Silicon Valley pioneer Brett Bullington hospitalized after Oklahoma bike accident

JOPLIN, Mo. - Silicon Valley adviser and board member Brett Bullington is in the intensive care unit of a Missouri hospital after hsuffering severe head injuries in a bicycle accident last week in northeastern Oklahoma.

According to a Tumblr page maintained by his family, he was admitted Oct. 8 to Freeman Hospital in Joplin, Mo., airlifted there from Welch, where an ambulance had transported him from the scene of the accident.

The blog said the 59-year-old, who along with several others, was cycling across the nation to raise funds for the non-profit Carolina for Kibera , an organization working to affect positive change in Kenya, went down about 61 miles east of Bartlesville on Oklahoma Highway 10, near Miami.

The family said he was on his way to Welch, when he accelerated on a downhill section to about 28 miles per hour and fell. A fellow cyclist said when Bullington lost control of his bike, he went down face-first.

The cyclist Don Sheppard in his blog said it was day 25 -- the Bartlesville, Okla. to Neosho, Mo. stretch – of the ride from Santa Barbara, Calif. to Charleston, S.C.

He described Bullington as “one of our strongest riders.”

Before the accident, Bullington wrote on his Facebook page, Brett's Ride Across the USA , that he was doing the ride as it was “about a point in my life where I have the time, I really do like riding, the cadence and the time outdoors. It is also something about my youth, my main source of transportation until I was 19 was a bike.”

Shortly after he was admitted to the hospital, doctors removed a portion of Bullington's skull to relieve pressure on his brain. His condition has since stabilized.

“Brain bleeding is generally stopped, brain swelling is subsiding, no seizures for a few days now,” says a blog post written Tuesday morning.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Bullington served as the executive vice president for Excite.com, a board member for Flickr, Cameraworld, MusicMatch, Jotspot and TurnHere, Inc., among other companies and as advisor to to Gowalla and Wink, among other companies.

Currently he is an advisor to Outfit7 Ltd. and a board member to Carolina for Kibera.