Originally Posted by
KD5NRH
If the inside of your helmet wasn't already head-shaped, you might want to consider something different next time.
Well, it was head-shaped - it just wasn't quite as precisely the shape of MY head as it is now.
Originally Posted by
fredgarvin7
"Central at Buena Vista, for those who know Albuquerque). At this particular intersection, I normally turn left in the bus lane"
Is this the left turn Bugs Bunny always talked about in "Albakoykey"?
That's the one!
Originally Posted by
fredgarvin7
It sounds like you think you were wearing one of those airforce helmets with a heads-up data display, virtual target aquisition, radar guided, multi-task tracking, wire guidance, computer-enhanced vector control. In other words there were far too many variables to estimate, and the pothole was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. Too many decisions too quiclkly to process. You shoulda pulled back or over to a safe area instead of proceeding. Aborting early sometimes wins the day.
You have to realize that a lot of the complexity of my description is postcrash analysis - it's not quite what my my thought process was at the time, which was quite a bit simpler ("Cross in front of car ... going ... crap! Cross fast! Light over the curb ... WTF just happened and why am I suddenly doing my Superman impression? Ouch!") I agree that I committed an error in judgment - I knew I was sprinting through a narrow gap, and I know that unexpected things can go wrong. Last time it happened, I managed to buckle a chainring (I literally twisted it apart, and it was a good-quality ring. What can I say? I'm very large and very strong), and this time I had to try to find an exit route very quickly. At the same time, if I wait for long gaps between cars, it can be a very, very long wait, particularly at rush hour. As with most things cycling, it's a balance. This experience will probably alter where I aim for in my balance between safety and speed - obviously there's a sweet spot in there somewhere.
At this point I'm thinking LHT. I suspect it's got beefier tubes than either the Crosscheck (which would be another reasonable choice) or my Aurora Elite had (I'm fairly surprised that the frame buckled two tubes before the carbon steerer sustained any noticeable damage - this likely says that Jamis' forks are very strong, and the Reynolds 631 tubes that the frame was made out of were perhaps lighter than might be recommended under a rider as large as I am). I had a hard frontal impact with my old ('01) Jamis Aurora (not Elite, so it had a chromoly fork) that bent the fork but didn't even misalign the frame, so I'm thinking that Reynolds 531 (aka 4130 chromoly steel,
AFAIK) may be a better tubeset for me. (And please don't think that I'm bashing Jamis - the bike was excellent, and never gave me a bit of trouble until I crashed it into something.)