His Keos are brand new. Cleats are basically brand new. Barely 200 miles tops.

Now...my take on the incident....

We're just starting in the preserve when I realize that he's never been in there before. This preserve is some geological abnormality in the region. Kind of like a little chunk of Wisconsin broke off and drifted south. It's a series of severe, short, up-downs...like a freeking roller coaster.

I laid my bike down going through there last year on a sweeping off-camber curve that ended up having 2 turn radii...the second being the tighter one of course.

So I'm warning CyLowe the whole time..."Man, these are steeper than they look. Don't let them fool you. My tire usually loses grip climbing a couple of these at the end. Take it easy. I've laid it down going through here......" etc....

I think CyLowe turned all of this into some sort of direct challenge. We were at the bottom of a particularly steep section towards the end, and he turns to me (giving me "the look" I'm pretty sure ) I think I remember he was talking about the Horrible Hilly, and how I was going to die on it, and proceeded to mash the hill. I can't remember exactly...I was busy downshifting.

Well he gets about 1/4 to 1/2 way up this thing and I see him vere left and hear a gun shot. Turns out it's his drivetrain trying to drop a gear on the cassette. I look down at his cassette and see that he's 3/4 of the way up it as he's attempting to downshift.

I think to myself, "he's going to bail." Just then he lays it over.

Now let's recap some of the things I've seen CyLowe do over the last year or so.
1. First ride we went on he did a clipless fall at an intersection (probably my fault becasue I was in front and did a stall at startup)

2. His first road clipless pedals were some Ritchey's that had their retaining ring let go...pedal came off the spindle while still attached to his foot, and he went careening off the road and came inches from face planting into the side of a semi-trailer

3. This hill climbing adventure.

As he mentioned he gets up, walks it off, feels embarassed, and goes to clip back in and can't. My first reaction is that he twisted the cleat way out of position. He fall hard to the side and from experience I thought maybe he hadn't tightened down the cleat bolts tight enough.

Then I hear him say "OH SNAP!"...literally. We were quite a ways out too. He cycled through it like a champ. I racked my brain for any solution I could come up, but he just carried on.

While riding with CyLowe can be entertaining, you have to give it to the man...he knows how to suffer through mechanicals. Me, I throw in the towell and call for backup.

...BTW I'm still laughing. It must have really hurt and I feel bad, but that was some funny stuff.