As every cyclist knows, every ride is an adventure. However some stand out among others. Yesterday was one of those days.
2PM. Leave my house for a 3 hour training ride under beautiful skies. I plan for an easy effort as my training hours have been greatly hampered this spring by family obligations and a lot of traveling. Coming up a hill on Mt. Olive Church road, I see a middle aged man walking toward me with his Golden Retriever. He puts his thumb out like a hitchhiker, “Can I get a ride?” I laugh with him and say, “I got plenty of room on my handlebar. Hop on!” Nice, it’s gonna be a good day on the bike. Sigh.
1 Km later, I hear a big vehicle pull up behind me. “Get your ass out of the way!” I hear someone scream. I round a bend as the vehicle, a school bus, comes around me. There is a scrawny junior high school kid hanging half his torso out the window yelling obscenities at me. This kid doesn’t even have a license yet and, presumably, doesn’t know the traffic laws, yet he’s pissed that I’m on the road. Must’ve learned it from his parents. Lovely.
Continuing on, after about an hour of riding I come to a stop light. I can’t help but notice the sky has darkened rather quickly in the direction I’m headed. I contemplate turning around and heading home but decide against it. The storm looks to be coming from the west so if I can get to the top of Spencer Mountain before the rain starts, it’ll just be a foot race between me and the clouds to get home. So, at this point, I’m looking at a 2 hour time trial, essentially. Great, let’s get started.
The light turns green and I turn the pedals once before my left calf cramps up. I bring the bike to a stop and massage the Charlie Horse. That’s weird, I think to myself. I don’t normally get muscle cramps. In fact I can count on one hand exactly how many I’ve had in my 28 year athletic involvement. I continue on, regardless. The sky grows increasingly darker and the winds have started to gust like crazy.
Heading up through Mount Holly I start to see lightening and hear thunder in the distance. “What the FUCK?” I hear myself screaming as my hand involuntarily reaches for my chest. Something had flown in my jersey and stung me on my sternum. As I fidget around trying to get whatever is in my jersey out, I hear an old lady yell at me as she passes me on a hill. “Get the hell off the road!” What is with people today? 500m down the road, it happens again. “What the FUCK?” This time my hand was reaching for my neck. Apparently, I’m not just pissing off humans today.
OK, now I’m about 5 miles from the bottom of Spencer Mountain and although there is thunder and lightening, there is no rain…yet. Flying along at 25 miles an hour, several huge raindrops hit the ground around me. Here we go, I think. But it stopped. Then several more. Oh, crap. But then it stopped. I just…might…get…lucky. Then it poured. But only for about 15 seconds. I picked up the pace trying to outrun what was coming up behind me. I came around a corner only to find a long line of traffic stuck behind a school bus. I rode into the grass – brakes don’t work as well once they’re wet. I stayed in the grass until I passed most of the traffic and then continued.
As I made the left turn onto Spencer Mountain, the sun came out and the temp rose quickly. I had a hard time with the hill, having been pushing myself for the past hour trying to outrun the rain, which I had assumingly accomplished. As I made another left turn at the top of the Mountain to head back home, I looked over my left shoulder and saw the black clouds of a thunderstorm off in the distance that I had very narrowly escaped. Looks like Mountain Island Lake is getting pounded. I was now paralleling the storm. The threat of imminent death was greatly reduced. Now I could relax.
Well, relax as best as I could. The winds had been battering me for over an hour now and they hadn’t stopped. It’s Murphy’s Law for cyclists – I call it Merckx’s Law. The wind will always come from the front and very rarely from the back. You have to push much harder and you go slower than ever. And when you’re tired – expect the winds to pick up even more. It’s a little joke Mother Nature likes to play on her children. Every direction was a headwind. I’d lean into a gust with my left shoulder and then it instantly turned and comes from my right. It’s a good lesson in bike handling, but my legs are killing me and the wind just means I have to pedal harder to get nowhere faster.
20 minutes from home and the sky starts to darken again. This time Lake Wylie is about to get hit, which means I’m back in the path of the storm. I push as hard as I can to get home. I make it home with about 3 minutes to spare before the down pour – calf still cramping, eyes bloodshot from the road grit blown into them and 2 swollen sting marks on body. Echos of angry drivers circle my mind and the hitchhiker that made me smile. A quick look at weather radar reveals thunderstorm warnings in effect for the areas in which I had been riding. Close call.
One huge deep breath and it’s into a bubble bath with a glass of wine for me. Finally time to relax…for real.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Monday, May 5, 2008
Close Calls and One Pissed Off Cyclist
A member of my team was hit by a car recently. The driver of a truck turned left in front of her and she t-boned it. Her collar bone is broken and she has a lot painful bruising. She’ll be off the bike for 5 weeks.
This same scenario plays out often. I remember one instance a couple years ago in Charlotte. The difference: the cyclist was going down a hill and the vehicle turning left was a city bus. The cyclist died on impact, and the media (including the TV Station I work for) instantly assumed it was the cyclists fault.
And it never seems like charges are filed and if they are, then it’s little more than a slap on the wrist. You just killed someone! And no one is going to hold you accountable. That is appalling to me. I will mention, however that all Charlotte city buses now have a 6 inch by 6 inch sticker on the back that says, “Share the Road.” Gee, thanks. A 6 inch sticker on a mass transit bus really stands out. I feel much safer now.
