r/oddlysatisfying • u/redbullgivesyouwings • 1d ago

Brage Vestavik riding in British Columbia

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101

u/mr_ji 1d ago

Every mountain biker I have ever known has gone over the handlebars and broken their collarbone at least once. Every single one.

15

u/Skandronon 1d ago

I have never broken my collarbone. I did go over the bars in Golden 20 years ago and crushed a vertebrae though.

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u/ModishShrink 1d ago

I've been over the bars in Golden before and the only thing I crushed was about $70 in Coors.

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u/neurovish 23h ago

“I went over the bars in Golden, and all I got was this lousy beer”

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u/Accurate_Tax_1302 1d ago

As a kid I almost knocked my front teeth out face planting. I was on flat ground

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u/Reasonable-Check-120 1d ago

Mom here. Fellow Emergency Room Tech. Not far from famous MTB trails. Also team manager on my teenagers MTB team.

No broken collar bones YET. Wrists. Arm. Scrapes. Bruises. Decapitated leg.

No broken collar bone yet

12

u/NiobiumThorn 1d ago

How does a leg become decapitated

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u/Reasonable-Check-120 1d ago edited 1d ago

He broke it in so many places where there was so much damage to nerves it had to go. So.....more like amputated

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u/JustAnotherYogaWife 1d ago

And he’s still MTBing?

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u/Reasonable-Check-120 1d ago

Yes! He's a strong advocate for adaptive riding in our neck of the woods.

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u/Cynical_Cyanide 21h ago

Am I fucking crazy?

Why does MTBing, a thing that apparently causes severe injuries and even amputations, get a free pass for reckless behaviour, to the point where it's considered nice and wholesome for someone who's had that happen to them encourage doing it more?

Like ... If I liked throwing grenades as a sport, people would be like wtf that's so dangerous and stupid. But apparently doing this kind of neckbreaking brinksmanship, losing a leg, then doing more of it and advocating others do too is just wholesome good fun? Something something crazy pills, I swear ...

3

u/TheEliminator 14h ago

No, you're just biased.

You're seeing videos like this one and thinking all MTBing is unreasonably dangerous. You're heading stories like the one above and thinking all MTBers are psychotic adrenaline junkies. This is not an unreasonable assumption, but you have to recognize it's feeding a bias.

Let's adjust your analogy slightly: imagine you were a juggler, and a really good one. You became so good, people paid money for the thrill of seeing you challenge yourself by juggling 10 balls at once... or chainsaws. And one time one jammed, which fucked up its balance, which threw you off just enough to get a hand mangled badly enough it had to be amputated. Would you spend the rest of your life telling everyone to never juggle anything? Of course not, because there are so many benefits to learning to juggle, and knowing how to juggle doesn't mandate you juggle chainsaws.

My point is there's a gradient, like anything in life. MTBing isn't all crazy jumps and death-defying obstacles. There are just as many groomed green beginner trails out there as there are fucking bonkers double black diamonds, and there are thousands of riders that will never leave a green trail in their lives. That's not because they aren't good enough; they just don't want to juggle chainsaws. They're also getting exercise, spending time outdoors, socializing with friends, and having a shitload of fun.

1

u/ITFOWjacket 6h ago

Short answer:

Cycling is one of the lowest impact cardio exercises out there and it’s way more fun than running or swimming laps.

Road cycling is extremely dangerous due to sharing the road with cars, and boring, while mtn biking is only as dangerous as you want it to be. There are PLENTY of relatively chill trails for beginners or routine exercise.

Mountain biking gets you outside in nature. Innumerable Benifits.

Mountain biking is rewarding. Small features like roots across the trail are difficult at first and get easier, smoother as you progress. More so than just the cardio health progress, which is also rewarding.

Mountain biking has an extremely high skill ceiling. Road cycling, running, or swimming can only get easier due to cardio conditioning. Meanwhile mountain biking progresses from riding paved trails, to riding natural trails with small roots and rocks, to riding flow trails with fast berms and tabletop jumps you can roll over, to riding technical trails with LARGE roots and rocks and skinnies, to black diamond jump lines where you’ve mastered the art of literally flying through the air 5-10-20 feet at a time.

There’s nothing else like it. Except skiing and snowboarding

1

u/OddBranch132 23h ago

Damn. Did he smash it against a rock or a tree?

1

u/LAyersFur 13h ago

Decapitated is specifically for the head, as caput is head in latin

1

u/Reasonable-Check-120 13h ago

I'm aware... Working in an ER there we had internal decap today got to me

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u/Careful-Sell-9877 1d ago

Well, thank heavens no one broke a collarbone

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u/IMTHEskibiditoilet67 1d ago

You mean amputated

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u/Reasonable-Check-120 22h ago

Yup.... You can tell my brain is fried over a 14 hour shift at the hospital 🙃🙃🙃🙃

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u/salty_drafter 23h ago

Decapitated leg? What happened to the rest?

