 Hi, and welcome to In The Studio. We record the In The Studio monthly here at the Davis Media Access Studios. The show airs on DCTV, Local Cable Channel 15. It's also online at dctv.davismeanie.org, as well as AT&T U-Verse, Channel 99. And with me today is a very special guest. This is Ken Mercurio. And thank you so much for coming in. I feel like this has been a long time planning. And I'm very glad you made it. Thank you. Ken recently completed a book, which you can see here by our side tables, which I will hold up. Or if you haven't on the other shot, well, you can go to that. This particular book is called Head Over Wheels. A Lucky Stiff turns strategy into a cycling triumph. You can see it there. Ken is with us today to talk a little bit about his story, about the story that he documents in this book, and some of his road to recovery, so to speak, I would say. And what you went through and all that. So Ken, first off, your background. A little bit in cycling. I'm a cyclist myself. I think in Davis, it's really appropriate that you've landed here in Sacramento, so to speak, because Davis is quite the bicycling town. Yes. You actually attended UC Davis a year ago. I did. I graduated in 73. And I must say that during my four years here, I was just a clunker cyclist. I had an old beat-up bike that I just used for getting to class. I never rode it outside of campus. That's half the people around Davis, I think, just ride clunkers. I've seen people who use their feet as brakes. It's flat. There's not much challenging terrain unless you get outside of town. So you were in Davis. And I'm a bicyclist myself. But living down in Simi Valley is where you first started getting into bicycling. It is. And I became a cyclist because I hired somebody at Carnation Company, where I was working down there. And he also had gone to UC Davis. And he was a big cyclist. And he told lots of stories about his bike ride across the country and his bike ride from Guatemala to Oregon. And it got me interested in cycling. And that's when I became a cyclist, 79. You started racking up the miles, commuting tune from work. That's true. Which was a pretty long commute. For back then, maybe even any time, I guess, that was a long commute. It was 22 miles each direction. And you do this in rain or shine? Well, not necessarily. Luckily, it doesn't rain too often in Southern California. But I probably didn't do it in rain. But still, 22 miles each way and usually four days a week. And this was with friends? Or this is sometimes by yourself? Sometimes by myself. Well, going to work, we would ride by ourselves. We would go in groups, home from work. Because back in those days, work ended when the alarm went off at 5 o'clock. And we would leave at the same time. And I rode with other cyclists. So then you started noticing that, hey, I'm not too bad at cycling. You enjoy it. You started riding longer rides. You started riding centuries, which are 100 mile rides. You started riding double centuries, which are 200 mile rides. Here in Davis. Here in Davis. And you found that you did OK on those as well. Right. I was a long distance runner. Here at Davis on the track team and cross country teams. So I have the endurance part and lungs. And yes, that trance posed over to bicycling. And I was a good long distance cyclist. Right. And then at some point, and I don't know exactly what year this was, you decided, OK, I've been doing these distance races and fun rides, I guess you'd say, for many years. You decided you were going to do the race across America. Well, that wasn't the race across America. It was a tour ride across America. But it was very fast. It was 32 days. 32 days. So we have a picture of that. So I would like the director to bring up. And I don't know if you can see. That's a picture of you. Oh, yes, the finish. That's at the finish. Yes. And that's on the particular, since we'll get into what happened to you, I would like viewers to note the bike that you're holding there, because that is particularly the bike that you had your accident in later. So note that, viewers. I want to show one more picture from that ride. This is called, this is the ride across America. It's not a race. No, no, it's just a tour company, for-profit tour company, called America by Bicycle. And it's their fast ride across America. So you can see in the font, it's pretty small. But also, I'll read it, that your final mileage was 3,540 miles over 31 days of riding. So that's a daily average of 114 miles per day for how many days again? 31 days. 31 days straight. Well, any reference? Not straight. It was 32 days, with one day off halfway. 15 days in Topeka, Kansas, we had a day off. And I rode 21 miles touring around just to see Topeka. But anyway, there was one day off. And besides that, you rode, some days you would ride more than they needed to go the distance, I guess. Well, yes, I sometimes took little off tours to go see sights, because I thought I may never get back here again. So I sort of had a reputation of the 25 of us as being the person who would take little personal side tours. So that alone is a pretty big accomplishment. Yes, that was from a lot. Riding across the country, people do it, but it takes them two months. They stop a long way. This was 31 days. And that's a pretty, all this just goes to show that you weren't experienced cyclist. That was the best shape of my life, was when I completed that ride across the country. And you started going on some club rides