Tha 5-0

Today I decided to live a little dangerously. Been wanting a new bike for a while so I stole one I saw sitting out on the road (turns out it was Dave's! Sorry Dave!!!) Got into a gnarly chase with the local Po Po's and finally they had to side check me to get me down. It was like that classic get away video of the guy on the free way getting away from the cops on a bicycle... Cept, that's just not quite how it happened...

Rode home from Aimee's today after taking her to a couple of doctor's appointments and what not. Taking it easy after a long day in the saddle at the Frederick Water Shed yesterday, cruising mostly on the flats and just generally spinning my way home in the nice and somewhat warm weather.

Get to a blind corner with a green light (only maybe 300 yards from where I get on trails for nearly the remainder of my ride), spin it easy around the corner and "whoop whoop" a cop is in my lane coming at me with the lights flashing. Sh*t! I'm on the flats so I can't just grab a handful of brakes, maneuver as much as I can but there space is limited.

End up slamming the left side of my body into the rear drivers side door, bounce off a little and go down on the right. Cop gets out, makes sure I'm ok, I do the quick systems check and all systems appear a go, I mention I'm more worried about the bike so she gives me a business card and takes off to whatever emergency she was headed for.

Bike's alright but the new bar tape (2 short rides on it) is trashed and the front wheel is knocked a bit out of true. Loosen the brake and ride home. A guy in one of the 10 or so cars lined up at the light that the cop was heading around yells out I should get off the bike and sue that *^&^*(; I shrugged and kept going.

Back home it looks like I might have a bruise on the thigh (though doubtful), a couple of additional scrapes and not much else aside from a bit of soreness tomorrow. The bike on the other hand needs the wheels trued, new bar tape, new HANDLEBARS (the right drop is now bent in somewhat severely) and well, probably another general tune up similar to what I spent 3 or 4 hours doing on Saturday. I hate riding a freshly cleaned and perfectly tuned bike!

Whatever happened to karma anyway?

The Saturday Ass Over Elbows Edition

Ouch... Yesterday Brian and I finally made it up to the Avalon area of Patapsco for some riding. We'd planned to head out to the Leesburg Bakers Dozen course but with rain on the way and a 1+ hour drive to get there I suggested we forget about that idea. Turns out we probably made the right choice. We finished up our ride just as the rain started to fall as it was.

The Avalon trails have been basically out of commission for a while from the precip and freeze thaw cycles so we'd been waiting to get up there. It was Brian's first time ever riding there and my first time in at least a year or maybe 2 aside from a short night ride before last year's Baker's Dozen. Riding smooth, relatively flat and easy trails like Rosey and Fairland lately it was really good to get out to the more technical and hilly Avalon system.

My face scrapped something on impact and something sliced through my ear a bit as well.

We parked in the Park'n Ride on 195 and dropped in to the park. The decent was super fast and I was feeling great on the bike. Just before we got to the small lot and tot lot area before the first climb of the day I noticed a large and jumpable looking rock along the side of the trail. I went back and told Brian I was going to try and jump it. Bad idea.

The helmet obviously took a solid hit for me.

I jumped it though as I was doing so knew I shouldn't be. The rock had a steeper face then I realized so I went up hard and the front wheel came down fast. It planted with the rest of the bike still in the vertical position I went over the handle bars cracked my head off a log or something and landed flat on my back on top of said log. By far my hardest crash in a long time, maybe even ever, and I have the broken helmet to prove it. Damn.

A couple of spots showing the helmet did it's job.

Since it was within the first 10 minutes of the ride that this happened, once I shook the cobwebs out of my head and determined I wasn't badly injured I decided to go on. Brian obliged and we ended up getting a great 2+ hour ride in on surprisingly rut free and hard packed, and dry trails. Despite the crash I wasn't overly cautious which surprised me, at least until our final descent down a particularly tight, twisty and rocky/rooty trail.

Once I got all the dried blood cleaned up and the cut to stop bleeding it really doesn't look all that bad. You can sort of see the start of the cut there on the front of the ear.

