COMING THURSDAY: Read excerpts of Jim Bardoner’s blog from Montana as he prepares for the Race to the Sky, and follow his blog online at timesfreepress.com
Jim Bardoner stared fear in the face, looking directly in its cold, steely eyes with the ultimate stakes.
Bardoner, an Erlanger doctor who lives on Signal Mountain, was standing on the runners of a dog sled last year, surrounded by Montana snow, and the pain in his severely dislocated shoulder may have been the one thing that kept his mind from approaching panic.
The shoulder — injured by several falls from the sled — already had been shoved back into its socket several times in preceding days by Doug Swingley, a dog-sledding veteran who has been a sponsor and a mentor for Bardoner.
Now Bardoner was alone and the shoulder was shredded. It would require extensive surgery, he suspected, but in zero-degree temperatures with little to no light left and his exact direction unsure, the throbbing pain was secondary.