The Blue Ridge Brutal

{Prompt: Did you have any notable accidents or injuries as a child?}

I went into the corner with too much speed. That’s the bottom line.

When I gripped the handlebar brakes to slow down, I hit both the front and the rear. I hit them hard, hoping to slow my descent as quickly as possible.

Maybe I gripped them a little too hard. Maybe the wheel wasn’t perfectly true, and the clincher brakes stuck on the deviation of the rim. Maybe the road was a little slick, and I hit a small patch of fine gravel.

Whatever the reasons, my front tire started to skid, and when it started to skid, I couldn’t hold my line. I couldn’t make the turn without wiping out.

So I let off the brakes. I recovered control of the bike — a minor victory. I still had the rubber to the road.

But my line was all wrong. I wasn’t heading around the curve of the road, to the left. I was heading toward the guardrail, to the right — right in front of me.

I started to wonder something I had never wondered before. I thought, “Oh shit… how do you get over a guardrail without busting your bike? Can you flip a bike over a guard rail and keep the wheels intact?”

That’s the last thing I remember.

The Blue Ridge Brutal

It was a beautiful summer day, August 13, 2016. We drove from Raleigh to West Jefferson, into the mountains of North Carolina, about three hours away. The event was a charity ride, called the Blue Ridge Brutal, sponsored by the Ashe County Chamber of Commerce, with proceeds earmarked for a scholarship fund for graduating seniors.

It was called “brutal” because it featured 101 miles of mountain roads, almost 8000 feet of total elevation, and gradients as steep as 13% on Buffalo Road, at the Three Top Mountain Pass. If that wasn’t enough, you could add on the 3-mile, 1,000-foot climb to the top of Mount Jefferson at the end.

West Jefferson is a small town, 25 miles northeast of Boone, North Carolina. It was once a major stop on the Norfolk and Western railroad line, also known as the “Virginia Creeper”. It is the home of the Ashe County Cheese factory and the Dr. Pepper bottling company. The whole area is famous as a source of Christmas trees for much of the East Coast, and Christmas tree farms decorate the hillsides like the floral squares of a handmade quilt.

Today the town thrives on tourism, including cycling tourism, because of the beautiful scenery of the mountains, and the folksy charm of the countryside. The Blue Ridge Parkway runs along its southeast border. The south fork of the New River runs along the bottomlands, and farms dot the countryside with red wooden barns, silos, and livestock.

Barn quilts (4’ x 4’ painted patterns on plywood), are found so frequently on the barns that there is a barn quilt driving tour in the county, and there is a barn quilt art studio in town.

You could see all that beauty on the bike ride. As we rode our bikes south from West Jefferson and climbed up to the Blue Ridge Parkway, we found ourselves enshrouded in fog, in a world of evergreens, in a profoundly natural, primordial world — populated by deer, chipmunks, birds, and insects. Except for the sound of the spinning bicycle gears, and the rush of wind in our faces, there was little else but the sounds of nature—the rustle of leaves and the soft reports of animals in the forest.

Then, when we left the parkway, we enjoyed beautiful vistas of farmland on all sides… back roads devoid of traffic… rolling hills and valleys.

After 50 miles of riding, cyclists were no longer clustered together in one big parade. We were spread out over several miles of roadway, each of us free to enjoy our own ride — our own private pastoral meditation.

This is when I came in a little too hot on a downhill, left-hand, 90-degree turn.

I was approaching the crossing of the south fork of the New River and the first rest stop of the ride. My friend was ahead of me on the descent after a small (200 foot) rise, and I may have been chasing a little too quickly as I came down about 100 feet into the turn.

Hitting the brakes…

Losing traction…

Off the brakes..

Heading towards the guardrail…

I know now that I was 2 hours and 56 minutes into the 6 and 1/2 hour ride. I was on a bend of Carson Woods Road, at mile 50.1 of the Blue Ridge Brutal bicycle route. And I was descending at about 27.7 miles per hour on an 8% decline, before I hit the guardrail.

I know this because I had a Garmin — a GPS navigator — on my bike.

I can see all the data on my Strava account, but part of the ride is not in my memory banks.

There are one or two minutes, when I was on the wrong side of the guard rail, that are gone from my recollection forever.

I don’t remember the accident at all. I don’t know how I went over the guardrail, or how my bike remained intact. I must have been concussed.

After the Crash

The first thing I do remember is riding down the mountain with the wind in my face. Not just the wind in my face, but the wind in my eyes.

