If a girl endos in the woods but nobody is around to see it...

I am riding along down the Deer Run minding my own damn business when all of the sudden my bike comes to a complete stop and I am flying over the bars. I lay there for a minute trying to catch my breath and then hop up to see what the hell caused such a thing to happen. This was my first endo. You see endo-ing is one of my biggest fears of riding a bike. So much so, that I am a back-breaker meaning, I hardly ever use my front brake to avoid this horrible fate!

Back to my story, so I look at the trail and can clearly see the indentation in the ground where my front tire stopped suddenly but there is no apparent cause for this to have happened. No rocks, no logs, not even a twig, nothing! Dazed and confused, I try to hop back on the bike and catch the group. It won't go anywhere. I check the back break thinking maybe the pads are stuck on the rotor or something. Nope, they are fine. Then I look at the front tire and notice that the skewer is stuck in the rotor! I can't get it out and am just concerned with catching the other riders so I start walking the bike on it's back tire and leave the front one in the air (a trick Kathy taught me while we were hike-a-biking at our daughters soccer practice).

Finally, I see Kathy in the distance coming for me. She has a look of concern on her face. I tell her what happened, she removes the weeds sticking from my helmet and then turns her attention to the bike. She takes off the tire and hands me a piece of something. I ask her what it is and she very casually says "a piece of your fork" I start to FREAK. I say "WHAT?" "No it is not" and then she shows me the void that piece had left on the fork. She takes off my tire and gets the skewer loose and puts the tire back on. We figure it is safe enough to ride slowly back to work. So that is what we do.

The damage? The fork down something-or-other (the hookey thing that holds it to the tire) is broken off much like this and the rotor (disc brake) is bent or warped. I call my mechanic (also my husband) and have him stop by my office after work to assess the damage. It is his opinion that the fork failed or broke which caused it to twist and suck the skewer into the rotor and causing the bike to come to a sudden stop. He also thinks it has been cracked for some time. He gets on the phone to Fox and tells them what happened and arranges to send the fork back to them. We are hopeful that this is a warranty issue being that the bike is less than a year old and I weigh less than 100 pounds and do XC riding not dirt jumping! We are also trying to get the warped rotor covered by Fox. I will update everyone later on the status of that as things develop.

We arrive home and Brent asks if I need anything to which I respond "yeah, a stiff drink" he tries to give me whiskey but I refuse and decide on some Smoking Loon Cabernet which I proceed to almost finish all by myself. I guess I was more shook up by all this that I expected to be or just thirsty, whatever.

My mechanic then took an old Rock Shox Sid fork he had laying around (thanks to Bill) and installed it on my bike so I won't even miss one day of riding. He called our buddy Todd who drives for Fed Ex and got a box delivered to pack the fork into. He packed it all up and then took it back to Todd to ship out to Fox today. I am hopefully going to have the replacement by this time next week.

Physically how do I feel today? Like I got hit by a truck. I landed on my head and left shoulder so obviously my shoulder hurts, a lot. But for some strange reason, the entire right side of my body from my ear lobe to my lower back hurts. Oh, and it hurts when I cough. I am pretty sure I did not break a rib or puncture my lung....

Ride on...