rearword

The foreword is a great thing. Nobody reads them so this is where the author gets to come clean and tell the truth without fear of spoiling the story they are about to fabricate. But, just to make sure, I'm putting this at the end; confident that my writing skill will insure that no reader gets this far. Nick, Rusty, Zerial, and Jonnie are some of the most talented riders I've ever had the honor of trying to hang with. Above that, they are men that I'm proud to call friends. There was a little too much adventure on this trip. Rusty took a hit that would've taken out a mere human and it came close to taking him out. The femur is a big bone and he broke it good. There was a lot of internal bleeding, and the doctors were fighting to keep him going for as long as it took them to bolt and strap him together. I know from the way they spoke after the surgery that it was far worse than anyone had realized.

Partly due, I think, by how well Rusty was dealing with it. The hardest part of his recovery is yet to come. This will be a trying time for him and he'll have to be strong enough mentally not to take any risks that might jeopardize the healing. Rusty and I had a few long talks about things like when to be smart enough to back off and stuff like that. He and I are about the same age and here we are trying to hang with riders around half our age, good riders. I had a notion of getting philosophical and writing about things like how the awareness of our mortality or I guess our fragility starts to creep into our minds and mess with our ability to ride the fast, steep and nasty. Then I realized that I don't know what to do about it except to maintain priorities and have some fun. We all get to choose if riding a big drop is worth not riding at all for awhile if we miss it. Riding on the edge gives us that yummy adrenaline rush but sometimes you have to pay back. I have maximum respect for Rusty and look forward to the day when he drops me again. Nick is a friend and a brother. He always sees the fun and positive vibe in whatever is happening and makes bad things good. Thank you Nick and Janie
for putting us up and, most of all, putting up with us.

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