Broken Arm

Mark and I celebrated our 11th anniversary with a mountain biking date that ended with me in the emergency room. I have been trying my hand at mountain biking lately (LOVE IT!). I started out by practicing going over and down things in my back yard. We made a little jump and we have some rocky stairs that I have been riding down. It has significantly increased my confidence while mountain biking. Anyway, we decided I was ready to go up to Tiger Mountain and I was so excited that I was able to go down things that last year I would have walked around. I made it all the way down doing almost all of the drops and roots, etc.. We were about 1/2 mile from the bottom when we came upon a spot that was wet (the trail had been really dry to this point). I saw a big root right at a bend in the trail, and decided I needed to be going faster to get over it. As I came to it I turned right on top of the wet slippery root and the bike just slipped out from under me. *Sidenote* I have noticed that whenever I wipe out on a mountain bike it is almost always at a very easy point when I am just riding along like I would be on the street or something. Just before this I fell over on a logging road for no good reason at all. Anyway, my elbow hit the ground hard and I knew something was wrong when I went to push myself up and I could barely move my right arm let alone put any weight on it. At first I couldn't ride, but it was almost as hard to walk the bike since I only had one arm. In the end I carefully rode the rest of the way out, but by the time we got the car Mark was suspicious that I had broken it because of the amount of pain and the fact that I could barely use it. We had plans to go to dinner, and I wanted to just go and then deal with the arm, but Mark said that if my arm was broken, the pain was going to get worse. That convinced me and we headed for the emergency room. In the end we found out there was a small, non-displaced fracture in my elbow. I wore a splint for 3 days and then the orthopedic surgeon said that I could take it off. They don't like to cast elbow fractures unless they have to because your arm can get stuck in that position. Since my fracture was small, they decided not to cast it (thank goodness...I was having visions of having to take Sam over to all of my friend's houses everytime he needed a diaper change!). I'm doing much better now, but I still can't ride my road bike, and, although I haven't actually tried, I'm convinced that I could mountain bike because my arm doesn't have to be all the way straight for that like it does on the road bike. All in all, it was sooooooooo much fun until I fell and I can't wait to do it again.