Thread: Road Mishaps
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Old 11-15-17 | 11:51 AM
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SethAZ
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Bikes: 2018 Lynskey R260, 2005 Diamondback 29er, 2003 Trek 2300

I've never broken any bones (knock on wood) in bike crashes, but I had a couple incidents that were pretty bad wipeouts.

In 1989 in Switzerland I went down while carrying too much speed down a hill and turning fairly sharply to merge with a road going along the base of the slope. Wiped out into that road (luckily no incoming traffic or I'd have been run over) in front of a half dozen people waiting at a bus stop. My pants were mangled and I had a little road rash, but otherwise the bike and I (minus my pride) were OK.

Also in 1989 another guy and I were riding fast down a very long mountain descent in the Jura mountains outside of Solothurn, Switzerland when the other guy attempted to take a curve in the road with his inside pedal straight down. The pedal struck the road, he went down hard and broke his collarbone. I chained both bikes to a fence around some sheep grazing land near the side of the road and a passing motorist drove this other guy and me to the local hospital. Another guy drove me back to recover the bikes the next day.

In 1990 a pivot pin for a lever that actuated my bike's drum brakes (bike was a drop-bar road geometry bike but had drum brakes, which I'd never seen before until I got to Switzerland) sheered off, wrapped the brake cable around the axle, and jerked my handlebars 90 degrees to the right in a fraction of a second. I did a Superman over the bars and landed on my hands. Fortunately I was in great shape and had been doing lots of pushups for several years so I was able to break the fall without breaking either my hands/wrists/arms or my face, and so other than gravel embedded in my palms and a hole in my pants, I was OK. I was able to repair the bike, replace the brake cable, that sheered-off pivot, etc. and get it ridable again.

Other than some falls that really hurt on my MTB, and hurting my shoulder really badly after falling over once while clipped in on my MTB after coming to a sudden stop and not getting my shoes unclipped in time, I've been fortunate over the last few years since I've been riding again. No serious incidents yet on my road bikes (and trying hard to keep it that way, knock on wood).
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