Beautiful Sunday morning, First 4 runs of shuttling at Diablo Bike Park in the bank. Feeling great being back in the saddle on familiar trails again, gaining confidence from the bike’s feedback. Fourth run, down the 2008 World Cup DH run. I’m not sure if it was the speed that I was carrying, but I completely didn’t see a small sapling. I proceed to clip it with my right bar end, this caused the front wheel to turn and launch me down a 3ft rock decline. Ouch.

By the time my brother and I got down to the bottom, I knew something was broken, my left arm couldn’t support any weight.

The video below depicts where I crashed. At 1.13 where the rider crashes, that’s where I crashed as well. I don’t think mine was as crazy looking however.

In this video you can see at 59 seconds where I crashed hard.

In this video, it’s at the very end where I took a digger.

Now it’s almost a week later. I’ve been reading up on how to get myself back on a bike as fast and as safely as possible. Seems like it’s a common injury among downhill mountain bikers. From what I’ve read, it’s a 6-8 week healing process and surgery probably won’t be necessary. Currently, I’m wearing a sling and in a week or two, switching to a figure 8 harness. Also, I’m going to an orthopedic clinic as soon as my health insurance kicks in. Oh and no need to worry about the bottle rocket, it took the abuse better then my body did.

If anyone has any advice on what to do for a fracture of mid-clavicle with displaced fragments (non-opposition), please leave a comment.