A few weeks ago I learned the hard way about slippery footbridges.


My accident took place on the Northwest Lancaster County, Pa River Trail, which like many rail-trails is mostly paved. This trail also has quite a few footbridges made out of metal and wood or perhaps that manmade decking material. A few weeks ago I was riding early Sunday morning after it had rained some the night before. The trail itself was fine and I knew that I had to be mindful of slippery wet leaves especially with all the curves in this trail but didn't take into account the bridges. Most of them are only slightly inclined but there is one adjacent to the Marietta Boat Club that is maybe 10 or 15˚ as it goes down on one side. As is typical there's a pole at the end which I swerved to go around as you normally would but my front wheel lost traction on the wet decking and down I went onto the path. My right knee and elbow get scraped up but it's my wrists, mainly the left one, that took the brunt of the impact. Luckily I had a scarf in my bag which I used to stop what bleeding there was. The chain on my Trek DS3 was knocked off but the bike itself didn't sustain much of any damage. After licking my wounds for a few minutes and collecting my shock and anger I walked the bike back over the bridge, reset the chain, and then rode back to my car but could only use my right hand which hurt less than the left. The X-ray revealed that nothing was broken thankfully, it was just a bad sprain, and hopefully, I'll be able to ride again this weekend. The bike is just a year old and the tires still have a lot of meat on them and were at around 40psi.


The moral of this long story is, be careful on those bridges in wet conditions!