mountain bikes, and taking a pass on the full body armor they had available (who mountain bikes in body armor?  I have a helmet don’t I?) we hit the mountain.  Admittedly, when we first got to the lift, we were pretty disappointed that it only took us up a small portion of the mountain. We were looking for a serious adrenaline rush here. It’s midlife crisis time baby!

 

I was shortly dissuaded from my frustrations. This course was amazing! You go down sharp switchbacks turning left and right across steep horizontal banks. You’re riding over bridges spanning rocky crevices. There were hills and dips. And after I got accustomed to the course, I found the jumps course!   It was the best.   This course took you over 20+ jumps of different heights all the way down the mountain. Now I hadn’t jumped a BMX bike since I was 12 and never a mountain bike.  I had also only been on a mountain bike once in the past decade, but this was AWESOME!  As I raced down the mountain, the jumps got bigger and bigger. It would take you up a near vertical incline and set you down on a ramp going down the backside. It was all beautifully designed and completely exhilarating, even for a newbie 41-year-old.

This is always where the interesting stories begin, at the end of common sense and beginning of ego. After five hours on the course, Rod decided to take a break, he had just ate it over his handle bars. I don’t stop unless I absolutely have to (yes, that is foreshadowing).  Having my earbuds blasting Chvrches, sunglasses down, and sporting a Capt. America shirt, I was ready to battle the mountain alone. The first two solo runs were perfect. The jumps were amazing. It was getting to the end of the day so I wanted to make these last few runs special. I was hitting each jump faster and faster, catching more and more air. At the bottom of this run I turned off onto the True Grit trail with a warning signs of very large jumps.  Perfect!  I had done this run 5 times already.  Jump after jump went perfectly and I was approaching the last large jump of the trail. I loved this jump and I hit it at a real good speed. And boy did I ever go up.  I’m guessing 10+ feet in the air. In fact, I went up so high… I wanted to go down. Instinctively I nudged my front wheel down to catch the ramp on the backside of the jump. Unfortunately, I was well past the ramp at this point, but my front wheel kept rotating forward.  It wasn’t long before I appreciated that the bike was now riding me and this is where Sir Isaac Newton and I became forever and profoundly acquainted.

As near as I can recall, and as my CSI investigation of the marks on my helmet and body conclude, I landed fully from head to knee on the right side of my body and I thought my world had ended. Have you ever hit an animal in the road and looked in the rear-view mirror as it flailed around for a few seconds and then stop moving? That was me; my own personal roadkill. The shock throughout my body was horribly intense. It was a pain that I could not explain or understand (a bit like divorce). As I laid there motionless, I realized that I was in the middle of the trail on a blind corner beneath 8 ft. high jump and the next biker to come along would land right on top of me.  Groping and gasping in pain, I grabbed my bike, threw it in a ditch next to the trail and then rolled in after it. To add insult to injury, my hydration pack had ruptured and chose that time to drench me.

I lay there, not wanting to move and trying to see if this deep pain would go away. It wouldn’t. I wasn’t quite sure what to do. Nobody had seen me, and I was all alone.  Still, I couldn’t move.  Then finally a few minutes later I heard a biker approaching.  He buzzed right on by.  Fortunately, he was with the buddy who landed his jump, stopped and came back. He had an Eastern European accent which explained his Russian-style first-aid technique. He grabbed my hands, pulled me to my feet, handed me my bike and said “You okay?”  I nodded.  In daze I coasted the bike the few hundred yards down the mountain.

I got to the base, Rod was lounging back in an Adirondack chair, he looked at me, laughed, and asked what happened. I dropped the bike, collapsed into a muddy spot of grass and said “Dude, go find the first aid station.”   Now before you give Rod a hard time for laughing, when I heard in high school Rod got hit in the face with a javelin my first instinct was to laugh to. I figured if he had died, someone would’ve said “Rods dead.”  So if one of us is not dead, there must be a funny story behind it. Yet, I was not ready to laugh just yet.

Somebody gave Rod a general bearing to the first aid station and I hobbled off like a cast member of the Walking Dead - makeup and all.  After getting misdirected for a moment, we found the first aid station. Finally help.  We opened the door and walked inside and found… A dog. A well behaved black dog, but a dog nonetheless. He didn’t even have a stupid St. Bernard whiskey barrel which I could justify as painkillers at this point. We both did ask the dog for help, but to no avail. So Rod dropped me in a chair, took my picture, and went off to let them know they had a visitor. After a long while I helped myself to one of the gurneys, laid down, and waited for help to arrive. 

