How to survive a crash in the Nevada desert?

As I am lying down with my knuckles bleeding sand in my face and breathing shallow because I got the wind knocked out of me, I am thinking,,, "oh no not again".

Fri morning I made reservations for 3 mountain bikes rental to explore Red rock Cannon in Las Vegas Nevada. Joanne her brother David and I are getting ready to ride in 100 degrees heat on one of the beginners mountain bike trails. A funny looking cycling dude who runs the lonely store by himself shows us a quick basic map how to do a fun loop after he has set us up on our bikes. It should take us about 2 hr but somehow we didn't get back until 5 hrs later.
Since I felt in good shape I started to go ahead to explore the trail. Soon after climbing some hills came the fun part flying down bringing back memories of me dirt biking as a teenager. I was very impressed with Joanne and her brother David who never had been on a mountain bike before following me trough the rugged terrain.
We where prepared for survival as we carried about 2 gallons of fluid with us knowing dehydration would be easy in this environment. I just watch a survival show couple days ago where was mentioned that you need a gallon of water per person per day to survive in the hot desert.
I was somewhat surprised about the difficulty of the beginners coarse soon realizing we got lost since we took a wrong turn earlier. Oh well if we continue this direction we must end up back where we started from. It was hot, super hot but the fun trail trough the beautiful mountains made it well worth it.

There I was lying on the ground, it happend so fast, a split secound.
I quickly stood up checking myself, at least I fell on my good side, the opposite side of when I crashed last year and broke my collarbone and 4 ribs. My collarbone looked OK but when I took a deep breath I recognized the same pain and crunchy sound, thinking O no, I broke another rib. I was glad however my all new 2010 was still intact which I couldn't say about the bike. The rear derailleur got bend.
At this time Joanne and David had arrived and checked out the rest of my damaged body. It looked like some gravel rash, possible broken pinkie finger and rib, big bruise on the right upper thigh.
I tried to bend back the derailleur as adrenaline was still flowing and as I did, it broke of in my hand. Great we are miles away from the shop and I was in no shape to walk back to the highway.

As I was thinking how to take the rear derailleur of and possibly make this into a single gear with only a basic toolkit, 3 moutainbikers stopped and asked what had happened. The only 3 mountainbikers we had seen all day. The one guy offered his help and had a better tool kit with a cable cutter and chain breaker. Shortening the chain I decided to put it in the middle so I at least could ride in the single gear. Unfortunately the chain was also beat up pretty bad and kept derailing every couple feet forcing me to place it in the big ring in the front and the small ring in the back. Luckily most of the way back was downhill with few elevations.
We all managed to get back to the store 5 hrs later with me standing on the pedals with my full weight at 30 rpm. luckily we had enough fluids and a nice mountain biker that stopped to help with having the right tools for me to improvise to get back.

The bicycle store dude was very impressed we all made it back and told us we unfortunately missed the nicest part of the trail. He did mention that if we wanted to ride and rent road bikes next time, there is a 37 mile loop around the lake with hills and no cars aloud just made for road cyclist.
This might be something to consider to do with some G2 riders next time.

I tried not to let the crash spoil the rest of my Vegas vacation to much but maybe next time think twice by flying down a trail I never been on before and realizing I am not 20 years old anymore.

Took a Xray yesterday at work could not see if ribs were broken. Pinkie finger starting to look better. The popping sound and soreness is still there especially if I take a deep breath but I tolerated spinning for 45 min today.


So this weekend G2 rides, Saturday I will be starting from the usual place Atlantic Blvd AIA parking lot. Waiting at Spanish River at 7:45 ish for all G2 riders to get together to ride North

Sunday 7:30 am Same place.