“Where are my glasses?” I thought. “I’m not wearing my glasses.”

“Oh… I must have crashed. I must have lost my glasses.”

“Oh well. I guess I’ll go back and I’ll get ‘em later.”

“Hmm… my back is sore. I’ve hurt my back. I’d better check it.”

Checking with my hand, “Oh shit, there’s something sticky on my hand. Is it blood?”

“Oh! Thank god! It’s just sticky from the Gu. I busted the Gu in my back pocket.”

“I must have landed on my back. I must have flipped over the rail and landed on my back.”

“I must have flipped over the guard rail, landed on my back, knocked the glasses off my face, climbed back over the guardrail, climbed back onto my bike, and headed back down the mountain.”

“That’s kind of bad-ass.”

A sharp pain on the outside of my right thigh. “Oh… My leg hurts.”

Looking down. “Oh shit! I cut my leg.”

“Oh, but it’s barely bleeding.”

“It looks superficial. No bleeders. No…. No visible muscle tissue. No ligaments. No connective tissue. Yeh… okay… superficial.”

“Will it need stitches? Hmm… It could be stitched up, I guess… I’ll figure that out later.”

“Oh… Oh shit… They’ll see that cut at the rest stop and they’ll figure I had a fall. They’ll check me for concussion.”

“They’ll stop my ride. Okay… Concussion protocol… Let’s see…”

“Who are you? Steve Gallup. Check.”

“Where are you? On a charity mountain ride. Check.”

“What is the year? Hell if I know. Oh well, I’ll come back to that one.”

“What season is it? Charity bike ride… must be Spring. What day is it? Must be Saturday or Sunday.”

“What is the rest of that protocol. Oh, who cares! I’ll worry about that later.”

So I attempted, and probably failed, a self-administered concussion protocol test, on my way to the rest stop, a case of “Physician, Heal Thyself” gone awry.

At the rest stop, no one asked, and I didn’t tell, whether I had suffered a head injury. The rescue squad medics applied a “field dressing” — literally a single pad of gauze with backing, secured by a band of medical tape.

At first, I was only disappointed by the primitive nature of the dressing. But after a mile or two, I discovered that the inelastic medical tape was digging into my flesh with every contraction of the muscles in my legs.

Even so, I plugged on for about 20 miles. I struggled up the insanely steep pitch of Buffalo Road, and I reached the Three Top Mountain rest stop at mile 76.

I thanked the cycling gods for giving me the strength to climb that ‘wall’, and I promised them, in the name of all that was holy, that I would cut my ride short.

I would only ride the final 25 miles of the 100 mile route. I would not attempt the 3-mile climb up Mount Jefferson, at the end.

After all, I reasoned, I had probably flipped over a guard rail, cut my leg, hit my back, and suffered a concussion. It would be tempting fate too much to climb the mountain at the end. It would have to wait for a future ride.

That sounds insane, right?

When I got back, I told my friend the story — how I must have hurt my head, but I still kept riding on instinct. How you could suffer a concussion, complete with retrograde amnesia, and still seem perfectly lucid.

He said, “Did you break your helmet?”

I said, “I don’t know. It seems intact. I didn’t really check.”

Sure enough, there was a crack running completely through the Styrofoam mantel.

I said, “Maybe you should drive us home this time.”

Postscript:

I bought a new helmet, and not much later (about 6 months), I bought a new bike with modern disc brakes.

I no longer take even “little” hills between mountains for granted, and I accept that “cyclist-error” probably caused the unwanted “encounter” with the guard rail.

Although I couldn’t avoid the guard rail, and was injured, still, my bicycle came away unscathed.

I called my wife before we left for home, to let her know that I had “a little accident”, but I was okay. She said, “So you’re going to a hospital, right?””

I never went to the hospital, and I have a beautiful scar on the outside of my right thigh, as a testament to the experience. It is just below the end of the Lycra of my cycling bib shorts.

Post Postscript - This is how I described the ride on my Strava feed in 2016:

More brutal than expected, when I skidded on a downhill turn and had an encounter with the guardrail. Suffered some cuts and bruises, and a mild concussion; but I feel fortunate to escape mostly unharmed. Feeling pretty mad at myself for blowing the turn. Perhaps the most scenic ride I’ve done this year, with great volunteers, who dressed my wounds, filled my bottles, rooted me over the hills, and went above and beyond.