Roots: Nature's Railroad Tracks (or: Today I Hit a Doctor)

Being a chef, father, and husband, my schedule is pretty chaotic. The only fairly consistent times I have to ride are Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday mornings. My weekend riding was going well. A good ride at MEQ on Saturday. A decent road ride before picking up my daughter Sydney on Sunday. Monday, Lori and I were planning on taking the kids to school and heading to the river for a day of kayaking. When I got home from dropping off the kids, Lor was still spent from working the night before. I figured I'd knock out a quick ride, and we could paddle after lunch.
The 'E' (Evergreen Park) portion of MEQ is just that: thick evergreen Forest. So thick, in fact, that I've rode in there while it was raining without getting wet. Evergreen trees in this part of the state are shallow rooted and thrive is sandy soil. Which is why, every spring we have a new trail to ride due to washout and blown down trees. The roots are terrible due in part to the popularity of this high-traffic trail system. Any kid who learned how to ride a bike in the city has probably at one time or another wiped out because they hit train tracks at the wrong angle. At Evergreen Park it would seem EVERY root is at the wrong angle! They bring you to a stop while you're grinding up the last few feet of a hill. They'll kick your back tire out from under you while trying to make a sharp corner. They can launch you air-borne as you shoot down a hill. And sometimes they just throw you off your bike. Twice in my time riding in Evergreen I've had bad crashes and have had no idea what caused them. Yesterday was one of those times. I was headed towards the Maywood corridor down a bone jarring section of roots. I've never fallen here. It's bumpy, but that's what mountain bikes are built for. In an instant I was on my back, my bike was on top of me and I couldn't breathe. I had clearly landed on my handlebars on the way over. I pushed my bike off and rolled on to all fours. My lungs were deflating with a horrible grown and I couldn't reverse them. I thought about dialing 911, but I couldn't speak. It seemed like forever before I got a little gasp into my lungs. Followed again by more raspy exhaling. Little by little, the process reversed itself until i could again fill my lungs with air. It was the most scared I've ever been. When I got my wits about me, I looked around for what had done this to me. I couldn't find any one root that seemed more dangerous than the others. Riding on adrenalin and endomorphs, I continued riding a shorter, easier route back out of the woods and home. It wasn't until I bent down for my water bottle, that I concluded something was really wrong.
When I got home, Lori was up and I told her I was taking myself to walk-in. She drove me to the clinic and thankfully there was no line. Not like in winter when everyone with the sniffles is there. The nurse insisted in giving me a sponge bath for all the other bumps and scapes I had incurred which actually kind of creeped me out. But she did say the nicest thing that i could hear in my current situation, "You must have a really high tolerance for pain. You blood pressure is only 120/80." When the doctor came in, he listened to my lungs and probed my gut looking for internal owies. When he got to the bottom of my rib cage, I yelped and swatted his hand away. "I guess we found where you hit, eh?" He laughed and sent me to radiology. Twelve x-rays (three of with were taken twice), later, the staff deducted that I had not broken a rib, but had in fact incurred quite a bit of trauma to the cartilage that attaches the rids to the sternum. With that diagnosis they sent me home with a girdle and some vicodin.
The real pain of this ordeal lies in the fact I didn't get to go kayaking with Lori, and I was planning on treating myself with a trip to the kettles to ride my favorite trail after I took the kids to school Tuesday morning! The doctor says a month before I start feeling better. I wonder how long it will take to feel 'good enough'?