Here is a picture I took of Wade's deformed shoulder. I will let him explain to you all what happened.

By the time Halloween came around I assumed that I the mountain biking season had come to an end. however, at the Halloween party (as you see posted earlier) Pat Rich invited me to come with him mountain biking. I had nothing to do really the next day so I accepted. In the morning I got up and started working on my bike to get it ready for the ride. I cleaned all the dirt and grease and what-not. I got it all ready to go and then Pat said that I could ride his Santa Cruz Blur. I failed to mention that my bicycle is a Jamis Durango hardtail, the Blur is one of the top XC full-suspension bikes. He knew of my desires to upgrade to a full-suspension bike so I couldn't turn down the offer.

Well I get on the trail and the bike is sweet so much more different than my bike. The ride was much more smooth and going over the rocky terrain and tree roots was much easier than my Jamis. We get to the top of the trail and Pat said that the bike was more stable at higher speeds because of the suspension. So bombing down at first was nice and I felt good about how it handled, much smoother than my bike.

Well ahead is this ramp that goes over this huge pipe. You have to make a quick 90 degree turn on a dime and you don't have much space to get the momentum to go over it. We actually saw a woman endo while crossing it on the way up and I biffed it there myself a couple time previously. Well I was approaching ramp and I was thinking to myself that I should slow down. So I pressed on my brakes and next thing I know I feel the momentum of my body differ from that of the bike. Then in a millisecond my body had flipped 180 degrees with my back 1 foot above the ground and the bike still attached to my feet above me. I slammed to the ground. I get up like nothing happened and Pat's friend was right behind me and saw the whole thing. We looked at the bike and my body took all the impact, there was not a scratch on the bike. I looked around to see what had happened. I assumed I hit a rock but then I realized that the Blur has hydraulic disc brakes which are much more sensitive than my mechanical disc brakes(that I never adjust). I have to pull back more on my bikes front brake to get it to grip. So naturally I pulled back like my bike thinking than it would grip the disc ever so slightly. It didn't it and made the wheel completely stop causing me to endo.

So thinking that my shoulder was just bruised I get back on and ride down. I was impressed with how smooth the full-suspension was. I was feeling good then I try to go off a bump and when I landed the impact pains shot from my shoulder so I was thinking it was a bit more than a bruise. When I got to the bottom I was hurting more and more. Bad thing was I took the pickup and I had a hard time shifting. I had to drive home in 4th gear because I couldn't get it into overdrive.

I was gonna tough it out because of my high-deductible health insurance but I knew something was wrong. It hurt more and more and I thought it was broken. So we went to the hospital to get it checked out. Turn out nothing was broken, it was a torn AC joint (you can Google that, I'm not going to explain it). I was in a sling a couple weeks. I feel good now but it aches at the end of the day all the time and I will have a deformation on my shoulder the rest of my life. As you can see both of my shoulders are screwed up somehow. Don't worry folks, I will be fine just in time for skiing.

This year for Halloween we went to our friends Halloween party. We had a great time. In fact we had such a great time we didn't take many pictures. Here a a few pictures from the night. Above is RaNell and Mike Leftler
Annie and Eric Larsen
And here is Wade as a robot from flight of the conchords.