PBR | Calling Dr. Mauney: A "Love & Try" sub-story

PUEBLO, Colo. – You don’t necessarily lose all sense of caution, moderation, and restraint when in a job promoting bull riders, but it sure helps.

The approaching cab door opened, and when I swerved on my bicycle to avoid the impending mess, I slammed shoulder first into a parked van.

The bike would have stopped quicker if both brakes had been applied. But that’s hard to do when holding your phone in one hand.

Smart phone. Dumb people.

Guilty as charged, Your Honor.

The hit didn’t ring my bell, but the air was knocked out of me, as they say.

The young woman who had opened the cab door looked genuinely frightened in her earnest concern for the idiot holding his phone gasping for air with his bike on the ground.

Let’s call an ambulance, she says.

I finally sputter something about seeing bull riders take shots a hundred times worse and walk away, and J.B. said in my new book you get wrecked out bad, well, crawl into the chutes if you have to, and go cry there. Don’t lay there on the dirt unless they’re bringing out the back board.

This street is my dirt. I’m okay.

She has no freaking idea who J.B. is.

I managed to get on the bike and slowly pedal away.

But the pain got even worse today, and my girlfriend, who had been reminding me I’m neither a bull rider nor a young man, took me to the ER where the technician started aiming the giant X-Ray camera at the wrong side, and I had to redirect him.

Come on. You have one job.

Waiting for the results, I texted J.B. and his wife Sam the story from the street, because, come on that’s funny.

Does it hurt when you cough or sneeze? J.B. asked.

Hearing that is so, J.B. said it’s a rib.

Hey, he is DOCTOR Mauney. (That’s a joke for those who read J.B.’s harrowing yet hilarious lacerated liver story in his Foreword in the new book Love & Try that I was railing about to the girl who car-doored me.)

Sure enough, the X-rays came back showing a fractured rib.

Turns out I didn’t need to go to the hospital.

I only needed to consult with Dr. Mauney.

When it’s time to fly again, maybe he can clear me.

Andrew Giangola is the author of “Love & Try: Stories of Gratitude and Grit From Professional Bull Riding,” available on PBRShop.com with proceeds benefitting injured bull riders through the Western Sports Foundation.

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