Crash course

Been on the bike quite a bit, but mainly riding to and from work on a loaner. So after a week of no dirt, I hit the trails of Makara with Josh and his friend Carl on Sunday. After a false start when I left my shoes at home, I finally met them and Johnathon at the carpark and we got underway. I should've brought a road bike as we slogged up the tar to the start of Varley's Track, a switchback ribbon up the side of the hill to the start of Vertigo. Carl (who it turns out I'd read about in NZMTBR mag, he runs singletrack tours in Colorado and Moab and is a gun rider) suggested we all drop our seats down for this on, but as I'm on a gram saving mission, I'd swapped it out for a standard clamp. I'd ridden Vertigo once before, and remembered it was pretty steep and tight in sections. I also remembered Rad Ross's words "only a dufus drops their seat post, duuude". About halfway down I was praying to the QR Gods as I happened upon Josh off his bike, doing what I don't know, discovering some new species of butterfly or something. Actually he's stuffed up a drop-off, and with nowhere to go and a seat digging into my ribs, it was a trip over the bars for me. I took the impact on my left leg (?) and got out of it pretty well unscathed. My ankle was a bit sore from being clipped in I guess, but it only hurt when I pedalled.
Today (my day off), I was still alittle tender, but decided a ride might sort it out. And it did. Until I shoulder charged a tree, swapped from one side of the track to the other, and landed in a pile of fallen trees, same leg clipped in, now with added bruising and what feels like the groin ripped from the bone. Oh how I love mountain biking. Time for a couple of painkillers, Steinlager administered.