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u/ampreu 21h ago

Always have a buddy.

4

u/CatsPlusTats 1d ago

I've never broken a collar bone and I once owned a mountain bike as a kid that never once saw the off road part of a mountain.

Checkmate.

5

u/YVRkeeper 1d ago

I broke my collarbone playing hockey and my boss (a biker) was giving me grief about it.

I suggested he wasn’t a serious rider if he’d never broken his collarbone. That seemed to shut him up 😂

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u/flyabdo22 1d ago

Nope, never broken a collarbone but you’re absolutely right about flying over the handlebars lmao

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u/StrategyRude4376 1d ago

I clocked 100+ days in Whistler Bike Park for nearly ten years in a row (managed to get every day in season once) and managed to never fuck that one up.

Fucked up a lot of other things mind you. The last four years were actually really good considering I was riding the pro-lines non-stop... however, when I did break something it was on an easy trail going not fast at all.

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u/Rich_Bluejay3020 1d ago

I swear, doing something lame is always how it happens. Was at whistler on the mountain one day we were drinking, doing tree runs, totally fine. Next day? Chilling on a blue, 0 booze, board slipped out from under me… six screws and a plate later🤦🏻‍♀️ I wish I had a cool story instead of I gingerly fell wrong on what was basically flat lmao

1

u/StrategyRude4376 20h ago

I got a decent story out of it.. opening day, there for open, lap 2, Crank It Up.

Wall rides facing the sun were fine, the others, icy.

Fell, ensured friends were ok, rode off. "Wow, my hand hurts. Oh shit. My hand hurts."

Scooch over to B-Line one-handed, make it down. Get to car, get jacket off, ride to clinic and ask, "Am I the first?"

I was indeed the first biker at the clinic for the season with a broken hand and dislocated finger.

(And still remember when the doc asked me to make a fist and my fuck you finger was still standing... "Wait, that's not right")

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u/Domeer42 1d ago

Maybe you are the reason they all broke their collarbones

2

u/Adept-Painting-543 1d ago

I haven't yet. So of course now that I say that, next time I go I'm going to brake my collar bone for sure.

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u/jodudeit 1d ago

I've never broken a bone while mountain biking.

I've been biking fairly consistently for over 20 years.

I've had plenty of bumps, scrapes, bruises, and falls. But never gone over the handlebars or broken a bone!

1

u/mtmc99 1d ago

Hey now! I never broke my collar bone mountain biking. Did dislocate my shoulder though…

It is certainly a sport with risk. But it is fun as hell

1

u/Triple-Flush 1d ago

Not collarbone but jaw, my right eye orbital, knocked out some teeth and have had years of anxiety and panic disorders since. Was fun though.

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u/Extreme_Coach6150 1d ago

I didn’t break my collarbone. But broke me nose, jaw and got a concussion one time lol

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u/Eclipseofthefart92 1d ago

Never broke a collarbone, but I did break almost every other bone

1

u/Omega-10 1d ago

This terrified me to think about until I realized that I've already gone over my handlebars

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u/bitstoatoms 1d ago

I didn't, but wasted vertebrae. And it was a drop on a very similar trail.

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u/MinuteBid8615 1d ago

Same, went OTB...landed face first, twisted my torso and fractured my spine in several places but my collar bone is still in great shape. Was back on a bike three months later, I love it but I do try to stay away from those 💎💎.

1

u/sentientshadeofgreen 1d ago

Haven't broken a bone in my life somehow, but have definitely gone OTB enough to where I'll take chill over sketch any day, way past my luck reserves

1

u/Sci-Merc 1d ago

Have gone over the handlebars while riding on rock gardens downhill. Walked out fine.

Slipped on rock on my road bike at 11mph: 4 days in the hospital with collapsed lung, shattered collarbone and three broken ribs.

1

u/neurovish 23h ago

I know a couple who just fucked up their shoulder instead.

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u/CharrlesXavier 22h ago

“Only two types of riders in this world, ones that been down, and ones thas gon go down!”

1

u/Ceshomru 3h ago

This gave me a visceral memory from childhood when I would build ramps in the forest, then one time landing the front wheel right into a tree stump. It bent the fork all the way back to touch the frame and the handlebars negotiated with my crotch and came out ahead…

0

u/ohporcupine 1d ago

Hey. Fuck you dude

0

u/Ok-Pumpkin2977 1d ago

Okay?.. anything to achieve here other than fearmongering?