What happened? No more than 2.5 miles into this ride I had words with a motorist as I carefully (I thought) entered a T intersection to make a left hand turn. I had come to a complete stop and proceeded when I thought it was safe to go. Apparently I did not see an oncoming car to the right who came to a stop despite my avoidance maneuver and felt the need to call me out. The incident did not escalate beyond the initial exchange of words, but as I pedaled away I couldn't help but think that the whole incident could have been avoided if I had been more careful. It really bothered me that I had allowed myself to lose my temper on this very first ride of 2010. Did I give myself bad karma? You tell me.
A few miles later I'm on a slight downhill stretch of road trying to keep my cadence under control and then, crack...thunk!! My natural inclination was to stop pedaling but on a fixed gear bike that means you get lifted off the seat. Guess what? No seat! The saddle had snapped off the seat post!!!!! Luckily for me there was no traffic passing by when this occurred and I was able to ditch my bike into the snow on a nearby front lawn.
I feel real lucky to walk away from this accident mostly unscathed except for a deep contusion on my inner thigh where I initially landed on the broken seat post. It could have been a LOT worse...by less than an inch if you know what I mean!
Now I have a new cycling goal for 2010...try to maximize good karma! I want to have a large reservoir of good karma in reserve for the rest of my cycling days!!
The bike, post accident:
The saddle with broken post:
The bib knickers with punture hole:
1 comment:
Wow. Makes my bad ride today seem pretty good, in comparison.
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