Randomly, in the spirit of Halloween, I figured I’d share my mostly minor mishap today. It happened on my spare junker BMX bike today while doing front end spin around sort of balance tricks.
Apparently I need to get some end caps for my handlebars, the sharp uncapped handlebars are what cut me. ☹️🤦
Edit: Don’t mind the wristband, that’s a 1.5 pound sandbag weight to help exercise my left arm.
There’s a reason road races won’t let you start without bar end caps. It’s a safety critical part and actually quite dangerous to ride without them. Consider yourself lucky you only hurt your hand and didn’t take a core sample of yourself.
I hope you heal up quickly and stay safe!
Thank you for that! I should be good fairly soon… 👍
Check my other comments, you’ll see my old BMX bike, which was totally set up with everything necessary for my riding style including metal bar caps.
My old bike was clean, everyone called it Silver, and rightfully so. Sad thing is half the parts are installed so tightly, they can’t be removed anymore, and the frame has stress cracks now…
Ugh man that’s terrible. We call that getting cored. Get some end caps. Ow.
You can deburr the edge as well
Yes, I do need to deburr the edges, I do have a decent set of files.
But that won’t be sufficient enough, my style of tricks are very fast paced and somewhat intermediately inspired from tricks of riders such as Matt Wilhelm, but I ride brakeless…
Matt Wilhelm:
Me, like 13 years ago (Granted I’m not quite that good, but still…):
Needless to say, this spare bike of mine needs some service. I cracked Silver’s frame years ago (my original main practice bike)…
My current junker/fixer-upper:
That looks painful 😨
Part of my faith in humanity was restored today. I just rode my bicycle yet again, ~10:30pm my time, to the store to get a beer.
No bandages on my hand, bleeding quit hours ago. But the cashier saw my hand injury and opened up their first aid box (I didn’t ask, he offered).
He gave me two alcohol wipes, a gauze pad, and a large bandage.
Honestly I think I already got this disinfected and taken care of, but the cashier fella restored a little of my faith in humanity…
Oddly enough, it isn’t even painful. I almost didn’t even notice it, I almost just kept on riding, my adrenaline was kicking by then.
But I felt a light sting, so I stopped to check. 10 years ago, I wouldn’t have even bothered checking, I would have literally kept riding for at least another half hour.
It’ll be alright though, I fully disinfected and medicated it, with surgeon’s hand wash and betadine solution. Thus far I don’t even need a bandage, I just flopped the dead skin back over the wound and let it dry in place, after full cleaning and betadine…
Thankfully it barely went through the first layer of flesh, very little blood, and practically no pain.
I’ll be alright 👍
It’s a sign that you need road-rash-resistant gloves!
Yeah, I hear you there. 👍
But for real, more-so its a reminder that I need some protective end caps on the handlebars. This wasn’t a pavement injury, it was literally the unprotected end of the handlebars that stabbed into my palm.
At least it was only a first layer skin injury, not down to the meat and not much blood, but of course its gonna need some healing time…
Is the handlebars edge sharp or something?
Yeah, apparently so. I’ve only been practicing on this junker/fixer-upper bike since the 10th, I’m still noting a number of fixes and upgrades it eventually needs…
