I like bicycling.

These days though, I’ve shifted gears and am into hiking like I was bicycling,

I can honestly say it’s a thrill to crest an 11,080-foot Sierra pass after six miles of hiking just as it was going downhill on a Death Valley highway on a racing bicycle topping 50 mph.

It’s a thrill that’s hard to describe, but one of my more memorable experiences involved a 15-pound purebred dog, a backboard, air bubbles, an unsuccessful Miss Placer County pageant contestant, and being exposed to half of my mother’s friends and then some.

I was 31 at the time.

It was a period in my life where I did a lot of things people would describe as bizarre. I was racing with this 17-year-old downhill for a pizza.

I knew I could take him once I got around a blind corner I’d taken perhaps 60 times. It was a straight visual shot for about a half a mile with no driveways, which meant if there were no cars I could overtake him in the other lane.

Brian was ahead of me by about six bicycle lengths. No problem. But as I rounded the corner, there was the stupid dog that would come out and yap at your wheels.

Every other time, I was by myself and left the dog in the dust. But this time was different. After Brian got away, the dog turned around and saw me coming.

He did what any stupid mutt would do. He started charging me.

What happened next was a matter of seconds but seemed like an eternity.

The last thing I wanted to do was hit the dog head-on at 40 mph. I veered to the right. The dog veered as well. I figured I’d clip him and hit the stone wall on my right. Not good. I veered to the left. The dog veered again. There was a barbed wire fence and a drop off of about 20 feet. Not a place I wanted to end up.

So I made a split-second decision. Take the dog head-on.

To this day, I can still see the dog’s eyes bug out and him trying to stop and turn around when he realized I was about to hit him.

Brian later described to me what happened next.

I remember the first 180-degree flip and when my knee first slammed into the pavement. I do not remember the second flip or the 15 to 20 foot skid. I was out cold.

I came to about 40 minutes later, as I was being lifted on a backboard into an ambulance.

I recognized the voice of the driver. I didn’t recognize the EMT.

She, however, recognized me. As she started to put the IV into my arm, all I could think of was a “60 Minutes” report I had seen on people being killed in hospitals by air bubbles from syringes.

Then she asked the questions: “Aren’t you Dennis Wyatt from the Press-Tribune?”

“Yes.”

“Did you judge the Miss Placer County contest this year?”

“Yes, did you win?”

“No.”

Charlie Brown would have been proud of the “arrrgh” sound I made above the laughing of the driver and just seconds before she put the needle in a vein.

They took me to the Roseville Community Hospital emergency room. It was early on a Sunday afternoon.

There was a silver dollar size wound on top of my kneecap down to the bone.

I was lucky.

The ligaments and everything were intact. It was just a bloody mess that was an extremely deep cut. It required extensive cleaning and stitches.

Brian had followed me to the hospital and had been allowed to sit in the room as the doctor worked on my knee.

I had a six-day a week column in The Press-Tribune. I also had done a number of stories on the hospital as well, as sons and daughters of a number of the nurses who happened to be playing high school sports when I was the sports editor.

There was a steady parade of nurses throughout the hospital who came in to say “hi” including four who knew my mom well.

One of them, Dorothy Vasion, asked if it was OK if a particular nurse came in and that she wanted me to “autograph” my column in that day’s paper.

I thought it was a little strange, but no big deal.

When she came in and started chatting, I recognized her as a woman cyclist who would sometimes pass me while training in the foothills. We had chatted before, but I never asked her name nor did she ask me mine. I always thought it would be neat to date her but never got the courage to ask.

After chatting a few minutes, signing that day’s paper and then her leaving, Brian started doing his Cookie Monster laugh.

I asked “what’s up” and he kept laughing.

I asked again and he pointed and laughed.

I had been on my back the whole time with my knee propped up.

I slowly pushed up off my elbows and saw what he was laughing at.

When I skidded, it was on my front side and had literally ripped to shreds the cycling shorts that you wear without anything underneath.

I had been exposed the entire time to about 15 nurses who were my mom’s friends or people I had done stories on. But worse yet, I was exposed to someone who I actually daydreamed about asking out.

Brian, for the record, is also the kid who almost drowned me at the 9,000-foot level on Sonora Pass when I collapsed on another bicycling trip and was lying in the middle of Highway 108 with my head going downhill.

But that’s another story.

 

 This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com