Day 13: Let me get a bite of that

Breaks Interstate Park, VA to Hazard, KY – 1.4 mi, -315 ft 

(85.1 mi, 4,749 ft)

First driver x blogger day! 😅

My POV: (6:00 – 9:10 am)

That morning we woke up at our bare bones campground (no electricity or water), and most of our devices were either dead or almost dead. Everyone was either tired, irritable, or slightly injured as they begrudgingly put on their bike gear. The first group consisting of Nate, Drew, Nunu, and Caroline left as soon as they could, knowing they had a long 85 mile day ahead of them. A little while later, Tatiana and Aarushi went on their way. Soon after, I pulled out of the campsite and started to make my way out of the park, trailing an incredibly slow camper van.

For some reason, the morning felt off. I still had this pit in my stomach from yesterday, after we biked through an incredibly sketchy neighborhood and had to drag our bikes under potentially live electric fencing. But today was a new day. All I wanted to do was get on the road and prepare for the next rest stop; I figured this routine would help calm my nerves. 

About two minutes into trailing this camper van, I received a call from Nunu. If you remember from the previous blog, Nunu had to SAG out towards the end of the ride because of her knee pain. In the moment before I answered, I had almost decided this was the reason for her call. But it was so early on into the day that it didn’t make sense. I kept my adrenaline from overcoming my temporarily focused and placated state, and picked up the call.

“Carmen, we need you to come right now, Caroline has been bitten by a dog”, Nunu demanded. I cursed in shock. Was Caroline okay? How did this happen? All I could think about was how our previous circular discussion on dealing with dogs in Kentucky never ended in a practical solution; instead we had relied on our faith in statistics and hope to keep us safe.

I frantically asked for their location, but all I could hear of Nunu’s response was random vowel sounds as the spotty service decided to choose our conversation to chew up. I had to call Nunu several times before she was able to pick up, and eventually she was able to tell me to follow our daily route until I could see her and Nate on the side of the road waving their hands above their heads.

Caroline, Nunu, Nate, and Drew’s POV: (8:20 – 9:00am)

At around 8:45 am, the first group had just taken the descent out of Breaks Interstate Park and were approaching a cluster of houses on the first back road of the day. Drew was leading with Nate taking up the rear, Caroline behind Nunu, but both sandwiched in the middle between them. 

They had just come up a hill and were met with an adorable big white fluffy dog sitting in the driveway of the “dog house”. Everyone was off their guard as no one suspected it could be aggressive. Drew first barreled past, and Nunu followed, but somehow their speed must have lit a fire in the dog’s eyes as it set it’s sights on Nunu. It came charging at her from the right (as seen below), causing her to scream bloody murder and start pedaling as fast as she could to escape. At the same time, Caroline saw this as an opening for her to get past. The dog was distracted with antagonizing Nunu on the left, creating a pocket behind the dog on the right. Caroline tried to bolt past, but the dog was quicker. It turned around, deeming Nunu was no longer interesting enough to chase, and targeted Caroline instead. 

She had told me that all she could think of in those few seconds before was a jumbled mess of potential solutions to the dog problem we had discussed. But since we had made no clear line of action, she picked one at random: just keep biking.

After, the dog kept on charging, and moved to focus on Nate instead. But he had yelled “NO” just in time to deter it. Incredibly, Caroline kept biking the entire time; she must of had an insane amount of adrenaline coursing through her to keep herself from feeling the pain. The four of them stopped at a house down the road to regroup, where they realized there was no service and made the decision to walk back up the hill to call for help. This meant they would have to once again enter enemy territory. 

If I believed in divine intervention, I might have seen what happened next as proof. While passing by the house, the dog had reappeared from behind the owner’s truck. It was about to charge again when suddenly a car came speeding down the hill and breaked just in time to only bump into the dog, allowing Caroline, Nate, and Nunu to hobble to the top of the hill where Nunu was finally able to call me.

Simultaneously, Drew had decided to confront the owner. Drew was very polite, southern accent slipping out to maybe subconsciously disarm him. He asked for him to take responsibility for what had happened and was of course uncooperative. Instead he blamed the team for being stopped in the road (which they have never done), it escalated into name calling and shouting and by this time Drew knew it was a lost cause. He channeled all of that anger into biking back up the 400 ft climb into Breaks Interstate Park in order to get service, update Tatiana and Aarushi, and call the police.

