Crashing in the cold

"Are you all right?"

The sweet little old lady asked me the question while sitting in the bus stop shelter, as she watched me disentangle myself from my bike. The bike and I were sprawled in the lane of traffic on Sturgeon Eddy Road, and my first thought was that the bus she was waiting for would come around the corner and forever press me into the blacktop.

It was at mile 13 of a 14-mile loop I was riding in 10-degree weather.

I quickly stood up, and dragged my body and bike off the street. Once on the sidewalk, I moved my joints, checked my legs and looked for fresh blood. Everything worked, and nothing was leaking out of my body, except for the clear viscous snot dripping out of my nose. I wiped it with a leather mitten and turned to the lady.

"You know I think I am all right," I said.

"That was a nasty fall," she said. "You were going quite fast."

I'm not exactly sure how fast I was going. It did not seem to be an unreasonable or reckless speed at the time, but the result proved that judgment to be overly optimistic.

All I did was come around a corner of Grand Avenue, a stretch of road that requires bicyclists to use the sidewalk, and turn onto Sturgeon Eddy. I glanced back over my left shoulder to see if traffic was clear and angled to make the move from sidewalk to street at a driveway. What I didn't see was a small frozen mound of snow, which I hit dead on. My front wheel jumped up, and down, and my mittened hands were jerked from the handlebars.

I went down, sliding and rolling into the lane of traffic. All in front of the little old lady in the bus shelter, who watched it all with wide eyes.

My helmet protected my head, and three layers of warm clothes, including neoprene booties on my feet, protected everything else. I apologized to the lady for scaring her, for crashing in front of her, for causing her worry.

And then I rode home. It actually was a great ride.