July 25, 2004Apparently my mountain biking skills have increased greatly, to the point where I rarely wreck when offroad. So the Bruise Report has been sadly lacking for material. However, dear reader, freakish things still happen on a road bike!
So I head out for a road ride with Jason on a Sunday afternoon. We get about 5 miles from the house, and I'm out of the saddle cranking at 15mph up a hill. I hear a little 'click' come from the back of my bike somewhere. The bike suddenly stops, but of course I keep going headfirst into the pavement.
No idea what exactly happened to the bike -- either I got something stuck in my spokes, or the drivetrain seized up, or the rear wheel became loose. Anyway, the result was me flying off the bike into the pavement, the frame remaining where it stopped, and the rear wheel flew 30 feet past me up the road. The whole rear wheel detaching itself from the bike and flying past me with a slingshot effect, that's kinda freaky.
Luckily, Jason found my wheel in a ditch and rotated my handlebars back into place (they got sorta messed up by the impact), and I was able to slowly ride home. Slowly, because I didn't really trust my bike not to throw me again.
