TheBanyanTree: Bad day on the bike

[A. Christopher Hammon]

As autumn comes, it is hard for me to imagine bad days on my bike and 
this fall was being another great fall season on my recumbent (one of 
those new fangled reclined type bicycles). I had enjoyed the Kentucky 
hills with a multi-day club ride to Bardstown and back as well as a 
number of rides looping out through the countryside. I spent several 
days solo touring up on the Little Miami Trail in Ohio; a fun little B&B 
(bed and breakfast) tour of one of the country's premier rail-to-trail 
conversions that parallels the Little Miami National Scenic River. And a 
few more days of bicycle camping with a group of friends through several 
Southern Indiana State Resort Parks. It has been fun and it was the 
kinds of retreats that I was needing this fall. I have seen some 
wonderful color and some fun wildlife; including a beaver scuttling 
across the bike trail just up ahead and a crane effortlessly riding the 
wind up the Little Miami. I had a deer run alongside me for a stretch. 
And then there was coming eyeball to eyeball with a hawk cruising low up 
Rose Island Road as I came in from Sleepy Hollow a few weeks ago -- I 
braked and the hawk pulled up and went on over me. Fun.

Then two weeks ago as I was riding home from the office one evening, I 
made a left turn off a through street and had an unfortunate encounter 
with the front end of an SUV in a hurry to pull out from a stop sign. I 
was just two months shy of it being 35 years since the last time I was 
hit on my bicycle by an automobile. Even though I was in the appropriate 
lane, signaling my turn, wearing a bright orange windbreaker, with my 
high visibility strobing headlight flashing so cars would see me; I 
still found myself square in the middle of the front end of an SUV as it 
hit me from the side. The driver, making a left turn while talking on 
her cell phone said that she looked right and left but not straight out 
in front of her until she finally heard me yelling for her to stop 
(vocal chords are the best horn on a bicycle).

The good news is that I got very lucky. First off, I still am <vbg>. I 
consider this to be a good thing. And I was also able to hobble away 
without anything broken. The impact crushed the left side of my 
handlebar, which on my recumbent is alongside my thigh when I am riding. 
That was the initial point of contact and the handlebar absorbed a good 
bit of the impact energy as it collapsed into my leg. Fortunately, I had 
my hand up trying to get the driver's attention, so it wasn't on the 
handlebar at the time. Otherwise, it was all muscle and soft tissue 
damage. It looks like my riding is through for this year but I am 
recovering quickly and spring is coming <vbg>.

There is another ironic story line running behind all of this. The big 
project that I am engaged in at work is pulling all of the pieces 
together for an online conference on the Healing Power of Forgiveness.

It helps that the driver has been very good through all of this. It was 
a trauma experienced by both of us.

Cheers,
Chris