in Simi Valley. I joined a club after the ride across America. And on one of those club rides, particularly one that was difficult that you were working up to as a challenge, you had this accident. And so that's what brings us to your current condition and the current story and sort of life changing. My neck that moves this much. Your life changing accident. I want to talk a little bit about what happened. What I guess, without getting too much into the details, your bike broke. The fork. The fork broke. And so actually, why don't we show that a picture? It's not of your fork, because we didn't have one. But this is a fork. This is an example of a carbon fiber fork breaking. And it gives people an idea, because when they think of bikes these days, they might think of steel bikes. But this kind of shows that these are fibers and that it's basically a, I guess, plastic. But I don't know these. It's a carbon fiber. It sounds like plastic. When you tap on it, you think you're tapping plastic. Right. So your fork broke. And we'll talk a little bit about the technical side of that in a minute. But what happened to you is that you flipped over, because the fork went. Actually, there's one more shot I'll show. There's a, that's your wheel. Yes, that is the wheel. The fork that broke then flew into the wheel. And you can see in that shot that there's a lot of spokes that were just completely taken out, which is not an easy thing to do. The spokes are under a lot of tension. And they're in there pretty solid. Even though they look pretty spindly, they're actually pretty solid devices. That wheel is strong. That wheel is strong. It collapsed under half the spokes breaking when my broken fork went into the spinning spokes. At 28 miles an hour, I was going very fast. So I think that's the key, is that the 28 miles an hour is a, that's a pretty fast pace. I was going very fast. Not many people go that. You were still, like you said, you're in the good shape. You were on the club ride. Yes, I was on a pro training ride. It actually wasn't a club ride. I went on club rides all the time. But they stop and wait for you. And you can go any speed you want. This was the first time I had ever done this famous pro training ride that was called the CME Ride. And I lived in CME Valley. But I could never qualify, so to speak, to stay up with the pros until I was in the good shape that I was in because I rode across the country. And this was the first time I ever tried this ride, when people in the club said, you're good enough to do this CME Ride with the pros. Just go ahead and give it a try one day. So the one day I try it, my bike breaks. So your bike broke. You flipped over the bicycle. You landed on the top of my head. Sort of just like a pile driver. Yes. And you're straight down. You were knocked unconscious. That's right. And I have no memory of the fall or lying there on the road. Even though I was speaking to people who stopped to help me and conversing with them, I have no memory of it. So you were conscious, but their memory was not registering. That's right. My first memories came hours later. And when did you discover the extent of your injuries? And I guess, when did you discover them? And what were the extent of your injuries? I guess I first have snippets of memory with the neurosurgeon talking to me in the emergency room that same afternoon. It happened at about 9 o'clock in the morning. And I'd say it at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon is when my memories are first there. A little snippets, though, of them saying, you have a serious broken neck, and you can either wear a halo, which they screw into your head, or you can have surgery. So the halo is the device that's got metal on it, and you have to wear the rest of your life if you don't. Well, no, you wear it to keep your head completely stable so that your broken vertebrae can heal. And in that case, if I had worn a halo and it had been successful, I wouldn't have this restriction that I now have. Because what they did instead was the surgery to implant rods with screws, screwed into my remaining vertebrae, to permanently fuse my neck. And they decided they had to do that because it was so pulverized, so sensitive, that they were afraid to even do anything with the halo. So this sounds like, is it a common injury? Is this an uncommon injury? Is it this type of injury? Aren't people normally, their spinal cord damage, I see. Oh, yes, yes, yes, the doctor, this is part of the miracle of the book of me even being here, is the doctor could not believe that I wasn't paralyzed or dead immediately because of the severity of the broken bones surrounding the spinal cord. And he couldn't understand how, if it's pulverized, completely surrounding the spinal cord, how could the spinal cord not have been nicked or in some way injured, which means paralysis or death? As long as that spinal cord is at all injured, it's death or paralysis. So somehow the bones surrounding the spinal cord, because I don't understand exactly the body parts of it, but the bones surrounding the spinal cord and the entire bones, the vertebrae, were broken. Yes, and what the doctor called pulverized when he did the surgery, he could actually see it, yes? But the spinal cord, no. No, no injuries to the spinal cord. So the doctor has told me, every time he would see me, it's a miracle that you are here with us and not with any paralysis. Right, and so you elected for surgery. I assume you went