This kind of shit happens way too often to cyclists. I have close calls all the time and I imagine it’s just a matter of “when” it happens and not “if.”
Take yesterday for instance. I was coming down a hill into the town of McAddenville. My light was green and I was turning right when an old lady decided to run her red light and very nearly take me out. I was able to cut my turn sharper than I had intended without laying the bike down. I ended up very close to her passenger side screaming, “WHAT THE FUCK?” The driver turned her head toward me like she was surprised to see me then quickly turned her head away and drove off with out so much as any gesture of remorse for almost killing me.
It was a good thing I had been slowing down for the turn. Had I been going straight through the intersection, it would have been a very bad day for me. It disgusts me that some humans are so desensitized that the thought of killing someone don’t seem to bother them. Like the bus driver. He’s still driving a bus. How does he not have flashbacks to robbing another person of his life because of a mistake all his own? How does he live with himself?
Why is it ok to run a cyclist off the road? Because maybe you’ll just hurt ‘em enough to prove your point? And that point being what? And why is that a rational decision to so many?
I will never be sympathetic to people who can rationalize the hurting or killing of cyclists.
This same scenario plays out often. I remember one instance a couple years ago in Charlotte. The difference: the cyclist was going down a hill and the vehicle turning left was a city bus. The cyclist died on impact, and the media (including the TV Station I work for) instantly assumed it was the cyclists fault.
And it never seems like charges are filed and if they are, then it’s little more than a slap on the wrist. You just killed someone! And no one is going to hold you accountable. That is appalling to me. I will mention, however that all Charlotte city buses now have a 6 inch by 6 inch sticker on the back that says, “Share the Road.” Gee, thanks. A 6 inch sticker on a mass transit bus really stands out. I feel much safer now.
This kind of shit happens way too often to cyclists. I have close calls all the time and I imagine it’s just a matter of “when” it happens and not “if.”
Take yesterday for instance. I was coming down a hill into the town of McAddenville. My light was green and I was turning right when an old lady decided to run her red light and very nearly take me out. I was able to cut my turn sharper than I had intended without laying the bike down. I ended up very close to her passenger side screaming, “WHAT THE FUCK?” The driver turned her head toward me like she was surprised to see me then quickly turned her head away and drove off with out so much as any gesture of remorse for almost killing me.
It was a good thing I had been slowing down for the turn. Had I been going straight through the intersection, it would have been a very bad day for me. It disgusts me that some humans are so desensitized that the thought of killing someone don’t seem to bother them. Like the bus driver. He’s still driving a bus. How does he not have flashbacks to robbing another person of his life because of a mistake all his own? How does he live with himself?
Why is it ok to run a cyclist off the road? Because maybe you’ll just hurt ‘em enough to prove your point? And that point being what? And why is that a rational decision to so many?
I will never be sympathetic to people who can rationalize the hurting or killing of cyclists.
Friday, May 2, 2008
The Magic Number
A contractor came to my house the other day to deliver my new cast iron Kohler sink (beautiful sink, by the way). As he stood at my doorway and peered past me into my “family room” (I use that term loosely), he caught a glimpse of my bike sitting on my trainer. My bike is the only thing in the room aside from a cat tree and a couple of plants.
“You ride bikes?”
The smart ass in me wanted to say, “No, why do you ask?” But, since this guy didn’t know me and might be offended by my witty sarcasm, I answered with, “Yeah, I love it.”
“Yeah, I have a friend that rides…he actually races.”
“Yeah? Me, too.”
“He has the whole get up – the clothes, the shoes, everything.”
“Really? Me, too.”
“Yeah, he has one of those like $5000 bikes. It’s REALLY nice. It’s REALLY light. I could pick it up with one finger.”
Again, the sarcastic ass in me wants to go to town on this guy. I love that he wants to try and have a conversation about biking. I really do. But, why is it that as soon as someone finds out I ride bikes, all of a sudden they all have friends with “one of those $5000 bikes.” Not $3000 or $6000. $5000 seems to be the magic price at which I should be impressed.
What’s funnier to me is that the contractor was saying this as he was staring at my bike, which he obviously had no clue fell right into that magic $5000 category. Nice bikes are not a rarity and five grand is not a surprising amount for a bike. I’m more impressed by what people do ON the bike rather than how much debt they went into to purchase it.
“You ride bikes?”
The smart ass in me wanted to say, “No, why do you ask?” But, since this guy didn’t know me and might be offended by my witty sarcasm, I answered with, “Yeah, I love it.”
“Yeah, I have a friend that rides…he actually races.”
“Yeah? Me, too.”
“He has the whole get up – the clothes, the shoes, everything.”
“Really? Me, too.”
“Yeah, he has one of those like $5000 bikes. It’s REALLY nice. It’s REALLY light. I could pick it up with one finger.”
Again, the sarcastic ass in me wants to go to town on this guy. I love that he wants to try and have a conversation about biking. I really do. But, why is it that as soon as someone finds out I ride bikes, all of a sudden they all have friends with “one of those $5000 bikes.” Not $3000 or $6000. $5000 seems to be the magic price at which I should be impressed.
What’s funnier to me is that the contractor was saying this as he was staring at my bike, which he obviously had no clue fell right into that magic $5000 category. Nice bikes are not a rarity and five grand is not a surprising amount for a bike. I’m more impressed by what people do ON the bike rather than how much debt they went into to purchase it.
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