Rider Down

I just read an email stating that a local rider, Danny Thomas, was on a weekend training ride in the mountains and had a pretty bad crash. He was descending Sourtownn near Piolet Mtn when he ran off the road, cracked three of his ribs, punctured his lung, and was lucky to be alive by the time he was admitted to the hospital in the afternoon.

Two weeks ago a rider in our club, Cliff Swanson was out on a Sunday ride with his wife, Wendy when an elderly woman ran them down on Carpenter Pond Road grazing Cliff and putting his wife in a coma for several days. Wendy is awake now and in recovery but she will never really be the same.

Before that an elderly rider was killed on his way home in North Raleigh and it has not been a year yet since Andy Stewart's wife Emily was hit by a car and killed on her way to work during her daily commute.

My girlfriend Carol hit a pot hole and went down hard on Carpenter Pond road about two years ago, cutting her head and injuring her shoulder. She ended up with stitches in her scalp and her shoulder still bothers to this day.

Our sport is dangerous, no doubt about it. I worry when I am out. When is my number up? When is it my turn. Or worse, when is it Carol's? I ride my bike to work every dawn in heavy traffic into RTP with bad roads and hardly any bike lanes. For the most part the drivers are courteous. But it is always in the back of my mind. Carol and I went out this past Sunday and rode from Patterson to Stem via Butner. The traffic was pretty light but I was scared for her the whole time. She was drafting and I kept looking back to see what was coming and where she was. I did not dare ride away from her at anytime for fear of making it harder to pass us and then some idiot would nail one of us trying to avoid oncoming traffic.

It is getting to the point that it is hard to enjoy riding. Almost every week I hear about another crash or another accident with a car. I live in fear. With a kind of macabre certainty. I still ride. I still go to the mtns to train. I still descend at 50 mph and I still ride my bike to work everyday. I have been riding avidly for more than 5 years now. I have not been involved in a single crash or incident with a car. I would like to think that I am a skilled bike handler and this has contributed to my continued avoidance of accidents. But the reality is that I have just been lucky. I saw Dave Zabriskey go down the other day in the Giro. He is a pro with hundreds of thousands of miles experience and he still crashed out of the Giro. It is not skill. It is luck. And now I wonder all the time when my luck is going to run out.