Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
I was riding into work this morning, thinking whatever thoughts I normally think on my ride into work. There had been frost on my deck, but the roads seemed clear, so I was buzzing along at my normal clip.
Coming down N 50th toward Fremont Ave, I downshifted a couple gears to take the turn as I normally do, slightly annoyed that a car had just passed me too close. I was peripherally aware of a biker standing on the sidewalk, but I thought he was waiting for the crosswalk or something.
I turned into the corner, and with extreme consternation noticed that my bike was no longer under me. I hit the ground before I had any clue what was happening, and tumbled, noting in a sort of detached way that my helmet was scraping along the pavement. There was a bloom of pain in my right hip, and suddenly something heavy plopped down in front of me as I slid to a stop -- my shoulder bag, I realized.
I lay there trying to disentangle my thoughts, testing bits of myself to see how damaged I was. The pain in my hip was subsiding, but it was obviously not going to be happy in the near future. Nothing was obviously broken, so I started getting up.
"Oh, I wish I'd seen you," said the biker on the sidewalk, "I just did that exact same thing. There must be ice there." Thanks. I picked myself up with a severe limp on the right side, my hip explaining in bright flashes of pain that it was, in fact, extremely unhappy at the abuse. I got my bike onto the sidewalk. I didn't spare it much attention, but nothing seemed overtly broken.
Slightly Helpful Biker asked if I was ok, obviously about to get on his way. He'd taken a moment to scoop some dirt out of a nearby planter and spread it over the area where the ice probably was. I said I was probably fine, but that my hip hurt. "Ok, I'm off to work then," quoth SHB, and rode off.
I sat there, my glasses entirely fogged over (all the heat I'd generated in riding rising to coat them), and just stretched out on the sidewalk for a minute to see if I could stop shaking. I tried to assess what had happened.
I came around the corner, and the bike just went away. Obviously, it was ice, or something so like it that quibbling over definitions was pointless. I bore the brunt of my fall on my right hip, although my shoulder was also unhappy. I could move, and I didn't seem to have broken any bones.
I painfully hoisted myself back on the bike, after several false starts getting my leg over the seat. Fortunately, the path ahead of me was entirely downhill, and so required practically no effort. The worst part was limping up to my office to check into the meeting that caused me to be on the road 30 minutes earlier than I normally would have.
Now, several hours and 1200 mg of ibuprofen later, my hip is the obvious casualty. There's a little bit of road rash on my patella, and my shoulder occasionally twinges (amazingly, I don't appear to have broken my collarbone), but I've got a patch of road rash on my hip that I can just cover with an open hand, and I walk at a highly comical and halting .3 MPH or so. Fortunately, sitting upright is completely pain-free, it's just standing upright and walking that sucks. Even more fortunately, I don't seem to have impaired my normal computering abilities at all.
So, what did I do right? Helmet, baby. That helmet absorbed what would have been a painful if not deadly sideways whack, and kept the side of my face off the ground as I slid to a halt. Conveniently, I was wearing long pants and a slippery windbreaker that I believe kept me from getting worse road rash than I did.
What did I do wrong? Well, I have a hard time classifying it as "wrong" exactly, but I didn't anticipate the black ice. The road had been clear of ice that I could tell, and I had no indication there was ice around this corner. I was complacent about road conditions, when I knew it was cold enough that ice was a possibility, if not likely.
Given that the two-wheel crashes I've had now were both low-sides, and both landed me on my hip, I'm starting to think that some padded biking shorts are called for. They would have materially reduced the injury I received today, and would have made my racetrack motorcycle crash less painful, although that crash didn't result in any lasting injury.
I find it interesting, although predictable, that my motorcycle crash caused me less damage than my bicycle crash. On the motorcycle, I was going about 70 MPH, but I was also riding a tiny bike (ie, I sit close to the ground) on a racetrack (ie, no curbs, cars, gravel, etc. to deal with), and I was leaned way over, so that my butt was inches from the pavement. On the bicycle, I was only going about 18 MPH, but I was sitting at least 3.5 feet off the ground, and wearing less protective clothing. The difference between less than 12 inches and over three feet is considerable, and that's where the real injury came from.
So, I have a feeling I'll be working from home for the next few days, and may investigate getting some variety of cane or crutch so I can walk at a speed faster than a snail's pace. Hooray for dangerous pursuits!
Posted at 11:13 permanent link category: /bicycle
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater