Went on the "Training C" ride out of Loantaka tonight with the Morris Area Freewheelers. We were about 20 people when we left the parking lot and I hung out near the back of the pack for the first few miles and let everyone else sort out their place in the pack. I'm always amused by the riders who jockey for position in the first five miles of a group ride. What's the point? Are you really planning on going off the front for the next 25 miles on a C ride? Really?
After a while I noticed gaps forming and bridged between the gaps to move towards the front. I felt pretty good and wasn't working too hard. Not nearly as hard as I worked in the time trial race on Sunday. I had just latched onto the back of the front group of five or six guys when four of them made a sudden right hand turn. I turned with them because I'm too lazy and not talented enough to read my cue sheet and ride at the same time. Turns out it was a wrong turn. The guy directly in front of me must have looked down to check his cue sheet because I watched him veer right into the curb and dump his bike as he executed a near perfect shoulder roll onto someone's lawn. I yelled to the riders ahead of us to stop, slowed my bike, and turned around to see if the guy was hurt. He was already up off the lawn and walking over to his bike. He seemed a bit shaken up but able to get back on his bike and continue the ride. It was so weird to watch the crash develop in front of me. It was almost like watching it happen in slow motion. I remember thinking, "Why is he riding into the curb like that?" followed quickly by "He's going head over handlebars." and lastly, "Don't run over his bike!". Once I made sure he was ok, I started back up the hill we had just turned down by mistake. It sucks to be in the big ring and try to pedal uphill from a standing start. No fun at all but eventually, after much mashing of gears, I made it up the hill and back onto the route. By this time the group had ridden past us, oblivious to the fact that we had made a wrong turn, much less the crash.
Off I go in pursuit of the pack again. We're headed for the Great Swamp which is a terrific place to paceline, so I wanted to get back to the front of the pack and see if I could convince a few riders to practice rotating through a paceline with me. I caught up with the front group just as we turned into the swamp. There were five of us in our mini-group and the guys started long pulls at the front. After a few minutes of sitting on the back, hoping someone would make the brilliant suggestion of a rotating paceline, I decided that it wasn't going to happen unless I made it happen and pulled up along the left side of the line, asking each rider in turn if they were interested in trying a rotating paceline. All said they were up for it so I started the rotation and off we went. It probably wasn't the sloppiest paceline in the history of pacelines but for sure it wasn't the tightest either. But hey, that's what practice is for.
Paceline over and getting towards the end of the ride and there are three of us who made another wrong turn but the other two guys seem to know where we are going and assure me that we're almost back to the parking lot. Rich introduces himself and we chat for a bit about the quick pace for a C ride, the condition of the road and such. Rich is wondering how we didn't catch the riders in front of us when we were pacelining and I tell him that we were the front of the group ride at that point. He's convinced that there were riders in front of us because he took a wrong turn earlier in the ride and a bunch of riders passed by while he got back on route. I realize that I was in the same group as Rich when we took the wrong turn and that guy crashed, so I ask him if he saw the crash too. He didn't see it. In fact, he didn't realize there was a crash at all. That's how fast the crashed rider got back to his bike. All Rich saw was a few guys (including me) standing around. He figured we were checking the cue sheet to get back on route. Nope. So I'm in the middle of telling Rich about the crash when I spot a squirrel up ahead. It's hanging out at the edge of the brush under the guardrail and looks... squirrel-ly. At this point, Rich is directly to my left, and I yell "Squirrel", but apparently Rich didn't hear me. I watched the squirrel do that start, stop, start, stop thing that squirrels sometimes do and I realize that the stupid thing is actually going to pick now to cross the road. By the time I see it dash out from the guardrail, it's too late to try any evasive measures. I remember this scene from the movie, "Days Of Thunder", where there is a crash in front of Tom Cruise's car and there are cars skidding out of control all over the track and at least one car is on fire so there is smoke everywhere and Tom can't see through the smoke but he has to get past the skidding cars, so he trusts that he will find a clear path through the mayhem and he slams the pedal to the floor. Tom is lucky and makes it through unscathed. I figured I'd try the same thing. Too late to react to the squirrel dash, I figure the squirrel has the trajectory and speed of the bike figured out and I trust he's going to miss me and cross the road to get to the other side. I braced for impact just in case. Apparently this squirrel either didn't pass his squirrel physics class or he didn't see Rich's bike on the other side of me. It passed just in front of my front tire and got squished under Rich's tire. Rich didn't see it coming and hadn't heard my warning. He went down immediately and hard. One second he was next to me in conversation and then the wasn't there at all. I heard the crash and heard him groan and hit my brakes. I honestly thought that in a bike/squirrel collision, the bike would simply roll over the squirrel and the rider, though sketching for a few feet, would stay upright and continue riding along. Man was I wrong about that. (note to self: In the future, yield to all crazy-ass squirrels) My biggest fear was that Rich got hit by the car that just passed us going the other way when he went down. He didn't. Whew! I turned to assess the situation and saw Rich lying in the road next to his bike and the now dead squirrel. It didn't look good. John, who was trailing us by a few feet when this happened, immediately called 911. I stood over Rich and asked him if he was alright. He wasn't moving but he was talking. He had no idea that he just collided with a squirrel. He took a minute or two to take inventory of himself and then peeled himself off the pavement and flung the dead squirrel back into the woods. Road rash and bruises but nothing seems broken and no gashes. I'm impressed with the Mt. Vernon EMS team. They were on site in minutes and did an excellent job fixing Rich up. Really nice people. While John and I waited, I noticed Rich flatted his front tire during the crash. I changed his tire for him and the EMS squad convinced him to take a ride back to the parking lot in the ambulance. The whole event scared the crap out of me. I was five feet away from two accidents on the same ride? Holy crackers! Rich seemed ok when I left him at the parking lot and I hope he feels better soon and he's back on his bike by the weekend. He's a nice guy who had a bad day but lived to ride again.
Get well soon Rich.
Thanks for getting me back to the parking lot John.
Crazy-ass squirrels have the right of way from now on.