Today, well I'll just say I feel it. The back, neck and shoulders are pretty sore, though still not quite as bad as I expected. The 800 mg Ibuprofen and Vicadin knock off medicine I've got left over from my wisdom teeth extraction likely have something to do with that though. The way I work I'll probably be worse off tomorrow; my soreness is always on a two day delay. In the mean time I need to look into getting a new helmet soon; a fellow rider out there yesterday reminded me about the Rockburn race coming up this weekend which I'm signed up for.

Unfortunately I didn't actually take any good shots during the ride so the focus of this posts images is of course my wreck. I guess the post itself is a little crash centric as well. Ah well, it's just been a while since I got to talk about how badly I tried to hurt myself I guess.

A question on crash liability.

I really wanted to comment on one of the Post articles on this accident, but by the time I got there hotter heads had already taken over with comments like "One less obstacle on the road". Once that crap happens any discussion becomes entirely useless. So instead I bring it home to a much less visible location.

First off, I can only imagine what Allison experienced in those last few seconds and what her friends and family are left with. I'm so sorry for their loss; no matter what anyone may say, it is a senseless and heartbreaking loss, accidental or not.


In an attempt at an unbiased look into this situation, I'd like to pose the following question.

My assumption (I know the investigation is underway and nothing has been said about how this happened, this is simply my slightly uneducated, educated guess) is that Allison was riding along in the cross walk, either she or the trash truck came up on the other and she ended up riding beside it in the blind spot. No blame laid here, just as with a car in a trucks blind spot does not entail blame. The truck pulls a right turn while Allison is right next to it leaving her no time to react. We all know where it goes from there.

Assume the case is the same truck on the highway, with a car riding in the lane next to it in the blind spot. The truck moves over to the right lane, hitting the car in the process. The truck had signaled but the driver of the car could not see this since it was in front of the rear lights but still in the blind spot. Where does the blame lie? With the trucker who moved over into the car correct? Criminal blame? Not so much but legally speaking the trucker was responsible for the accident.

Now consider a vehicle driving down a 2 lane, one way street in the left lane. Suddenly they turn right at a street, cutting across the right lane to do so. If they hit a car in that lane (or more likely a car runs into them as they cut across their lane), who is to blame? The vehicle that made the turn. Obviously. Still not generally a criminal offense, though if there was a death, I would guess an involuntary manslaughter ruling would not be out of the question.

So, what would make this case any different. The bike lane should be treated simply as another lane of traffic. Laws, and more importantly legal settlements should represent this. I'm saying there should be criminal charges here but in the case I've assumed, which is something that happens to many cyclists, though not to the extreme outcome of this case, the truck driver would be at fault. The insurance company would be liable for damages in the car on car incident. So should they be in the truck on bike.

Am I just way off base with this? Why do I doubt there will be any liability assigned on this case though?

Racing Crash: The 1st Edition

It’s been a while coming for me but last night it finally happened; I popped my cherry of bike racing crashes at Greenbelt last night. It was a pretty large crash in the number of guys that went down and were ultimately affected by it as the initial crasher was in the very middle of the pack when he went down. Apparently he crossed wheels with a rear wheel in front of him and couldn’t regain his balance from there. There was basically a road wide fall out of riders with a large group having to stop behind the crash group. No one was terribly hurt and even more remarkably it looked like all of the bikes got out relatively unscathed a well.

Aside from a sore ass and wrist and a small scrap on my knee I am fine as well. The body of course was sore this morning and I stuck to the sheets ever so slightly last night but otherwise I’m good as new. Unfortunately I still didn’t sleep well due to my anxiety and excitement for the big day tomorrow. The WaPo is certainly not helping with the anxiety part.

The race itself was going really well and we at least three guys well positioned at all times leading up to the crash. Michael, Joe and I each had good long breakaways that helped keep the pace a bit higher this week then last week. I managed to get upfront to try and help Joe’s breakaway survive which was pretty fun and we were actively discussing things going on in the race as well. After my near lap long time off the front I took a couple of laps to recover and was beginning to feel good again and was actively moving back up to th front of the pack when the crash occurred.

