It's not my story but I'm telling it anyways . . .

My older boys have been working on their biking merit badge since last September. They had several distances that had to be accomplished, culminating in a 50 miler. On the way to this point they did 10, 15, and two 25 milers. Several attempts were made at having an overnighter to do the 50 miler but things kept coming up. On my oldest sons birthday I purchased entrance into the Pat Tillman run. The next Sunday we learned that the 50 miler would be on the same day as the Pat Tillman run - bummer. Chase and I did the 50 miler together earlier in the week on one of his days off from school.

On the day of the Pat Tillman run we had our own bit of excitement but had a great time running. As we were heading home Glory called to say that the Scout Leaders had called her from Northern Arizona to say that Bradley had wrecked and had a bump on his arm and the felt the should take him into the closest hospital (Cottonwood Hospital). Glory told them to tell Bradley to get back on the bike and finish the 50 miler; he still had 45 miles to go. Glory asked me if I agreed with her and I told her we should trust the judgment of those that were with him. She was really frustrated with the long process it has taken for the boys to get this merit badge and just wanted it to be done.

About an hour later we got another call and were informed that Bradley had in fact broken his arm. The hospital splinted his arm (but didn’t bother setting it for him) and sent him home. The details of the crash came out later that night as I attended the daddy daughter activity – here is the play by play:

Bradley can’t “hold a line” worth beans on a bike and they were biking down a road with a small shoulder. He managed to swerve off the road and overcorrected to get back on and took a spill going about 15 mph. His leader had been biking close behind him and was frantically trying to break and swerve around Bradley. Bradley just exploded when he went down with gloves flying off, bike flipping through the air etc. He “balled” up until he came to his final roll and at the conclusion he let his arms drop away from his body . . . just in time for his leader to run over the arm and break it. They ended up finding Bradley’s glasses in the leaders spokes. Besides his arm he had some small abrasions on his face, arm, and legs but nothing major.

When we were able to finally get Bradley in to get his cast put on they discovered the Cottonwood hospital had not set the bone. We scheduled to put him under the next day and re-break his arm and then cast it. He was pretty nervous about being put under. This was quickly overshadowed when he woke up from the procedure and realized he had a purple cast on. HA, HA, HA – tears – Ha, ha, ha – we was absolutely mortified and got real vocal about it to the nurse (male nurse) who he made sure his thoughts of a man ever becoming a nurse was made clear (Bradley doesn’t approve). Bradley was still groggy from the meds and he held nothing back as Glory looked on totally mortified by his behavior. Yeah, he wanted a blue cast and was mad he didn’t get to make his selection and got such a gender neutral color (ok, everybody gets purple now-a-days but he feels it is a girls color). This was the worst part of getting his arm broken and of course the family gave him plenty of grief about this.

To end this story on a fun note; he had his advisor, the one that ran over and broke his arm, sign his cast. He signed it after the words “I did it”.

Andrew "set the bone the first time!" Brown