Talk to the hand

Here's the x-ray promised awhile back of the damage sustained when I got bumped off my bike at Frenchs Forest by a bike hater last December while riding to work.

Seven screws, and a plate, all Titanium. Will be interesting to find out if it's enough to set off airport scanners.

On the original you can still see the dark lines from the incompletely healed fractures. After noticing them, I understood why the specialists at Clinic 17 at RNSH said "don't fall off for the next 6 weeks. It was hard enough to put you back together the first time!" Each of those screws pretty much holds a single bone fragment in place, about 4 in total. So fair enough I suppose.

After test riding my commuter midweek, I discovered from the contact point with my hand that the bar end was probably the cause of the fracture, where my metacarpal was in contact with the side of it. When the bar hit the road with my hand still firmly gripping it (so quickly I went down), the bone didn't cope too well with being wrapped around the bar end.

Would I have had less damage overall without the bar end? Maybe. My shifters and brakes would have taken a beating, but I might have gotten away with bruising instead of the titanium upgrade.

So for now I've taken the bar ends off the commuter.