I was naturally pretty disappointed after the crash especially considering that I was feeling pretty decent and felt I had a good chance for a strong finish. In stead I took a couple of laps out and then jumped back in to try and help pull back a rider who took advantage of a pack slow down after the crash to allow riders to get back into the pack and put in a hard attack. I think I helped close the gap quite a bit before being and attacked and then subsequently shelled after that. All the better though at that point, I pulled off and watched the rest of the race from the sidelines.

The remaining two Union riders at the finish, Joe and Chris managed very respectable 11th and 12th place finishes respectively in probably one of the largest fields of the year at this race so all was certainly not lost.

This pic was from before the Greenbelt race last week, Joe, Mikhail, Chris and me. As you can see I like to dream. Have a few more which I thought I got loaded but apparently not. I will put those up when I get a chance as well.

Next week will hopefully have a different outcome for the final Greenbelt race of the season. We should have a strong Union force once again in the B race though.

Reckless endagerment from our supposed protectors

Well the weekend turned into a bit more of a flop then expected after a bit of an unexpected and unwelcome incident on Saturday evening. After touring the Guggenheim Museum a friend and I started riding down 5th Avenue to try and find one of New York’s photography museums. Around 51st and 5th my friend was hit by a car and knocked off her bike. When I came back to where she was I shocked at what I found out.

I was leading the way down the one way street with her following 10 to 20 feet behind me and didn’t realize she was not behind me anymore for a block and a half after the light turned yellow above me and I knew she wouldn’t make it through. I waited by the light for a couple of minutes with no sign of her before I called to see where she was. She said she’d been hit though she was fine and I said I’d be right there. When I rode up to where she was there were a few cops there and some concerned pedestrians looking on and my friend had a decent gash above her right eyebrow. The people there were telling her she needed a couple of stitches and making her stay put and I agreed with them and we waited for the ambulance to get there.

The real shocking part here was that one of the cop cars that was stopped at the scene was actually the car that had hit her, and was a traffic cop at that. (I feel so much safer knowing the traffic cops know how to drive.) Apparently at a red light the cop had been close to the curb so my friend went around on the right of the car before pulling up to the front left near the curb. When the light changed she started up and the car followed and ran into her with the front left side of the bumper. Not sure in this situation the cop had eny opportunity to not see her since she went around his car and directly in his field of vision and the fact that he hit her from behind with the front of his car suggests the same.

I’m pretty sure the police report will be a bit of a write off and any kind of law suit will be hard to follow, especially considering no contact information for any witnesses was taken and well, the guy is a city traffic cop and the city cops filling out the reports know that. The whole thing happened pretty quickly though and we got a slip of paper from the filing officer with a number to call and a report number to receive a copy of the report before they took us and our bikes to the hospital.

My friend has spoken with a lawyer who is very interested in the case and who apparently used to be a messenger in NYC so hopefully he will know exactly how to handle the case, but I have my doubts that there will be much of a chance. Unfortunately with my limited experience with dealing with these kinds of accidents and lawsuits did not think to grab as much information from the scene as possible and the witnesses were gone before we thought to get their information.

Hopefully this works out and something can be done about the whole thing and this cross eyed pissed off looking M’fer of a traffic cop gets at least something on his record. From the sound of it his motives were harmful and overly aggressive towards my friend and from the looks of the guy he was pretty royally pissed while standing around afterwards. While I’ve said this so many times before about other traffic incidents this could easily be chalked up as reckless endangerment, reckless driving and once again the use of a motor vehicle as a weapon. That’s jail time in reality but I’m seeing more of a slap on the wrist and a day off of work at most.

Anyone have any suggestions for how to proceed or anything else they could offer up to help?

Just sick

This little blurb was posted on the district racing listserv.