 

Finally five guys came running in, checked for vitals, broken bones, and took good care of me.  It was still pretty clear to all of us, including the patient, that I was in shock. I kept telling them that whatever was hurt, it was deep inside of my right rib cage.  My heart rate wouldn’t go down, and I looked pretty crappy. Then one of the medics did the wuss check.  He pulled Rod aside and asked how he thought I looked (well within my ear shot - I hurt my guts, not my head).  Was I overreacting?  Some guys do that.  Rod upheld the man code big time.  He basically said (with much more colorful colloquialisms) that if I was only a little hurt I would push through it. So if I was saying I was hurt, I was really hurt. That was good enough for him.  Well done dude!

My pain increasing, my abdomen starting to turn colors with some swelling beginning, we all agreed that an ambulance was the best next course.  So as I waited to be hauled off in ambulance for the first time since 1979, they went about putting antiseptic on every joint and across the entire right side of my body.  Not the best for lowering my heartrate.  The ambulance arrived about 20 minutes later, which was perfect timing because I was about ready to ask for the horse doctor’s prescription for a broken leg.  I really hurt.  Like the ski resort medics before them, the EMTs had to check my bones and back first. All were A-OK. But man, my guts really really hurt. Getting the IV, they offered up some painkillers.  I of course said yes. They eventually had to give me four times the normal dose to get the pain to drop and to get my heart rate to drop.  I finally stopped wanting that horse doctor’s shotgun to the head.

 

Once the pain subsided, we had a good drive ahead of us so I began to talk to the EMT. A Real nice guy, ski instructor, big surprise.   I asked what injuries they see around there. He said they mostly get the YDI injuries. I asked him what those were. He told me that I was a little out of this group, but it stands for Young, Dumb, and Invincible.  Young guys, doing crazy stuff. I think he implied that I fell under the old category doing crazy stuff. To emphasize that point, he then cut my Capt. America shirt off me. I was mortal again.

We finally arrived at the Emergency Room and I was feeling okay thank to the drugs. I tried to crack a few jokes, giving the hang loose signs to the EMTs, and everyone just presumed I was drunk.  Fantastic.  They hauled me into room 8.    People came in and out asking me questions, getting insurance information (gotta get paid in case the guy dies) and looking me over. Rod showed up at this point and sat there like a dutiful life partner for the next six hours. 

Three hours in, they hauled me in for x-rays and a CAT scan.  As I’m laying there in front of the CAT scan machine to stick my head into what looks like the Warp Drive of the Enterprise, the lady looks at me and says “You’re going to have to take those shorts off. They have metal on them.”  Let the wild times begin. I dropped those bad boys down because I knew I was wearing the ultimate biking paraphernalia: Voltron spandex.  She didn’t seem impressed.

As I sat there in the quiet room with the humming magnetics all around me I kept nodding off. She would walk up next to me grabbed my shoulder and I would jump. She would ask if everything was alright. I would say, “You just woke me up and startled me.” She’d say okay, excuse herself and come back and do it again two minutes later. This repeated three or four times. Maybe she was surprised that someone could fall asleep so fast. She’s obviously has never seen a member of a Mormon bishopric on the stand.

X-rays and CAT scan complete, they hauled me back to my dear Rodney waiting for me patiently - and still laughing and photographing me as we awaited the results. Finally, some guy I had never seen before (the only doctor I had seen all night) told me very seriously that my kidney was bleeding, that urine from my kidney was leaking into my body cavity, that blood was leaking into my urine, that my kidney was rather swollen and injured, and that they could probably let me go in a couple more hours.  Uh, Okay.  Welcome to Wyoming.  At least I didn’t have to kiss a sheep before I left.

Once the results were in, they finally consented to let me go pee after asking for hours.  But not in the bathroom, of course.  I had to do it there in room 8.  AND I had to pee in a large plastic jug, in case they wanted samples.   Fine!  To heck with my dignity.  Now in case you’re wondering, after battering your kidney, it is very very hard to urinate. This wasn’t going to be easy. I finally got the nurse to leave, but Rod was staying put, camera in hand. 

