Monday, August 2, 2010

My First Close Call

Ok, to be honest, it wasn't really my FIRST close call, but it was the one where I thought I might actually get clobbered by a truck. 

I have RoadID on my facebook and they keep posting the terrible accidents that bikers are having and how "roadID" has helped them.  GREAT, but I dont want to read about this daily, nor do I want these things stuck in my head!

I've been lucky until this point.  You can read about one close call earlier in the blog, I broke my arm because I was scared of a truck coming near me.  The truck was doing nothing wrong, nor was he near me, thus it was MY OWN STUPIDITY!    Then once, I had a dog chase me.  I pulled my foot out of the cleat thinking I might have to kick him in the face before he ripped off my leg; luckily he ran out of steam.

Yesterday's incident was closer than those two, and it pissed me off more than scared me! 

I have a 14 mile loop that I ride all the time.  The first 4 miles are pretty dangerous, lots of cars, two interstate on-ramps, a state highway with no breakdown lane, etc.  If I'm going to get hit or have a close call anywhere, I expect it to be in these 4 miles.  Then the rest of it is on  nice rolling hills, through back roads and usually limited traffic (it's the Webster, Danskin Tri course for anyone that knows that).

I left the scary area unscathed, and started up 'the hill' - I was pleasantly surprised at my ability to climb the hill too!  I had my bike re-fitted on Wednesday, then went for a 28 mile ride on Sat.  The re-fitting and new saddle make for a sore ride, especially on day 2.  The ride on Sat was very flat so I had no idea what the affect would be on the climb on Sunday.  It was amazing, I was at least 2x faster!   It's crazy what you can do when your body is in the right position and you're actually USING the muscles!  So I got to the top of the hill, said hello to Cutter, (the horse that lives at the top), then started the descent.  I was on quite the high, I might actually be able to beat my time today, even with the sore rear!

At the bottom of the hill there's a hard right turn, then from here I can really crank it.  There are lots of road, usually no cars, and you can see a good distance ahead.  I can usually go the speed limit (or faster).  I came to the crest of this little hill and was approaching about 25mph, and I saw this large box truck on the left sticking out of a driveway.  He looked RIGHT AT ME!  now, I have an ORANGE BIKE, I was wearing HOT-PINK, AND I was going OVER the speed limit!  He hesitated, twice, then proceeded to pull out!  Of course he doesn't know how to drive either and pulls out that he takes up the ENTIRE road and basically STOPS in the middle.  Luckily I saw him, and anticipated what he was going to do, so I put on the brakes before I got to him.  There really was no where for me to go either, he was covering the entire road, and the side of the road was a brick wall! 

His wife or someone else was behind him in another car (same driveway).  Man did I curse him, it's been a long time since I rode one handed for that long ;).. I know he heard me too!  I turned to the wife, (who saw the whole thing) and proceeded to scream what a Jackass the man in the truck was..   I hope she tore him a new one when they got to wherever they were going.

So the rest of the ride, I was just fuming, then kept thinking of the RoadID accident reports where people are REALLY getting clobbered by trucks!  I know I'm lucky, but really, how do we get people to not be so stupid? (not in my lifetime, I know)...

2 comments:

  1. So whats stopping you from getting the roadID? Buy it today, PLEASE!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Love reading about the SheRox tri. What a great weekend you had! You look fabulous in this photo!!!!
    Ali

    ReplyDelete