Originally Posted by ooga-booga

just experienced my "closest call" while cycling today. have a bad downhill wipeout requiring (brief) hospitalization in my past but this one was scary.
was gingerly descending (25-30 mph) yerba buena rd in the santa monica mountains near malibu in southern california when an 18-wheeler
came lurching around the corner and was taking up more than half of my lane with a guardrail and a decent 50-75 foot dropoff as a (potential)
life-saving/voiding alternative. just managed to avoid the truck (by approx 1.5 feet), and skidding and only glanced barely against the guardrail.
if i had been going 35-40 mph on that descent as i normally would have been, i'm fairly certain i wouldn't have been able to avoid both the truck and
the guardrail/dropoff. only reason i was going slower is that i got a front flat climbing the same road and my-time to replace the crappy-pump only got
it to the 30-35 psi range. definitely not enough for confident descending so i was mostly riding the brakes, thank goodness.

what is your closest call with mortality?