By BBC Member Tim Gehres
It’s been four weeks since the operation and a few days prior to that when the crash occurred. Yesterday, the Doc pronounced his blessing and declared it safe for me to hit the road once again. At 59 and a competent rider, the nagging question was how “could this have happened”. After three years of trying to get in the Hilly Hundred, I was so excited to finally get a chance to take on the Hilly only to crash just a mile or so past the Lunch stop on Saturday. I had rested over an hour at lunch and hadn’t really pushed it the first half of the day, so I felt great. But what could have been the cause? The crash happened so fast that I don’t ever remember it at all. The first thing that I remember afterwards is someone asking me some stupid questions about what day it was. All I wanted to know was “how’s my bike. Pain? What pain? On a scale of 1 to 10, about a 9, but never mind that, how’s my bike?
After returning to the scene of the accident this last weekend, I discovered the cause, or at least the contributing factor as so many accident investigators would say. It was in the form of a pothole patch, somewhat camouflaged, about a foot in length across the road, four inches wide and 2 inches high at the bottom of a shallow down grade. Now imagine rocketing along at a mere 20 mph on a road bike with one hand on the handlebars while trying to figure out where you are at on the GPS, never mind that there are at least 20 bikers around you, and suddenly your front wheel, a 700X23 with 100psi in it hits this little “Hill” in the road. Wheel stops, weight goes forward, handle bar suddenly jerks very sharply sideways and launches the poor hapless rider into space. $20,000 later for a new metal bone brace with which to annoy the TSA agents at airports, I am happy to say that my collar bone is mending quite nicely and that it felt really great to be back on the bike today. But the real question is how is it that out of 5,000 riders, I’m the only one that hit that stupid bump?
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