Alright, here's my brush with death story:
I was 14 and mountain biking near Grand Forks, BC. My bike had a bell on the handlebar that had broken the day before and I had been too lazy to take it off, so it was now just a broken nub sticking out of the handlebar. As I'm biking I go around a corner and right into a large root in the trail. I wasn't prepared for the root so I fly out and over my bike, landing on my head on the trail.
So at this time I'm all worried about my head, because I had gotten a concussion during hockey season a few months prior. It was sore, but I was still okay to ride. My leg was sore as well but I wasn't paying much attention to it. I continue my ride, and as I keep going my leg just keeps killing me. When we reach the logging road I decide to just take it down the rest of the way as everyone else continues on the trail.
So I get down to the cars and I decide I have to take a closer look at my leg. I'm wearing the type of shorts that have normal shorts on top and spandex inners. I peel up the spandex part to expose my upper thigh, and I find a gash on my leg that is 2 1/2 inches wide and 7 inches long. My muscle and fat look like ground beef. The worst part however, is I can see my femoral artery pumping.
When I went face first over my bike, I must have hit my broken bell and it made this gash in my leg. If the bell had gone millimetres deeper, it would have nicked my femoral artery and I would have been dead within minutes on that trail. Instead, I only needed 57 stitches to close it back up.
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