Tales from the
Trail & Beyond.

Dad and I decided to make it a road trip. Nine days on the road, August 9 to 17, just the two of us and a truck full of bikes and gear. First stop was Bend for the Northwest Cup at Mt. Bachelor.

I raced 15-18 Junior Men and finished 4th out of 10. Not a podium, but a solid ride, and a completely different feeling from China Peak in June. This time the hand was not calling the shots. I was.

Then we kept driving. All the way up to Whistler.

I lapped the Canadian Open track over and over, just trying to get a little better every run. That is exactly the kind of riding I was scared I had lost back when I was sitting on the couch with a cast on. It came back. Faster than I expected.

And Crabapple Hits. I hit that line all week, sending the 65 footers and loving every second of it. Five weeks ago the biggest question in my life was whether I would hesitate at the top of a trail. This week I was in the air over a 65 foot gap with a healthy wrist and a giant grin.

Back in June I wrote that the road back was tough and bumpy. It was. Some days it still is. But this trip was the payoff. Bend, Whistler, my dad, my bike, and a wrist that finally feels like mine again.

Whistler. One hundred percent. Worth every bit of the wait.

My hand was sore on my practice rides. Not the sharp pain from right after the break, just a deep ache that got worse the more I rode. So I made a call I did not want to make. I rested for half the day, took some ibuprofen to bring the inflammation down, and tried to save whatever I had left for the run that counted.

Then I rode. And I did not ride well.

The pain and the stiffness were there the whole way down. My grip was not what it used to be. I was slower than I know I can be and more careful than I wanted to be, and I felt every bit of it.

Here is the part I did not expect. There was no fear at the top. After five weeks of wondering what would happen in my head when I lined up at the start of that trail, the answer was nothing. No hesitation. I dropped in clean.

But the hand decided how the run went, not me. I crossed the line knowing it was nowhere near my best, and I was disappointed in myself in a way that is hard to shake.

On the drive home my mom and dad reminded me that all I had to do today was qualify. And I did. That was the whole job. Everything else was extra.

It helped. It still stings.

The road back is tough and bumpy. I knew that before today. I know it a little better now.

Cat 1. Officially. Onward.

The cast came off yesterday. This weekend I race at China Peak. First weekend back and it is a qualifying race. My timing is impeccable.

I am qualifying for my Cat 1 license, which I have been working toward. I want it. I am also aware that my wrist is stiff, my grip strength is not where it was, and the bone will not be fully healed for at least three months. The doctor knows I am racing. Her advice was to fall to the left.

Easier said than done.

I have been riding long enough to know that hesitation is where things go wrong. You commit or you do not. There is no halfway on a trail. But I would be lying if I said I was not thinking about the wrist. I am thinking about it a lot.

Will I be tentative? Will I send it? I genuinely do not know yet. I will find out this weekend.

I am nervous. I am also excited in a way I have not felt in five weeks. No soft re-entry. No easy warmup ride to shake the rust off. Just straight back in at a qualifying race at China Peak. Honestly, probably how it should be.

Race recap coming Sunday.

Five weeks, two days. That is how long I have been wearing this cast.

Today they cut it off with an electric saw and then scissors. It looked more intense than it felt. And just like that, it was over.

Walking out without it on feels strange. My wrist looks pale and a little foreign, like it belongs to someone else. The doctor says that is normal. A few weeks of being careful, ease back into things. I have a list. I am not waiting long.

There was a moment in the appointment where they pulled up the new X-ray next to the original one and showed me the bone healed clean. I did not expect that to feel like anything. It felt like a lot.

They offered to let me keep the cast. I said no. I chose to leave it in the past and pedal on.

Went straight home. Got the bike out. Race is in two days.

Mobius brace on. ODI grips. Fox 40 Factories. Let's go.

Two and a half weeks down. Two and a half to go. I have found a rhythm of sorts. Stationary bike when I can, grip balls to keep my hand strength up, planning out the rest of the year so I have something to move toward when this is over.

My friends are still riding. The texts keep coming. New trails. New lines. Someone hit a jump they had been working toward for months. Every update is great news that feels like a small punch. I am genuinely happy for them and genuinely miserable at the same time.

Mostly I spend time in my head. Visualizing rides I know well, trails I want to hit, lines I have been working out. Closing my eyes and riding a trail keeps me connected to something I did not realize I needed this much until it was taken away.

The other thing that happened was quieter. My mom and sister don't come on ride trips. No riding means actually being around. We are getting dinners. Walking the dogs. Watching sunsets. Having conversations that don't happen when you're always heading somewhere.

I did not expect this to be part of it. But here we are.

I do not have the full lesson yet. That comes when the cast comes off. But two and a half weeks in I can already feel something shifting. Patience, mostly. And a clearer sense of what actually matters.

The group chat has been busy. New trail outside of Laguna. Someone got a new bike. A ride I would have driven two hours for happened last weekend without me.

I am not bitter. I am just aware of every single thing happening that I am not a part of. There is a difference. Barely, but there is one.

Two weeks left. I have been visualizing so much that I feel like I have already ridden half the trails on my list. I have planned the year down to the month. I have watched more MTB footage than I care to admit. I have done everything I can think of to stay close to something I cannot actually touch right now.

Two more weeks.

One week in. This is harder than I expected.

I do not know who I am if I cannot mountain bike. That sounds dramatic. I do not mean it dramatically. I just mean that riding is the thing that makes everything else make sense, and right now I do not have it, and I am figuring out what that means.

Four more weeks.

It happened fast. It always does. One second I was riding, the next I was on the ground and my wrist was telling me something was very wrong. GoPro was running the whole time. I will post that footage soon.

Clean break, they said. No surgery. Just a cast for five weeks and come back when it heals. Waterproof cast, which is the one silver lining. At least I could shower.

I reached out to Mobius from the hospital. Their wrist braces are what I will be riding in when I come back. They said yes. Probably the most productive thing I did that day.

If you want to know what to do when someone goes down on a trail, I built a whole page for that. Read the Be Safe guide →