A couple amazing things happened on my lunch ride today. First, the entire group came to a stop at a stop sign. This is after multiple people have gotten tickets for rolling stop signs around here. While I think the ticketing is a waste of resources, I'll be happy if people in this group can follow the rules.
The second amazing thing happened when we were on a bridge over an irrigation ditch. It's a pretty crappy old bridge and there 3 inch gravel filled gaps that go in the same direction as you would ride. On a road bike this is dangerous because it's really easy to get your wheel into one of those and have unpredictable things happen. For the first time I've ever seen on this ride, someone got into one of those gaps today. At first he was thinking he was going to go down, but somehow he got tossed out of the crack and started veering directly toward the guard rail. He hit the rail hard and both he and his bike went over the edge and into the ditch.
There are many times (probably most of the time actually) where this ditch would be nearly dry, but thanks to our heavy rains last week it was full of water. The 6 foot drop into the water wasn't anywhere near as bad as an equivalent drop onto dirt. The rider made it relatively unscathed thankfully. His shifter took the biggest force and is broken, but he didn't get anything more than a couple scrapes. It didn't look like he hit his head or anything, but as I precaution I rode back with him to make sure he made it back safe.
That will sure go down in the history books of this ride, and I'm sure we'll be bringing it up for years.
Wow. They actually all stopped at a stop sign?
ReplyDelete((I'd already heard about the rest.))