right into surgery. I would have elected for surgery anyway, but he told me later the surgery was the only option because it was just so sensitive, so pulverized. OK. So now back really quick. We could digress really quick into the accident itself. I was interested being a bicyclist myself about the carbon fiber breakage, and I'm read quite a bit about carbon fiber over the years, and I've been riding bikes, relatively newcomer, I guess, relative to you since 89 or so. As a kid, I rode bikes, but then riding bikes with a mountain bike and on the road and whatnot since about 89. And I mostly had steel bikes, and when carbon fiber came out, there was a fear, well, could this break or have catastrophic failure. And I'm wondering if you knew about that or if you feel that the manufacturing was, I guess, that gets a little bit into part of the story of the book. But if you could speak to carbon fiber in general and what you've found out. OK, I'll have to say I didn't know about the potential for catastrophic breakage when I bought the Skatante bike that had the carbon fork. And I even had a carbon fork on a bike before that. But all this time, no, all I heard was a carbon. And the manufacturer don't say there is potential for catastrophic. No, no, no. In fact, they say carbon fiber is stronger than steel or the strongest thing you could imagine. But that requires good manufacturing process to have it be stronger than steel. And unfortunately, this particular fork was an off brand. It wasn't one of the major brands that you see out there like Trek or Cannondale or Specialized. No, it was an off brand. And it turned out they didn't have a very good manufacturing process because we discovered later that when they lay down the carbon fiber sheets, they didn't lay them down tightly enough. And they were little air pockets. And over time, because I put 13,000 miles on that bike before the accident, the air pockets can grow and expand into bigger voids. And that weakens the fork. So they also wouldn't say that though here's the lifespan of this thing that you're buying. And don't ride across America with it. No, they sure don't say those things. They sell the bike. But in fact, you might have been a higher user than an average person. But it certainly shouldn't have been at the end of its lifespan. No, no, it certainly wasn't supposed to have been. It was a manufacturing defect. And most bikes today still have carbon fiber. I mean, if fork breakage on a bicycle was a fairly common occurrence, you wouldn't see people riding carbon fiber forks. My incident was very unusual. Just doesn't happen. Or if it did happen, people just wouldn't be riding them. But on the other hand, and just to throw this back a little bit, there are, it does happen. Yes, it does happen. Being a bicycle nerd, I'm aware of there's a website called Busted Carbon or something like that. There are cases. There are cases where people will post that. And I don't know if they're off brands or if they're, sometimes it's that you have to tighten metal sometimes around the carbon if it's a seat post. Right, right, right. You can over tighten. Yeah, so it does happen. It also happens with metal. You mentioned in your book that one of your riding partners had it happen on a metal bike. Yeah, Dave Pressler, who went to UC Davis and was a bike racer himself at a B&L bike shop right here in Davis, had it happen right next to me. He was speeding down a hill out there in Saugus. And he started feeling wobbly. And when he got to the bottom of the hill, he got off and just pulled it apart. And there was his fork in his hand. And he's just lucky he didn't fall. Luckily, steel is a little more forgiving about how quickly it breaks apart. It's not spontaneous. It's not, right, right. He started wearing a helmet from that day on. Yeah, I think the trend towards wearing helmets is good, especially when you're going fast. I think sometimes in our lawsuit-driven world, I don't know if I want to say that. But helmets can be sometimes relied upon too much. If a bicyclist is hit by a car, and the car driver says, well, they weren't wearing a helmet. That's why they're saying, well, actually, they were hit by a two-ton truck. And so that's probably why they're hurt not because they weren't wearing a helmet. On the other hand, going at speeds of 28 miles an hour, you should definitely be wearing a helmet. Oh, absolutely. I would never. I've never gone out without a helmet ever. Right. And we don't want to scare viewers away from biking. This is a pretty amazing experience that you went through. It turns out that they were defects, or manufacturing defects, as you mentioned. It's not uncommon. Manufacturing defects certainly happen on cars and any kind of vehicles they travel on. So I think knowing the risks, obviously, still bicycle. Yes. And I still have a carbon fiber fork, too. Right. It's just that it's a name brand, and I'm more confident in the quality control that these manufacturers use. Right. So I want to talk a little bit about the aftermath of what happened. And the process you went through, sort of mentally, you suddenly became a very independent person, a very dependent person. And I wonder what that was like. You had to depend on everyone for your care. Yes. Well, that's the importance of family, friends, and love. And you had to depend on all of them. I'm kidding. Emotion. Yes, I sure did. And another fortunate thing for myself is my family tends to be the optimistic kind of