My fault. Raining cats and dogs, just fitted some Marathon Supremes to the LHT, had them pumped up to full pressure, really liking them, feeling a bit invulnerable with the 2" rubber - Monster Truck and all that.

I was negotiating some steel plates on a section of street under construction and took one of the plates at a slightly too oblique angle which of course ended up flipping the bike hard sideways. Put me into the steel plate shoulder first. I found out the hard way crashing a big heavy bike, with a big heavy mess bag on your back hurts way more than crashing a light bike with no load. It was a great commute up to that point.

On the upside, the bike was hardly damaged as I took most of the force involved on my shoulder and in turn my ribcage, just a bent brifter and some surface damage to the left corners of the front and rear racks.

In retrospect, running panniers might have lessened the damage to me and the bike. I don't always do that because I generally need to be able to carry the bike at the beginning and end of my commute and a fully loaded bike can be such a bear to do that with. Slightly lower tire pressure might have been prudent, given the conditions, as well. It's just that those Marathon Supremes roll along Sooo nicely when they are pumped all the way up.

Anyway, could have been much worse.

One final note, I think that my trying to accommodate car traffic was the main reason I had this accident.

Instead of just taking the road for about Fifty Feet and running those steel plates head on, I was noodling about trying to get small and out of the way. I won't be doing that in future. I'll be taking the road.