Brazil… The second stop of the 2011 MegaRamp tour… Got down there a few days early so there was plenty of practice time on the ramp. It was pretty much just me and Anthony riding for the first two days. The other dudes, Vince, Colton, James, & Steve, didn’t show up until thursday night or afternoon or something. Not sure why, but they didn’t want to go earlier in the week like me and Tone. At any rate, Anthony and I had a great time having the ramp all to our selves!

SUPERMAN-SEATGRAAAAAAAAAAAB!

 Paulo, Anthony, & me

That little speck in the trees is me!! Super Seat on the 60.

This is a really cool link to some highlights from the contest and the week!

They ended up thinking it was going to rain on Saturday and Sunday so they had us run the BMX contest on Friday so they could at least have TV footage to show on ESPN Brazil over the weekend. It didn’t end up raining over the week end but it didn’t really matter for me. On our first runs  of 4, I dropped in on the 60 foot gap, because there was no 70…, and did a Superman Cannonball. I was psyched that I’d pulled it clean and got a good pump into the quarter. I hit it with a bit more heat than I had been in practice and did a double whip to get a good score on the board before I started to go for it. I didn’t want a repeat of X-Games last year… (4 triple whip attempts & 4 crashes) Unfortunately I pushed in a little too much and had drifted out over the deck and no matter what I wasn’t going to pull the trick.

That is the air I crashed on, so at this point I was actually going over the two options I had. I knew I was going to crash, so I was a matter of how I would crash now. Because I was over the deck I could ether throw the bike and try to get my body into the ramp, or brace and let the bike take the brunt of it by casing… The problem with the first option was that I didn’t think I’d make it into the ramp, and that could have resulted in a broken back if I’d sat on the coping. Needless to say I went with number 2. It was the better choice but the way I landed was kind of a freak accident. Believe it or not it was a controlled crash, and after watching the video, I don’t even think it was very bad!

The best I can figure, my wrist broke when I cased, and the rib and spleen when I hit the bottom of the ramp. I re-broke the same rib that I popped in China on the Street course. When it broke it pushed into my spleen and popped it like a mellon! I thought that I’d just knocked the wind out of myself though and gave a thumbs up to show that I was alright. It wasn’t until I was getting ready to go back up for another run that I started to feel the stomach ache. About 15 minutes later when I was back in the medical room I passed out from blood loss.

Weeeeeeeeeee!

Splat!

The neck brace in that photo wasn’t necessary.

I was in surgery within 3 hours of the crash and thankfully the doctors were able to fix my spleen and I was able to keep it! They told me after the surgery that I’d actually lost 2 liters of blood internally! That’s about 1/4 of the blood that’s in my entire body! I call that a close one! =P

This is a screen grab from my surgery video! A.K.A. my guts floating in blood!

This is my spleen. You can see the gash running down the center spewing fresh blood!

These are the tools used to fix me.

They only had to make 4 small incisions to do the surgery that literally saved my life! Big big thanks to God for guiding the hands of the doctors that worked on me Big thanks to the doctors too! Thanks guys! =)

I think I lost a little weight over my 4 day stay in the hospital!

When all was said and done I had to spend an extra week in Brazil after I was released from the hospital. Darryl, Ray, Jeff, and the rest of the MegaRamp guys were awesome and took care of everything for me! MegaRamp also had ALL of my bills covered too! That’s called doing it right! I hope all of the other big events take note of how the MegaRamp crew is doing it! They even made sure that I was taken care of for the extra time I had to spend down there. Priscilla Coraccini stayed with me and came to the hotel every day to pick me up to take me out and about for lunch. I probably spent about 16 hours a day sleeping 4 hours just sitting in bed and the other 4 out around town with Priscilla. Each day I was there I felt better and better.

I saw some cool graffiti too.

I crashed on July 1st and flew home on the 11th. Over all it wasn’t the most fun trip, but I still managed to have a good time and make some new friends!

Home Sweet Home!!

Thanks again, God, Darryl, Ray, Jeff, Kevin Robinson, Anthony Nap, Priscilla, all the Doctors, and all my Brazilian friends! You guys were all awesome!