On The Pegs June 2020 - Volume 5 - Issue 6 | Page 84

On The Pegs 84
RUSSELL VS RUSSELL
RICKY’S TAKE (Cont.)
trail. But if you stayed on the main line it kind of did a little bit of a dog-leg left and
then back to the right through some chop. In my head I thought there’s no way he’s
going to go as fast as me through that chop as I am through the smooth side. I was
wrong because I think he might have heard me and picked it up, or whatever. We
came back together and collided. I was right next to him. We kind of just kept going
until I got clipped by the tree. The tree just took me off my bike. It turned my
handlebars to the right, and then I flipped over the bars. As I flipped over the bars,
my groin area caught the throttle and all my components on my bars. I was on the
ground for a second, catching my breath, and then I felt warm liquid all over my
legs and I was like, uh oh. This is not good. I realized it was blood. I had a puncture.
So I started yelling. There was a girl there, Mike Witkowski’s girlfriend actually. I told
her to call a medic. She was really good and really on that, so that was good. Another
guy showed up in a t-shirt. He was able to get his t-shirt off and apply pressure,
tie it, and apply pressure just above the gash. We were able to stop the bleeding
for the most part. So that was good. Then the medics got there. We thought it’s
just a gash because it kind of stopped bleeding. Well, come to find out, we slowed
it down but I got to the hospital and my whole artery there in your groin was ruptured
and really had a lot of trauma. So it could have been really bad. I could have
bled out in like five to ten minutes. Very scary. Just very happy that everything went
pretty smoothly after the crash. n