Well it sure does seem like our ladies can’t catch a break from injuries! Jessica recently hurt her knee while at Woodward West. She is about to travel to meet up with fellow Chick Flick rider, Cami, in a couple days so hopefully she heals up quickly. Here’s an update from her.
Man, it has been a crazy summer, lots of traveling and good times for sure! I still have quite the adventure ahead of me, but as we all know about bmx is sometimes an abusive relationship. I’ve been lucky enough to be at Woodward West for the past month, thanks for the ride again by the way! I’ve been meeting so many amazing people and learning so much on my bike, it’s been great living with so little and taking in so much from the experience. Shawn Dorton has been so great with me just being there and hanging out with the kids, i haven’t had to work the entire month, he’s such a rad dude. Each weekend i’ve been able to escape camp and go to another part of California which has been awesome, been able to see old friends and see that they are doing well outside of the state of colorful Colorado!
Anyway, short story long, it was the friday before my last week of camp and i am getting comfortable with barspins and 360′s, so i decided to combine forces and try truck drivers. A long time ago i was trying them and they didn’t turn out so great… but it had been a while since then! I threw one and I landed at about 300 degrees, I was so close i had to do it before i could call it a night. Hindsight, I wish I wouldn’t have said the notorious “one more time” jinx… I went up the ramp waited til 270 and when I went to throw and just stopped rotating, dropped to the ground…. top part of my left leg stayed underneath me bottom part tweaked out to the side. My leg immediately heated up which made me really scared that I broke something. I laid there for a second to see if the heat would stop and tried to get up but I couldn’t move my leg to get up. I started getting really nervous. Luckily being at Woodward, they have medical staff, the trainers just picked me up and carried me to the trainers room. Now it was the tough part, I had pants on and under the pants I was fully padded up… we finally got them off and my knee had already swelled up to the size of a grapefruit. i don’t think i’ve ever been so happy to not see bones sticking out of my leg. haha. Due to my knee being so swollen we iced it and waited until the next day to check out anything.
Next day it was the same, it was still swollen like a grapefruit. It looked like I’d be sportin’ the crutches for more than a night. I never realized how much we take advantage of everyday things, getting in the shower, tying your shoe, etc. I can’t even imagine what Cami’s going through… Her injury is way worse than mine. After a few days we were able to conclude that it was just a torn meniscus. I say just because there are so many other things that could go wrong in the knee, and I was lucky enough not to have any of them as a problem. The meniscus has the potential to heal by itself, no surgery! I only had 5 days of needing crutches and then i was able to do half days for the next day or two. Which is good because my next adventure is going to South America to visit Cami, then hiking part of the Incan trail in Peru to see Macchu Picchu. I have a feeling that by Cami being hurt it will allow me some time to heal and just hang out with her! We can be gimps together!
As i said, short story long, my adventures will continue with little interruption which is awesome! I’ll send pictures from the road!
Take care! Talk soon!
Hasta Pronto!!!
Get well soon, Jess!
Tags: BMX, Chick Flick, injury, Jessica Ausec, Woodward