but let me introduce you to a different kind

Saturday morning was raining like mad here and a group of three of us were scheduled to do a 75K training ride in the hills of the Burlington Ontario escarpment. When we arrived it was spitting slightly, but the roads were covered with puddles and it was quite wet.

On the first hill, I noticed a bit of tire slip, but against my better judgment we continued on. About half way through the ride we had picked up a half dozen riders and I was moving to the back of the line and tucked in behind a rider as a few cars passed (it's a two lane highway). As I made the maneuver I drifted a little to the right and both tires went on the painted solid line.

It all happened so quickly and the next thing I knew I hit the ground hard and heard the screech of the tires. I had fallen to my left into traffic which was moving at about 70 Kph. As I rolled into my back, I distinctly member looking at the radiator from under the front of the car thinking this is going to hurt a lot. Whoever was driving was obviously paying attention and had managed to bring their car to a full stop in a really short distance, saving me the indignity of being scraped off the highway.

Some other riders helped me off the road and grabbed my bike. I messed my elbow and knee pretty good and was inspecting my wounds, testing movement and didn't get a chance to give the "I'm sorry I'm an idiot wave" to the driver before traffic had move on.

I told our group that I needed a few minutes before we continued on, so everyone took the opportunity to have a drink, snack and joke about my brush with death. As this was going on a car pulled up on the opposite side of the highway and an elderly lady got out and was negotiating her way across the highway towards our group. At this point I had no idea who she was... I thought she was the mother of one of the riders. She introduced herself as the driver that one of us had fallen in front of. She had a roadside emergency kit with gauze, polysporin and bandaged me up. She offered to have her husband come with his pickup truck and take me and my bike home if I needed. Sweet lady

I thanked her for the offer and told her that I'll be able to continue. I thanked her for not running me over and apologized for putting her in a scary position. Now get this, she then apologized to me for not sticking around after not hitting me.