Drama in Real Life, bike carnage 2004

Scenes I seen from the year...

Doing about 30 mph, Larry is in front of me shoot down a winding hill near High Ridge, Mo. A couple guys are off the front and he's pretty fearless so I'm not trying to keep up. We're doing the 75 mile covered bridge ride. So anyway, we hit a sweeping left and Larry goes down and starts sliding. He finally runs off the road and sprays into the shoulder through all the leaves and sticks. I shoot by just as he stops. He just missed whacking into a tree as far as I can tell. I turn around and see how he's doing. His skin is gone on many parts of his leg and arm, but no broken bones. He gets back up and rides another 60 miles or so.

About 10 laps in to a crit I see Larry's (different Larry) back wheel start to slide around going about 35 mph down a hill. As he trys to regain control and almost makes it, but he hits another guy and goes down real hard. His helmet gets crunched real good. Broke bones in his back. Larry is wanting to cuss, but he doesn't let himself because, well, he doesn't cuss. He moans "fiddlesticks" and other such expletives until the ambulance comes. The race gets cancelled.

On the Marquette ride (35 hilly miles), I'm in the lead group and coming down a hill and see a lady in a minivan waiting to turn left across our path into a gravel parking lot where there are some ball fields. She sees us and stops, so nobody slows down. Then at the last second she starts to go and pulls right out in front the lead rider. He rams into the side of the minivan and slides along the length of it as a couple of the riders go down. A bunch of us stand around until the ambulance comes. The we keep on going.

It's raining on the Dogfish (32 miles) ride and I make a right on to Mason off of Ladue road. Sean is right behind me. When I hit the smooth pavement and start heading downhill I go down on my right side and slide along. Luckily no cars are coming. Sean waits while I get right back on and eventually we catch the group after a few miles. I wind up with a major ass bruise and a hole in my shorts. Afterword, I just keep riding with the hole.

Out past Waterloo we are bombing down a hill and heading for Bluff Road. There is a steep right turn. Mark and Little Luke get into a ditch on the left and both of them flip over. Luke winds up on the other side of the electric fence. The neighbors come out to see what is going on, but everbody can still ride so we keep on going. For some reason I think the electric fence thing is funny.

We're out at Columbia bottoms and riding on some chip seal road. I don't realize Sean is drafting off of me and when I slow down and turn around he clips my wheel and goes down, slicing his knee. It looks pretty nasty so he head back to the car. Later he said it didn't need stiches, but it looked like it did at the time.

Moab 1: Bombing down Klondike Bluffs Trail on the slick rock Todd hucks down on a section of gravel, flattens his tire, and whacks into a either a bush or a tree. He shakes it off and we keep messing around on the slick rock, which is a blast. At the end we loaded four mountain bikes and four guys into a Ford Escape. You should try it, it was a bit tight.
Moab 2: At 1:30 in the morning in the 24 Hours of Moab I'm surfing around on the sand heading for a 15 foot drop. I shoot off the edge and lose it to the right and endo. My light keep working, so I slog on. Sometime around then one of the course marshalls get bit by a rattlesnake she's playing with.

Thankgiving ride out at Marquette. We are just getting started and I see a rider slip and fall hard on his side. We catch up to him and see if he's going to be able to keep going. He's in pretty much pain -- but it doesn't seem that bad. Later on I heard he broke his pelvis in three places.

Well, that's about it. See you on the next ride!