05/12/2008

Progression and Pain A Rider Eats it Hard When Gravity Goes Way Bad words and pictures by Mark Steinebach

The frames of the reel slow to a crawl. "How could this be," I ask myself? There is no way out and everything that is to come is going to be about big, big pain. I was completely upside down when I impact on the back of my head, my body whipped hard and I landed flat onto my back. Immediately there was an exquisite surge of pain stabbing hard and relentlessly between my shoulder blades trying to burst through my sternum.

I have felt it before but never so intensely. I rip my helmet off, trying to get my breath and assess the damage. I rock to get up but my body is unresponsive. It is then that I look down at my legs. My feet are pointing freakishly outward, parallel to the ground. The "get up" commands from my brain are not getting an automatic response. I grab the top of my pant leg and the terror grips me. I cannot feel where my hand is gripping at my thigh. I purposefully roll to my side. My damn legs do not follow. I do not remember what I did at that point but I do remember the thoughts, "oh, God, not this, not this."

Some 28 hours later (all of which were spent strapped flat on my back on a hard backboard) I was in surgery in the capable hands of BC's top spinal surgeon, Dr. Marcel Dvorak. I had sustained a "burst" fracture of T5 (the fifth thoracic vertebrae) and a fracture of T6. All of the ligaments attached to and stabilizing the spinal column from T3 to T7 were ruptured and my sternum (breastbone) was fractured. Because there was nothing stabilizing the spinal column any longer, my spinal cord had taken a hit. The surgical team fused T3-T7, placed two titanium rods and 8 screws in the vertebrae to hold everything in place and reconstructed all of the soft-tissue mess. I awoke in post-anesthetic recovery to smiling faces and the good news; my cord was going to be okay. I was not going to be paralyzed.

I am passionate about bicycles. It was road bikes in the eighties. I switched to mountain bikes, riding and racing cross-country in the nineties, and as the nineties drew to a close, I was drawn by the allure of the big bike. I had already starting abusing my poor Santa Cruz Superlight when most big bikes were still a freak show of poor engineering. I broke a frame or two before I knew that I needed a bigger ride to go with my bigger ambitions. Once on a capable steed there was little to stop me.

me and my physio on a date in the stairwell at the spinal unit

I am not a daredevil but as soon as a stunt was conquered, I was looking for greener pastures and bigger conquests. Adrenaline, a type-A personality, and a life-long addiction to over-achievement propelled me forward. This was not a peer-pressure thing. I have mostly ridden by myself. I ride 4-5 times a week and only ride about once a week with friends. So what went so horribly wrong that sunny spring morning? Riding with the right gear on well-known terrain and on a stunt ridden successfully on scores of previous rides, some of the answers can come from looking at how our sport has grown.

Freeriding, shredding, black-diamond riding, ripping, mountain biking; the sport that so many have grown to love goes by many names and no name. This is in part due to the fluid nature and the evolution of the sport. You only have to look at what mountain biking looked like in the early 90's to know that what was happening then hardly resembles what is going on in the forests and on the streets in North America today.

Bikes have gone from skinny, light hardtails to monstrous swines with wheels. The momentum at present is a movement toward some middle ground that is accompanied by a ground swell of excitement for the "urban" hardtail to address the growing street scene.

As equipment has evolved, so has riding. In the early 90's a ride on the shore involved steep and natural lines with the beginnings of the "built" stunt. Those who mastered the wheelie-drop could ride everything in that day. The big huck was still a bit mysterious. Dig out your early NSX vids for footage of spandex-clad dudes eating it hard on the shore. I was inspired and so were an army of others.

As the sport progressed the manufacturers started to respond with bike designs they felt would address the growing phenomenon. At the same time, acidic bike reviews from some of the popular magazines of the day did not serve to drive this development in a positive direction. The result was a bike that had minimal and ineffective travel that came with an enormous weight and performance penalty. They also broke when put through their paces on the shore. One good thing arose from this…the huck. Though the suspension designs and function were abysmal, riders could now count on this suspension to take some of the impact that would normally be fully imparted to the body of the rider.

During this time, regular dudes like Schley, Simmons, Tippie and Cowan were doing the seemingly impossible. There was a circus freak show air about their riding; but they were doing it in our own backyard. Their riding dragged an entire community into its vortex. We all wanted to ride like the rockstars that they were. And slowly we could. Perhaps we could not ride with the same talent, but through the marvel of modern engineering, we were doing what one riding phenom of the day and a present day biking-legend referred to as "monkeys hucking our meat." Today, the no-footer, x-up, tables, big gaps and good-sized drops are regular fare on the shore. We hardly take notice of this any longer. Appetites are for the killer lines…the seemingly undoable Crankworx-style ride.

Where does this obviously finite progression proceed? How does this filter down to the type of equipment and the type of riding that we will be doing in five or ten years? What are the human costs? I just have to go to my favourite trails to see someone building the mother-of-all gaps or that pencil-wide stunt built 15 feet over Viet Cong-style forest floor features to get part of the answer. Some of the answer can be found in the Spinal Unit at VGH.

Post-op xrays showing the 2 titanium rods and 8 screws that now hold me and my spine together...one view is from the side, the other is front to back.

Invariably, mankind is always searching for its' boundaries. It is near these boundaries that life feels real. This reality is fed by adrenaline with its' concurrent gut-squeeze and euphoric high. We have all tasted this because, for each rider, that elusive boundary lies at a different place in the forest and our minds. For some of us it is on those circus-high, pencil-wide stunts; for others it's trying to rip A-line fast enough to make all the trannies and not get in the way of the guy with his hair on fire. That is where some of the beauty, elusiveness and allure of our sport lies. It is accessible to all and each will have their own level where they will discover their own adrenaline-fed euphoric high. The trick inherent in this is making decisions that will keep you out of the hospital while allowing you to bask in the adrenaline.

Our sport does have its risks. Progressing beyond the margins where a body can bounce without cracking in half is where the risks become personal. This is the zone where you have to be equipped appropriately in skill and gear to objectify this risk. You must also be equipped psychologically to deal with the consequences of finding your boundaries. This is where personal responsibility comes into the dialogue. There will always be someone who can ride the line that you will never be able to do. That person's boundaries are different than yours. If you start colouring outside of the lines delineated by your experience and skill-set you must accept the inherent risks and potential outcomes.

My injuries were not a result of pushing my own personal boundaries. I was a recipient of injuries that occur when your boundaries far exceed the margins where a body cracks in half rather than bounces. I have been injured before and I have wrestled with the good and evil that is my adrenaline addiction and my passion for biking. I am fortunate to have only briefly glimpsed a future in a wheel chair and will be back riding soon. My personal boundaries, which only a few months ago were expanding faster than Star Jones in front of a box of Crispy Cremes, are in the re-evaluation stage. I have lost none of my passion and enthusiasm for biking. I do want my old body to experience this stuff when I am really old. I want to wring every drop of pure riding goodness out of my on-bike experiences. For all of us this may mean a greater role for evaluating and objectifying risk so that when gravity goes bad, you can live with the end result.

- Mark Steinebach (Baloom)