From the Arlington County website, crime reports for April 11:

FELONY HIT AND RUN, 4/10/2007, 1500 block of S. George Mason Dr. At approximately 1602 hrs on 04/10/07, a man driving a Honda Accord northbound on S. George Mason Dr. got into an argument with a female bicyclist. The man got out of his car, pushed the woman and threw her bike. While leaving the scene, the man bumped the woman several times with his vehicle to push her out of the way. A police officer witnessed part of the incident and stopped the Accord a short time later. Johnny Arthur McRight, 58, of Arlington, was charged with Felony Hit and Run, Assault and Battery, and Destruction of Property and held on $2,500 bond.

This shit makes me sick...

My first real bike wreck - A foggy review

I knew it was bound to happen again sometime soon, though I was hoping it would be similar to the last time where there was no falling or injury what so ever involved. Unfortunately this time was very much different from then beginning with the fact that this one was entirely the drivers fault. I was out on a bar crawl with some of the polo/dcfixed.com crew and was seperated from the main group and then from the couple of guys I was with when one got a flat.

The bar we were on the way to was Hayde's on Mt. Pleasant St. so not knowing exactly where the bar was I headed over on Park and had just crossed 16th Street when the guy hit me. He was pulling out of a parrallel parking spot as I was riding by and I had no time to react before he hit me and I was on the ground. I was very lucky in that I didn't break anything or get seriously hurt from it but my bike was across the street and I was on the ground in front of the car with road rash all over my right arm.

I also hit my head and was a bit foggy the rest of the night but a number of people witnessed the accident and were there to look out for me. One guy was helping me and getting pretty confrontational with the driver that hit me before I calmed him down and pulled him aside to help me figure out if I was hurt seriously or not. I could feel I'd hit my head but didn't know if it was bleeding or anything and was definitely in shock but visually the guy said I looked fine.

The driver made it pretty clear early on that he had no insurance information to give me and I think had been drinking as well. Once I got my bike back I told him to be more careful and took off to try and catch up with the group from the crawl. On hindsight I wish I'd at least had the where with all to ask for some information or get something from the guy. Turns out now I'll be replacing my chain ring and likely my cranks on my fixed since they are bent to hell after that.

Later I tried riding my bike home after meeting the group for a couple of drinks at Hayde's and crashed. The chain had come off the bent ring and gotten caught and sent me over it looks like but I didn't check into it as all I wanted to do after that was get my ass home. I threw the bike over my shoulder and sulked back to my place to sprawl out on my bed and fet some rest.

The next morning I was stuck to the sheets from the road rash on my arm/elbow and I was pretty sore overall but didn't feel nearly as bad as I was afraid I would. I managed to get some ibuprofen in me and then play some ultimate frisbee with some friends at 11 before an early evening bocce ball party on some friends' roof deck (which I walked to). I kept myself pretty loaded up on the pain killers the whole day though so today when I woke up I felt worse then yesterday and spent the majority of the day staying put and trying not to cough since it feels like I did a thousand sit ups yesterday or something.

So, there it is, my second time being hit in the city. Significantly worse then the first bounce off the truck involved in the first but still I was extremely lucky. Hopefully I'll get a break before I get another one of these things as I'm not really interested in this sticky road rash crap right now.

As for riding, I rode to the frisbee game on Saturday and while it wasn't too uncomfortable I was definitely a bit nervous and maybe even a bit shakey on the bike, though that may have to do with how long it's been since I've ridden the Specialized with gears. I was supposed to get out for a ride today and in hindsight I wish I had but the body just was not interested and I didn't want to keep loading up on the pain killers since I've been taking them pretty regularly lately because of all the running as well.

Tomorrow morning I'll probably ride to work and might even try and get out for an easy spin during lunch but we'll see how I feel. For now I'm just glad I wasn't sidelined with anything worse.

On a side note, it appears that one of my favorite blog writers will be officially taking a break. I've heard this from others lately that came right back to posting within days so I was sceptical at first but it's been a bit and there is nothing new. This is truely a sad moment for Freewheeling (and Fixed) Spirits everywhere.