2010 July 13th:
Mark:
I woke up this morning feeling refreshed and ready to go. I woke up Niko and we got dressed to go to breakfast at the restaurant across the street where we had dinner last night. When we were there we saw that they had and all you can breakfast buffet that sounded really good. This certainly beat the coffee and donuts offered by the hotel.
After an enormous breakfast of lots of protein and fruit, I paid the bill and left Niko to keep eating and I went back to the hotel to get ready to leave. Niko showed up a few minutes later and he started to get his stuff packed up. It wasn't too much later that we were both ready to go.
We headed up to Zion National Park. The park was already pretty busy with a lot of people walking around the Visitor’s Center. I found where to get the passport stamped and then we went back to the bikes to do the drive through the park. As soon as the road crossed the bridge and started to go up, the road construction started. Every National Park that we have been in on this trip has had construction. The difference here was that this had to be the worst road construction that I have ever seen.
The road was so torn up and full of holes and partial bits of pavement all gnarled, it was very bad. There was absolutely no sign of workmanship at all. In fact I think that the road Niko and I took for a “short cut” was in better shape than this. The problem was that many, many people were traveling on this road.
About two miles into this construction mess, Niko went down and he was no longer in my mirror. I turned around and found that some people were trying to help him out from under the bike. Somehow the bike had landed on top of his foot. These very nice people were trying to pick up the bike and told them to just leave it. I wanted to know how Niko was doing and whether he was OK or not. He said that the bike landed on his foot and that it really hurt. We sat him down and took off his boot and sock before the swelling made that impossible. This was probably not the text book method of dealing with an injury, but it was what we did. One of the people helped me get the bike up and off to the side of the road. His spouse was a nurse and had some ice packs and put one on Niko’s foot.
The ranger showed up soon after and then some construction guy (who was quite the DICK). The Ranger called for EMT and a few minutes later the park ambulance showed up. They took one look at Niko’s foot and then put it in a temporary splint. They loaded him up in the ambulance and took him to the hospital in St George.
I was left with picking up all of the stuff that they didn’t take and figure out somehow to get both bikes somewhere off of this road. I put Niko’s bike back together and made arrangements with the ranger to get a ride back to my bike. I was going to take Niko’s bike down to the ranger station and park it until we could figure out what was up with Niko’s foot.
Just before I rode off the construction dick asked me if I was going to leave my bike parked by the side of the road. I told him that was exactly where I was going to leave it until I could get a ride back up here to take it down to the hospital. I think that he somehow thought that I should ride both bikes down at the same time. I told him that he would just have to deal with it. This guy kept acting like it was us that caused this problem when it was the lack of workmanship in the road construction that really caused this problem.
I left with Niko’s bike and rode it to the ranger station. While en route however the ranger got another call and took off and left me stranded. I found the ranger station and went inside only to the dismay of another ranger who said that I should never have made it through the doors. I guess they were supposed to be locked or something. She was very helpful once I explained why I was there. It only took a few minutes and somebody came by to pick me up and took me back to my bike.
The construction dick was still there and seemed even more upset than before. He told me that he had to direct traffic around my bike because it was in the way. I was to the point and told him that none of this would have happened had they just done their job right in the first place. He went off on me about a bunch of politics and telling me that there was more pavement than they had bid to scrape, with this problem and that problem and how the governor of Utah had to get involved and on and on. What a sob story. So the answer was to just leave the road in a terrible mess and wait until someone got hurt, and then to do it right. I had a hard time even believing this guy’s gall. I got my stuff put together and mounted up and drove back down this horrible mess of a road.
I went back to Niko’s bike and grabbed his luggage and loaded it onto my bike. I knew that Niko would want to get out of his riding gear and into something more comfortable. Once I was loaded, I took off toward St George to find the hospital. It took me a good hour to get there and to find him. He had already been seen and he was waiting to see what the doctors wanted to do. He broke the metatarsal for the big toe on his right foot. The doctors said that all they had to do was to splint it and then he was to stay off of it and to see his physician in a week to see if it was healing properly.
Well it was a good thing that I had an hour to think about all of this before I got to the hospital, because I had ran through several scenarios of what our options were. I called my friend Evie and asked her if she would put Niko up for a couple of days so that I could go home and get our truck. Luckily she was really close to the hospital running errands at the time and swung by and picked him up. We got his prescription filled and then I took off for home.
I would like to say that all of the Rangers that were involved with this were great and very helpful. Thank you for all of your assistance. All of the hospital staff was wonderful and had Niko bandaged up and on his way quickly. Thank you all very much as well. And to my long time friend Evie, I’m very thankful that you were available to lend assistance. Thank you so much.
I rode on toward Colorado for about two and a half hours and stopped for the night in Richfield Utah. I have less than 500 miles to ride tomorrow to make it home. It will be a long day but I can do it.
I will get my truck and then go pick up Niko and his bike and take him home. We’ll take care of some business and get him to see his doctor and get him healed. Once all is settled, I plan to continue on and still visit my friends in Texas. That is where the idea for this whole trip started in the first place. It sure is funny how one thing led to another and we ended up going the other way.
I’m very thankful that Niko isn’t hurt any worse than this minor injury. Things could have been a lot worse. I’m also thankful that I’m so close to home and with just a little effort we’ll get him home and taken care of. I want to thank every one of you that has helped us and supported us in our journey. It would not have been possible otherwise. Thank You and Good Night.
Don’t worry, the story will continue. I will keep posting to let you know what is going on. Thanks for reading.