 

(I just realized Rod did actually take a  photo)

After nothing for a long while, Rod excused himself behind the curtain to the hallway. Then of course, he kept throwing the curtain opened at random intervals to allegedly see how I was doing. More to the point, he was showing everyone else what I was not doing. Things finally happened, but that cranberry/orange juice cocktail color had no business coming out of the human body.   Blood in urine visually confirmed.

Bloody urine aside, they were going to let me go.  They seemed to do an assessment on Rod to determine if he would take me to a hospital or dump me into the trees for the bears if I began bleeding more. They concluded the former, but I knew it was the latter. That was fine by me. As I waited, the man who, up until a few minutes ago, I thought was a doctor, came in and offered to wash out all my wounds with a brush and sponge. Not quite the sponge bath I was hoping for, neither the gender of the attendee, but I took it.  That guy had gentle hands, never got his name though.

 

Handing me a couple of bottles of drugs, they told me I would be checking out.  Having lost my Capt. America shirt, I wasn’t sure what I would do. But what are best friends for if not to buy you tasteless shirts to wear while high on narcotics.  So I stumbled forth into the Jackson Hole wearing this beauty:

 

(It took me four days to realize what the fish hooks looked like… actually my son had to tell me.)

Now Rod and I had talked about grabbing a steak that night before my little aerobatic maneuvers. Not wanting to let him down, we made our way into a nice steakhouse. I grabbed a Gatorade on the way in to put some liquid in me and I was staggering like I was polishing off a bottle of Jack Daniels. Now I looked like a leper at this point wearing a shirt with the word “hooker”, blood covered shorts, a hospital band and an IV bandage.  The restaurant hostess didn’t blink. She handed me a pair of scissors to cut off my hospital barcode band and took us to the table.  Wyoming.  Got to love it.

This is where I felt bad at how beat up I looked, as they sat us next to five beautiful women roughly our age. I thought my appearance would make them all completely sick to their stomachs having to dine next to this gross guy.  Wrong!  There were all nurses from out of town who seemed to enjoy the carnage. And they went right into diagnosis mode.  This could’ve been a splendid night, if I didn’t feel like I’ve been hit by a train.  The conversation continued, and my dinner arrived, a few bites of steak with a little asparagus, and I politely excuse myself. I walked to the front door, dashed to the gutter, and promptly threw up everything I just consumed… out my nose.  There were several, “Dude he’s drunk” comments, but that was probably more dignified than the reality.  Once my stomach was empty again, I ran into the bathroom to try to clean myself up. I looked like crap. Staggering back to the table, I was intercepted by one of the nurses who came to check on me.  Way too sweet.  If I only was not in such a pathetic state, I’d ask for her number. Despite the charming company, I knew we had to go. Nurses or not, no one wants to be puked on. 

Doggie bag in hand, we made it to the truck and after Siri got us lost a couple of times we headed North for an hour. At random times I would wake up point to a shrub and yell “Deer!”  Fortunately, none of the shrubs posed much danger to the truck and we made it back to our tent/cabin. I have a vague recollection of what happened going forward.  I somehow got into my sleeping bag - Percocet, water, and iPhone lined up next to me - and watched the lightning light up the sky. Or that this could’ve been the painkillers. Still not sure. 

Well, morning finally came, I survived. I fished my doggie bag out of the truck and with a steak in one hand and an orange juice in the other hand, I had a nice breakfast with Rod.  Yep, this is exactly how I recall our adventures always seeming to end.  Some good food, a little blood, never getting the girls and good friends who, at best, call each other Butt-Head… and that’s on a good day.  That is how to start a single life – it’s all smooth roads from here.

 

Postmortem (not literally)

Despite the pretty bad injuries, four days in and I’m healing very fast.  My face is almost normal again… too bad.  Still cut up, bruised, and looking like an octogenarian crossbred with a leper, but I’m still breathing in oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide. I was told by several people that I should not forget my age and find a new hobby. My thinking is that I landed 99 out of 100 jumps my first ever time trying the sport. That ain’t half bad. Besides, mountain biking isn't my hobby.  Not growing old without a fight is.  If I may quote two of my favorite lyrics “We only do it for the scars and stories, not the fame” and “When the Catcher comes to take my soul he’s going to have to fight me first.”  May the mourners at my funeral be solemnly informed that they were never able to recover the body… and if I don’t die, may I never be stuck on ObamaCare.  Cheers!