My POV: (9:10 am – 1:30 pm)

Once I got there, Nunu immediately grabbed the first aid kit from the car and started to tend to Caroline. They all moved to sit under the shade of some abandoned truck. At this point, emergency response services had been called and we were all waiting for them and the police to arrive. 

I felt at a loss for what to do. I realized how unprepared I felt to deal with an emergency such as this; everyone else made a plan of action. I just did what others said and tried to be helpful. It is an interesting feeling, knowing in theory what steps to take, caring so greatly about the outcome, and yet being completely clueless as to how it should be translated into practice. Police should be involved, yes. Caroline should get medical attention, yes. But ambulances are expensive, so should I drive her? Should I wait for the police to arrive before I take her? Will they bring medical response services with them who can take her themselves? Hospital or urgent care? Wait times? What can the police even do in this case? A lot of questions that were impossible to be answered without experience. I trusted those around me to do what was right. And they did. I think it’s vulnerability, stepping back where you feel unsure, especially in moments where accuracy matters the most. It’s probably fear too, mixed in there. 

Drew and Nate went down to the “dog house” to wait on the police, where Nunu soon followed, but not before she handed me a walkie talkie. She had been so dedicated to charging them that it was unfortunate how they finally were being put to use.

While we were waiting, Aarushi called Charles, our wonderful host in Hazard and the coordinator of the challenger center, to ask if there was any way he could come and pick us up. He immediately agreed and determined that he was able to get a cargo van and get to us at around 2 pm that afternoon.

About 30 minutes after Drew had made the first call, Tatiana left where she was comforting Caroline to make a second, slightly more angry call to the sheriff. The cops still hadn’t arrived.

10 minutes later, the Haysi volunteer rescue team pulled up. Two volunteers climbed out and slowly trundled over, both older in age. Before they could start treating her, they needed to fill out some paperwork. It was an interesting interaction to observe; I felt like I was performing a vivisection of rural healthcare. 

Caroline had to repeat her information several times as the man in charge of writing it down had poor hearing, while Aarushi had to loudly and slowly repeat how to spell H-U-A-N-G. I watched as he actively mistook an 8 for a 5 when Caroline very clearly dictated her phone number aloud, and when he crossed out the K in his “Karoline” for a C.

After his partner had finished cleaning Caroline’s wound, she realized they would need more bandaids. He was already over by their ambulance, more than 200 ft away, and so she decided to shout at the top of her lungs, “GET BANDAIDS!” It went back and forth several times, through a series of, “WHAT?”, “BAND-AIDS!”, “BEND-WHAT?”, “NO, BAND AIDS!!”

Eventually they got it figured out, came back to patch up Caroline, and gave us the chance to ask more about how to proceed. Should we be worried about rabies? Apparently, they have to get a sample from the dog, so that was largely out of our control. We never even learned from them that Caroline would need to get the rabies vaccine anyway, just that she might need a tetanus shot.

Eventually the sheriff arrives, followed by two more cop cars, one hour after Drew had first called them.

Mind you, I have been in a slight state of shock this whole time. Caroline’s eyes were understandably red, Aarushi was clutching her hand like she knew she needed the support—we were all on a similar wavelength, trying to stay calm but really quite shaken up. But when the sheriff came over, he brought a completely different vibe. To me at least, all of their southern accents were disarming, he was calm, in a kind of jolly mood, which matched the volunteer rescue team’s (what seemed to me) lack of urgency. Maybe I just misread a good beside manner.

The sheriff talked to Caroline, looked her over, and asked about the dog bite. He brought out his phone to take a picture, squatted down to get a good angle, and in a serious tone accidentally said, “Let me get a bite of that!” He immediately apologized, but everyone thought it was hilarious; it was the first time I had seen Caroline break a smile since this whole mess had begun.

