This morning I took a spill on my bike. It was on one of my trails (I’m the Strava local legend) on one of my loops (that really only I know, as far as I know), on my time (I was the only person on the mountain).
I was descending a small single-track, and came around a corner I’ve done a hundred times. The dead, dry mountain grass lay on its side, and as I turned, banking to the left, my wheel slipped. I tried to gather myself, but I knew I was going down. I thought of putting my arm out to brace myself, but I didn’t want to break it, so I instead opted to hold on to the handlebars and hope for a miracle.
It was literally a split second from a controlled descent to impact with the ground.
I know I let out a scream, and the force of the ground equal and opposite to my body’s accelerated force toward the ground caused my scream to bounce, just as I rolled across the ground. It’s funny how certain seconds in life move like slow motion.
As I came unclipped from my pedals with the impact of the ground, I remember rolling a bit, and the back of my head hitting the ground and my helmet becoming slightly detached from my head. My first thought:
Dang! I hope I didn’t break my brand new helmet!
After I stopped sliding along the ground, I pulled my helmet off, and sure enough, I had detached the visor, and I had broken the shell casing around my head. And it wasn’t even a big impact. Grrrr. (Interesting, I wasn’t even concerned about my bike, because I knew it wasn’t that bad of an accident. Funny how your bike becomes a part of you!)
I think the cause of the crash might have been a low front tire. I had kind of noticed on the descent, but I was on my way home anyway, so I didn’t think to stop and check it out.
Before returning, I tried to inflate my front tire, but something was wrong with the CO2 cartridge, and my attempts to inflate actually took the rest of the air out of the tire. So, as I walked my $5,000 bike with a flat font tire home, I got a text from a friend asking how I was.
“No worries about me. I just wrecked on my bike and am hiking home.”
“Are you OK?”
“I broke my brand new helmet, shredded my tire (a little exaggeration for sympathy, but it was popped off the bead and was leaking self-sealer!), skinned my knee, got dirt and weed stains all over my back and side, not to mention thorns and weeds all through my shirt, which I ripped.” (The rest was all true!)
My friend responded: “Maybe don’t do that anymore.”
I thought about that, and later in the day asked my friend, “Should I quit biking?”
“That’s up to you. Is it worth the risk? But maybe quit crashing…”