A group of us were out on Monday for one of the last dual-sport rides of the season, up in the backwoods. The XT is proving to be a really fun ride, especially now I have mastered the 'knack' of starting it consistently.
Anyhoo one of the group, Bev, went down on a greasy downhill gravel logging road. It was a relatively slow speed tumble, but she slid for a couple of metres before coming to a halt. She was wearing full protection, all synthetic, but no 'armour'. Long story short the pants protected her from gravel rash, despite being badly chewed up. When we exposed her injured knee it was obvious that the accident had created significant stress underneath the pants. I've never deen such a horrendous gouge.... there was a 3-4" tear horizontally across her knee which was so deep that all of the flesh was peeled back from the bones. Pass the puke bag please!
Fortunately we had a doctor with us and the facility to get her to the hospital and her bike safely back home. The fact that she had not filled the wound with road mung made the repair quite straight forward; seven stitches later she was leak free. She'll have an uncomfortable healing process because the injury is right where there is the most 'stretch', but the consolation is that she wouldn't have been doing any more riding until next spring anyway.
I shudder to think what the state of her leg would have been if she had only been wearing jeans, but also reflect on how much less damage would have been done if she had been wearing crash padding over her knee......