We still had more questions for the rescue team: should she go to the hospital or was it unnecessary? If so, should she go in their ambulance or in our car? His response was to tell us a story of how a motorcyclist got into an accident, broke his arm, ribs, and collar bone, and still refused to be driven by them, opting to make the two hour drive to the nearest hospital himself. In other words, the decision was up to us. Ultimately we decided she should go with them, since their service is free, and they should theoretically get there faster. Aarushi hopped in the ambulance with Caroline, and then they proceeded to wait for an extra 20 minutes on the side of the road.

While we were making sure Caroline got the help she needed, Tatiana was busy talking to the police. She had hopped in the sheriff’s car to drive down to the house to meet up with the rest of our team. Part of the reason why they had taken so long to respond, was that they had a debate over in which county the dog bite occured. The road was in Dickenson county, but the house was in Buchannan county, and cops from both were there. Eventually they determined the officers from Dickenson county were responsible for handling the attack, due to some river boundary on someone’s property.

Once they had come back up the hill, the cops noticed the ambulance hadn’t left. They asked us if we knew the reason, we definitely did not, and so one of them went to go talk with the rescue team. This whole time they had been waiting “to be released” by the cops, who themselves had no idea that was a rule, mainly because it wasn’t. Finally Caroline and Aarushi were off to Pikeville Medical Center, what was supposed to be a 35 minute drive had stretched into a 55 minute wait + drive.

At some point towards the end of this whole debacle, animal control arrived. For what reason I couldn’t tell you since the cops had earlier determined the owner had left with his dog in the car a while ago. Maybe they were hoping he would return to the scene of the crime. The sheriff also told us that this exact dog, named Max, had a record: he had bitten a cyclist before, but they hadn’t pressed charges. Max was notoriously aggressive. 

Right before the cops made their leave, Nunu and Drew remembered they had both taken pictures of the owner’s car, and went to show them. Drew managed to capture the license plate in his. The sheriff ran the plate and found the owner’s personal info. F**k you Scotty.

Caroline and Aarushi were now safely on their way to the hospital, the police were on the lookout for Scotty, and the rest of us were calming down, the eye of the storm had passed. 

We unanimously decided to SAG out as a team, since we knew Charles the goat would be able to shuttle us. I doubt anybody strongly wanted to continue anyway, but I felt partly responsible after creating the route and sending my friends off to their doom, while I was safely locked in a car. 

Charles would not arrive for another few hours, and so I recommended we go down to the only diner in the area to wait. A two mile, 5 minute drive can quickly turn into an hour long ordeal when shuttling 5 people and 7 bikes, something I first experienced that day. After my second trip, I came back to find Drew, Nunu, and Nate talking with a suspicious looking hiker who was apparently yapping to Drew about his own home town. I took Nunu to the diner, and then crammed Drew and Nate in the back seat next so neither one would be left alone.

During this whole process, cops kept returning to the address, a few hours after it had happened. My guess is that they were trying to see if Scotty had returned. We all appreciated that they seemed to be taking this seriously.

For the next few hours we recuperated at the diner until Charles arrived. I left to go pick up Caroline and Aarushi, who had surprisingly gotten done 30 minutes before and after going to a Starbucks in the hospital (this Starbucks was very special to Caroline), were now eating at a fried chicken place recommended by all of the hospital staff. When I asked about their experience at the hospital, Aarushi instantly spoke on how Caroline was simply so brave and remained incredibly calm throughout, even as she received six rabies shots in a circle around her wound. I can’t even begin to imagine how much pain she was in. For her part, Caroline said she now understood why people hold other’s hands when they get vaccinated. It hurts.

We went to go pick up her prescription at the pharmacy and then I drove to our bed and breakfast while they both took naps in the backseat. I was exhausted from listening to only the initial conversation with the first responders. Both of them had to deal with this the entire day.

Reunited with the rest of the team, we had another team meeting centered on the “Kentucky problem”. In short, those who want to bike should bike and those who want to drive should drive. The evening ended with most everybody calling friends and family to get advice on what decision is personally best for them. 

To me, the dog problem boils down to how much trust you have in yourself and the dogs of Kentucky. Are you able to defend yourself? Yell at and spray them? And trust that most are not aggressive? It’s mainly a mind game, a balance between stupidity and perseverance to our Spokes mission of biking, not driving across the country. The balance between the two shifts daily, as you’ll get to see in our next few blogs.

– Carmen