people. And I kind of get that from my parents. And luckily, I didn't go through too long a period of feeling sorry for myself. I kind of moved very quickly to setting goals for recovery. Well, it sounded like, to me, that your gold recovery was pretty much the day that it happened. And we should mention that this accident happened. You're in the hospital, and you'd already paid for this Blue Mountains Parkway tour. The Blue Ridge Parkway. Blue Ridge Parkway, sorry. And some of your first thoughts, when you were able to have thoughts again, was I got to get back to the Blue Ridge Parkway. And is this possible? Yes, that's true. It took me about a week to decide that maybe this is possible. One of the first things I asked on the day of the accident to the neurosurgeon is, am I ever going to be able to ride a bike again? And I don't remember asking that, but people told me that I said that. And that kind of cracks me up. It's part of the cells of your inner being. Exactly. So I wanted to know if I could ride again, and I just wanted to know how serious is this break that I have. But once I realized that it's possible to ride a bike again, that's when I became aggressive about my recovery goal of continuing with this ride that I had previously registered for that would be 9 and 1 half months from the date of this accident. So 9 and 1 half months, you have had surgery. You're lucky to be alive because your spinal cord was not either severed or nicked, or I don't know the terms. And you're already thinking. The doctors have said, OK, you can't move your head. You can barely move your body. You're dependent upon everyone else. It sounds like this group of visiting angels, which is through your churned company. We're helping care for you. And you're sort of already thinking, I want to become independent again. Yes, absolutely. I wanted to recover as quickly as possible. I wanted my story to be like those inspirational sports stories I had read as a child of the comebacks people had made when they were against the odds. Right. And I thought it was interesting in your book that you mentioned it was about having the final goal was not necessarily just so that you can go enjoy yourself on a bike ride. It was so that you can build the independence for yourself and not necessarily have to put everyone out or whatever for you. Exactly. I wanted to have my life return as much as possible to being what it was before the accident. So what was the process that you went through to get up to that, to actually get back to normal, I guess? Well, after a couple of days of finally, I would say during the week that I was in intensive care in the hospital, I did have a couple of days or three where I was feeling sorry for myself. Why me? What's going to become of my life now? I'm glad to say that that did last only two or three days. I became more positive as I started to feel better. It's kind of like as soon as you physically feel better, you kind of have a better chance for your mental outlook as well. And I just wanted to set a tough goal for myself and hope that I, at that point, I didn't know that I could ride a bike. I was told I might be able to ride a bike, but I just thought I want to do whatever it takes to get myself back to having as normal a life as possible. And if part of that can be riding a bike again, I'm going to go for it. And did you set your own milestones to get to that goal, or were they sort of given to you, or how did you actually? It turns out I achieved the physical therapy milestone faster than I was told I was going to be on physical therapy. But most of them were set for me by the neurosurgeon. But not knowing that you actually wanted to do this Blue Ridge Parkway. Well, yeah. He knew I wanted to ride a bike again, but he had no idea that I was actually pointing toward doing something as difficult as the Blue Ridge Parkway, which was 500 miles in five days. And how difficult was that ride? It was very difficult. I guess we're giving away the story to say that, yes, you actually did complete it. Yes, it was my goal to be able to ride a bike again. And once I was able to ride a bike again on the street, I had to train like heck for two months to get ready to do one of these most difficult bike rides you can do. And when you did start riding your bike, or you still can't turn your head. No, no, no. This is as much as I can turn my head. I had to rely on a mirror for the first time. And I'll have to tell every cyclist out there, everybody should use a mirror all the time. I'm pointing to this side. It was actually on my left. But I've realized how important having a rear view mirror is to know what's coming behind you. But that's how I see behind me. And I have to stand up on the pedals and turn my whole body left or right to be able to see left or right. Cause I really, I can't see, I can't turn my head much. And what about tilting your head up so that you can see ahead of you? Oh, well, I'm very upright. That's one of the big differences between what I could do before the accident. I could be a typical cyclist and you get in those arrow bars and you can get down real low, but I can't do that anymore. I have to be very upright with my hands on the top of the handlebars. And my handlebars are raised up on a stem that's three inches. It raises my handlebars three inches. So I'm very upright to see straight ahead. Right, and so you lose a little bit of aerodynamic. Yes, I'm not aerodynamic at all. The headwinds are a