Election Day Carnage

Seven or eight riders in yesterday's 23-mile lunchtime ride. Pretty fast, hard enough to make me drop to the back, barely hanging on.

Approaching Hwy 96 on Hodgson, somewhere between 20 and 25 mph I think, the traffic light at DQ suddenly turned yellow. Rawbee decided to hit the brakes instead of blowing thru. Sudden ripple effect, each rider almost locking 'em up, swerving to the right. My front wheel overlapped Don's a little. Not sure I could've stayed upright if nothing worse than that had happened. But his cassette sliced my sidewall and my tire exploded — and I mean loud — and before I could make any conscious reaction, I landed hard on my left side. Felt the back of my helmet slam against the pavement. Initially felt pain more than anywhere else in the middle finger of my left hand. Weird.

Was lying on the street, bike on top of me, afraid to move, afraid to open my eyes, shallow quick breaths, starting to feel pain on my left side above my hip. Somebody (Nelson?) pulled my bike off the top of me.

Slowly started to take stock of the situation and realized I was still in one piece and able to move everything. Answered people's questions coherently. Still afraid to try to stand. Learned that no one else had crashed. Surprisingly there was a police car just a couple blocks behind us and they called for an ambulance. Sat up in the street (right lane) and decided to just wait there, watching the cars slowly going by.

wtf? three police cars, two fire trucks, and finally the ambulance. Fellow cyclists still hanging around, watching and waiting, checking out my bike. (Go on, guys, you don't need to keep waiting for me.) Rawbee went on, to get his truck, expecting to help transport my bike and maybe me too.

Climbed in the back of the ambulance, got checked out a little more thoroughly, got cleaned off and gauzed up. Signed the form refusing a trip to the hospital. Scored some extra gauze pads, a little tape, and a little bottle of surgical scrub (which I've been advised to throw out and not use on an open wound). Rawbee drove me back to work.

Outcome: relatively little damage, coulda been much much worse. Broken helmet, sliced tire, blown tube, scraped handlebar tape, torn jersey. Two gauze-covered abrasions/contusions, above and below left hip. Minor stiffness in upper back. No cuts, nothing broken. Ten ibuprofen and a reasonable night's sleep. Just several days of soreness ahead. Keep wondering if I could've done anything differently. Too fatigued to be riding that close? Fingers not on the brake levers? Dunno...