Why Bent Finger Chronicles?

I have always said that I would, one day, tell the story of why I named this blog, “Bent Finger Chronicles.” That day has arrived.

Everybody has events in their lives that are timeline markers: Birthdays, Graduations, Births, Marriages, etc. There are other dates in your life that stick out as well. One of those dates for me is May 28, 1997.

At the time, I was a 30 year old, single, City Administrator of Dalworthington Gardens that spent all his free time riding the bike. The past previous Memorial Day I had probably ridden the best in my life at the Bobby Valentine’s 100K. I rode with the big boys the whole time. I even attacked the group. I made the front page of the Start-Telegram Sports page in a picture that I still hang proudly in my office.

I was serving as the Texas Wheels Cycling Club president and was excited about running our monthly time trial at Joe Pool Dam. I was positively giddy as the May time trial approached. I felt that I was going to set a PR that day because I was at the best fitness level of my life. Adding excitement to this event, my older, more athletic, brother, Dave, was in town with his family. Dave as you may know is a U.S. Army officer. He was transferring from Texas A&M to West Point. His wife, Dudely, and their six month old son Zach were going to hang out with me for a few weeks while Dave got quarters at West Point.

Dave and I headed out to Joe Pool Lake to meet up with my cycling club. We had an interesting discussion on the drive. Dave was concerned that someday I would be out in the middle of nowhere and be in a bike wreck. I assured him I had a plan. I explained that all I had to do was to have them call Dalworthington Gardens and tell them to say “Call 800, 600 is down” and everything would be alright. I explained to my brother, that 800 is the radio call sign for Chief Bill E. Waybourn and 600 was my radio call sign. That would give the dispatcher enough information to hunt the Chief down and understand the urgency of why the call was important. I had no idea that this was foreshadowing the rest of my day.

Dave and I arrived at the lake and met up with my cycling buddies at the designated start time of 6pm. I distinctly remember that Mark Wessels, Liz Wessels, Randy Wallis and Larry Stein where there. Since Dave was not riding, he was in charge of the watch. We leave in one minutes intervals and do an out and back on the dam. I do not remember who went in front of me, but I do know that my goal was not to have Mark catch me because he was starting after me.

Dave gave me the signal to go and I begin pounding the pedals to make my personal best on the TWCC time trial. Quickly, I realized that I was flying and settled into a good grove. I was very confident that Mark was not going to catch me and that I was going to shatter my personal record. As I grip my drops, I noted that my speed was hovering around 25 mph but I heard a clicking sound. I looked down and noticed that the magnet on my front wheel was hitting my cycling computer sensor on my fork. This was not a good thing I thought, because it was slowing me down. Each revolution had a small drag that was interfering with my peak performance.

The last thing I can clearly remember is reaching down to move the senor away from the wheel in order to stop the clicking sound. The rest of the story is a combination of my memory and those stories told to me by my friends present.

I hit the ground really hard. I felt my collar bone crack. Mark rolled up to me and found me sitting on my butt, my bike upside down against the guard rail and holding my right hand in my left. I was bleeding like no tomorrow. It quickly became clear to Mark that I had stuck my hand in my wheel. Something was very clearly wrong. Things started happening in a blurry kind of way. I was very confused. Mark asked to look at my hand. He looked, told me to close my hand and to hold on. I remember just a bloody pulp. I did not think I would get to keep my pinky finger.

Mark tried to get me to stand up by tucking his arms under my shoulders so we could start walking to the car. He informed me that the ambulance had been called. When he made the attempt, I could feel a sharp pain in my right shoulder and knew that it was a bad idea to get up. I had broken my collar bone.

The sound of the ambulance could be heard in the distance. Everyone assumed that they would have a key to get past the locked gate that kept cars off the dam. I had lost all sense of time and place. My buddy Randy had to explain over and over again the reason we were wearing our old jerseys was that our others were dirty and we had not done the wash yet.

The fine folks of Grand Prairie EMS arrived on the dam and loaded me up. I apparently did sit up and compliment them on their response time. I also kept trying to tell them to call Dalworthington Gardens. They had no idea what I was talking about.

Randy told me later, the paramedic stuck his head out the back of the ambulance and said “He wants us to call some 800 number...” Randy pieced it together and called DWG and talked to the Chief. Between the confusion of the event and now a body full of morphine, I was not communicating successfully. I do remember being assured or lied to, depending on your perspective, by the paramedic that he seen worse fingers that people got to keep.

I was greeted at Arlington Memorial Hospital by Officer David Janice of the Dalworthington Gardens Department of Public Safety. The best I can remember is that the medical staff ushered me right in. David, Randy, Larry, Mark and Liz all were there. Chief showed up later. I was hooked up to a morphine drip and I pushed the heck out of the button. I know that it does not always inject you with morphine every time you push it, but I still kept pushing it.

X-Rays confirmed my broken collar bone, broken hand and three broken ribs. All the doctors thought I was in a motor cycle accident. Somebody had to keep explaining that it was a cycling accident. I was rushed into surgery for my hand, because there was a concern that my pinky finger needed to be attached in a way that it could survived.

In surgery, hopped up on morphine, I met the good Dr. Ward. He explained to me the choices I had for my finger. He could set me up like Roger Staubach with a curled pinky or more of a bent one so I could still use a keyboard. I elected to go with the bent finger.

All of this did not seem to take very long to me, but when they wheeled take me home, it was after midnight. My brother and my friends stayed the whole time. The stopped at a 24 hour Eckerd’s on the way to get my prescriptions. Ironically, I was to meet the midnight pharmacist that filled that order, Tom Duran, in a few weeks as a new Assistant Scoutmaster in Troop 5.

My poor sister in law had to spend her time in Dalworthington Gardens driving me from Doctor’s appointment to Doctor’s appointment. I did fully recover to crash the bike many more times. However, I am stuck with a bent finger on my right hand, but at least I still can count to ten (or at least 9 ½).