Monday, June 23, 2008
Another Bike Wreck
Day One of commuting, I ran over a bunch of sticks, and one limb went up in my spokes causing me to get thrown over the handlebars and breaking the fork on the front wheel. I finally got it fixed, and today rode in again to work. On the way home, not 100 yards from the house, I was passing a house when a huge dog started barking at me, and rammed his head through the fence, breaking one of the board (or either having had broken it already). It completely terrified me and I crashed my bike again. After I wrecked, and after wanting to kill the dog who continued to bark and stick his ginormous head through the fence, I started to ride off, and realized something I'd always thought about but never articulated. When you ride your bike on a road in which there is (a) a sidewalk and (b) a lip separates the road from the sidewalk (a kind of either lip up or lip down), and (c) you're riding on a road that is already kind of narrow and not necessarily for bike riding, there's a tendency to kind of get paranoid about getting hit and so ride really close to the lip or the sidewalk. But then doing that, you can get into this weird psychological equilibrium where your arms and hands get paralyzed and you're terrified to turn your handlebars for fear you'll hit the lip and crash. So you ride like a freak, sort of, in this obsessive straight line, scared to death that the smallest little movement will end up killing you, as you can't quite turn your handlebars. So what should you do, and is that even called something?
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2 comments:
In many cases like this, it's advisable to take the whole road. In other words, act like a car. Drivers in general know how to behave when another vehicle is on the road. If the vehicle is sort of on the road but really in the gutter, it gets confusing. Drivers are just as anxious as you.
But it is also curious to move over and let the cars pass. So I would say, don't feel like you have to stay pinched in the gutter. Use the road as well.
But I also will just go on the side walk if there is heavy traffic. But usually I can find roads that are not heavy with traffic so it's not often a problem.
That's what I was wondering. Good advice. I've been intimidated to take up the whole road, but at the same time, I'm leaving myself no room for error by riding so close to the sidewalk. My new commute is much worse than my old commute. In my old town, my commute was 3-4 miles on a country road where I could go fast and there was no stopping. Then I moved onto a more trafficked road, but with longer stretches without a stop sign or light. Now it's almost entirely residential roads, then to downtown, and so I'm constantly having to watch myself, stop, restart. I don't work up nearly the sweat, either, as I used to - but the commute is much longer, too, so hopefully it balances out.
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