killer. In this particular ride, you said it's 500 miles over five. Over five days of 45,000 feet of climbing. So it's very hilly, very mountainous. And did you, I talk a little bit about regaining confidence in order to, you know, achieve those types of miles. Not just the physical part of it, but the confidence to be back on a bike. Did you go back to where the accident happened? Oh yes, because it was right in my hometown. It's just lucky that one of the lucky things about this unlucky event was that if the fork was going to break, it didn't happen somewhere on my bike ride across the country. It happened right in my hometown. But yes, on about my third or fourth bike ride, once I could ride again, I went down the main drag of Seamy Valley, the main street where it happened, and I went right past where it happened. But by then I'd been back there physically, not on a bike, but I'd been back there to see it. And I'd gotten past that emotion. And as far as building the confidence to ride in traffic, to ride on a road where there's other cars, I mean, did that take a while? Yes, that took longer. I would say that took a few days of just riding in non-traffic areas to get the confidence of relying on a mirror and relying on what my limited mobility neck could do and just getting the feel of riding a bike again where I'm very upright and I can't suddenly turn around to see something. So yes, that took a lot of miles of riding in hours of just riding back and forth in a non-populated area to get used to riding again. I think that getting the confidence does take a lot of miles. And I think having the education helps, but also just getting those miles of confidence on the road. I briefly wanted to mention riding the book itself. This was, you were not an author by trade. No. This is, but yet, did you have an editor or how did you sell for it? It started out while I was recovering and I just had a lot of time on my hands because I was wearing a neck brace and a chest brace for three months straight. And then after that, I still wasn't allowed to ride a bike or anything I just was doing physical therapy and just working my neck as much as I could prior to physical therapy, I was not allowed to move my neck at all. Once the brace came off, I could start to move my neck. But during that time of just hanging out, I started to write a story just because so many people asked me what had happened. I decided I've told so many people the answer of what I was told happened. I have no memory of it, but I was told later by other people in the group what had happened. And so I decided to write it down just as a permanent story for myself and for family and somebody who might wanna know what happened. But the more I wrote, the more I became interested in documenting how I even got good enough to ride in this pro training ride, which took me back to the beginnings of my cycling career. And then I was writing about the physical therapy and the recovery and the thoughts going through my mind about family and friend and support and my goals. And pretty soon it just kept going until I decided if I complete this goal I've had, this recovery goal of completing the Blue Ridge Parkway ride, that could be the end of this story. Well then once I was done, what did it look like a book? Well it looks like a book, it reads like a book and I congratulate you just on the accomplishment of overcoming this accident, but also in writing the book. And I think that- Well thank you. It took years though for a publisher to accept that as a manuscript. Well, you must feel good now to see that it's actually in print. Oh what a feeling that even hearing that it was accepted for publication was the biggest thrill I've had. Well I want to, we don't have too much time left so I just wanted to thank you so much for coming in. I want to let everyone know if they're interested, I think this book does resonate with cyclists. I think your story from beginning to end resonates with cyclists as far as how you got involved and what happened. Hopefully people can learn some lessons I guess but also just be inspired. I hope so. I hope they realize that they can overcome hardships and handicaps of their own by setting goals, working hard and you can achieve these things. Yeah, step by step. Right on. If people want more information they can go to sunburypress.com is the website where this book, the publisher of this book. You can also, in the latest issue of Bicycling Magazine, this is the issue of Bicycling Magazine which our bicyclists all know about. It's probably the top publication, Bicycling. And there is an ad in the back where you can also find out about Ken's book. So Ken Mercurio, thanks. And I should also mention, this show will be airing after you peer at the Avid Reader but you did appear at the Avid Reader tonight. I hope you have a good time at that tonight. Anyway, Ken. And the Hall of Fame Bicycling Museum on Sunday. Yes, oh, excellent. Yeah, the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame also in Davis. Yes, it's at one o'clock on Sunday also. Oh, well this is, I think people in Davis are definitely, it's a treat to have you here and I'm glad we'll get. Well, thank you very much. Glad we'll get multiple opportunities to talk with you. So thank you again, Ken, for coming in. You've been tuned to DCTV, channel 15 on the Comcast Cable System. This is in the studio. My name is Jeff. Tune in next week for yet another episode of In the Studio. Thanks very much.