So Sam, without any prompting from Mom and Dad, decided that this summer he wants to train and bike a marathon (26.2 miles). This last Saturday, I was doing a mt. bike race and there was a kids race and we asked Sam if he wanted to do it as some training. He totally wanted to try it and he did great (got 5th place and had lots of fun). They let parents come along and so I got some great action highlights.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Sunday, June 12, 2011
I Said A Bad Word Today
Friday evening there was lovely weather. In fact it was it had been a lovely morning too and so I had decided to ride my bike to work. And now work was over I was on my bike headed home.
Just a half mile from my work, there was some construction going on and the workers had used barrels to narrow the road from 5 total lanes to 2 very narrow lanes. I had ridden through this construction area before and had found it was safer to actual ride on the right side of the barrels in the construct area. I don't know if this was technically legal, but there was plenty of room there and no active construction. Plus when I had gone in the official lanes before, sometimes cars would try to squeeze past me or if I took the whole lane, they would drive right up on my tail.
So I road through the construction area. As I neared the end of it, I looked back to see if any cars where coming, because usually as soon as cars got to the end of the construction area, some of them would try to move over into the lane that had been blocked off and I wanted to see if I need to get over. There were no cars and so I look forward again.
This is the point where I said a bad word.
If you know me, you know that I hardly ever cuss. I think in general it doesn't contribute much to conversations and is mostly unpleasant. But there are some occasions when you find yourself in a really bad situation, when I think it is forgivable to describe that said situation with a word that accurately reflects the current state of affairs. I think this was one such situation.
Now maybe if I had time to think about it, it would have been better to say something more descriptive, like - "Wow, I think this going to hurt like the dickens". Or maybe I could have said something totally devoid of emotion that just relayed the facts - "This is an unsafe situation, there is a high probability that I will receive bodily harm". Or maybe I shouldn't have said anything at all, because there wasn't anyone there to here me anyway. But I cannot change the past, so now I will just relay in words what prompted my unseemly outburst.
So I was looking back for cars and then turned forward. At which point I saw about three feet in front of me, that since the last time I had ridden here, someone had tied a thin nylon rope from the last barrel all the way across the lane to another barrel.
I was going about 17 mph, which if you do that math is about 25 feet per second. So since I was three feet away from the rope, I had about 1/8 of a second to try to do something before I got clothes lined.
So if you do further calculations, you can see that really I didn't have time to do anything. Except maybe say a bad word.
My brakes hit the rope first and I desperately slid my hands back on the handlebars so that my fingers would not get ripped off by being caught between the handle bars and the rope. The rope popped over the brake hoods, hit my arms and slammed them to my sides as it wrapped around my body. As I was wretched backwards, I somehow managed to keep my bike more or less under me, so that as I slammed into the ground, the bike took most of the fall and the all the bodily harm I got from the actual fall was a nice scrape on my right knee. Now the bodily harm from the rope was another story. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. So here is two thousands words worth of pictures:
If you are wondering if rope burn across your arms hurts, the answer is yes, it hurts like the dickens. On the pain scale of 0-10 I would put it at about an 8-9 when it first happened, probably a 3-4 when just standing around and a 20-21 when water is poured on it. That being said, I feel very fortunate that in spite of the painfulness, the wounds are actually pretty superficial and will probably only leave small permanent scars. And I feel very very fortunate and blessed that I was able to stay up long enough so that the rope didn't hit my neck or face and that I was able to move my hands out of the way so that my fingers didn't get ripped off.
And finally, in regards to the most important question: "How is the bike?", Big Mac received a couple of scuffs on the brake hoods, a little tear on the bar tape, but other than that it seemed to be unharmed and I was able to ride it home.
Update:
I found this video on youtube that kind of gives you an idea of what happened: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OM1zD7Ipc8
Just a half mile from my work, there was some construction going on and the workers had used barrels to narrow the road from 5 total lanes to 2 very narrow lanes. I had ridden through this construction area before and had found it was safer to actual ride on the right side of the barrels in the construct area. I don't know if this was technically legal, but there was plenty of room there and no active construction. Plus when I had gone in the official lanes before, sometimes cars would try to squeeze past me or if I took the whole lane, they would drive right up on my tail.
So I road through the construction area. As I neared the end of it, I looked back to see if any cars where coming, because usually as soon as cars got to the end of the construction area, some of them would try to move over into the lane that had been blocked off and I wanted to see if I need to get over. There were no cars and so I look forward again.
This is the point where I said a bad word.
If you know me, you know that I hardly ever cuss. I think in general it doesn't contribute much to conversations and is mostly unpleasant. But there are some occasions when you find yourself in a really bad situation, when I think it is forgivable to describe that said situation with a word that accurately reflects the current state of affairs. I think this was one such situation.
Now maybe if I had time to think about it, it would have been better to say something more descriptive, like - "Wow, I think this going to hurt like the dickens". Or maybe I could have said something totally devoid of emotion that just relayed the facts - "This is an unsafe situation, there is a high probability that I will receive bodily harm". Or maybe I shouldn't have said anything at all, because there wasn't anyone there to here me anyway. But I cannot change the past, so now I will just relay in words what prompted my unseemly outburst.
So I was looking back for cars and then turned forward. At which point I saw about three feet in front of me, that since the last time I had ridden here, someone had tied a thin nylon rope from the last barrel all the way across the lane to another barrel.
I was going about 17 mph, which if you do that math is about 25 feet per second. So since I was three feet away from the rope, I had about 1/8 of a second to try to do something before I got clothes lined.
So if you do further calculations, you can see that really I didn't have time to do anything. Except maybe say a bad word.
My brakes hit the rope first and I desperately slid my hands back on the handlebars so that my fingers would not get ripped off by being caught between the handle bars and the rope. The rope popped over the brake hoods, hit my arms and slammed them to my sides as it wrapped around my body. As I was wretched backwards, I somehow managed to keep my bike more or less under me, so that as I slammed into the ground, the bike took most of the fall and the all the bodily harm I got from the actual fall was a nice scrape on my right knee. Now the bodily harm from the rope was another story. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. So here is two thousands words worth of pictures:
 |
| Left Arm |
 |
| Right Arm |
If you are wondering if rope burn across your arms hurts, the answer is yes, it hurts like the dickens. On the pain scale of 0-10 I would put it at about an 8-9 when it first happened, probably a 3-4 when just standing around and a 20-21 when water is poured on it. That being said, I feel very fortunate that in spite of the painfulness, the wounds are actually pretty superficial and will probably only leave small permanent scars. And I feel very very fortunate and blessed that I was able to stay up long enough so that the rope didn't hit my neck or face and that I was able to move my hands out of the way so that my fingers didn't get ripped off.
And finally, in regards to the most important question: "How is the bike?", Big Mac received a couple of scuffs on the brake hoods, a little tear on the bar tape, but other than that it seemed to be unharmed and I was able to ride it home.
Update:
I found this video on youtube that kind of gives you an idea of what happened: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OM1zD7Ipc8
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