Entries this day: bike_injuries

bike injuries

6:38 pm Monday 1 April 2002

Four incidents while riding my bike to I-group tonight:

1. I was riding pretty fast on the sidwalk beside Richmond. In the upcoming intersection, a car was waiting at the light pulled forward enough to block the pedestrian crossing (not that one was marked).

   I was going too fast to comfortably go down the sidewalk into his street, curve around him and then back onto my previous path, so I considered jumping into the street way back here so I wouldn't have to do a quick dogleg around the car.

   Looked behind me - no cars for a mile. Bunny hopped sideways toward the street, but I didn't get my back wheel up far enough to clear the lawn between sidewalk and street. In the air... falling sideways... street coming soon... landed kinda sideways on the street. Scraped my left forearm under my elbow, bonk on left hip, slight scrape on left knee, bruise on inside left ankle where the crank on my bike landed. Glasses were a bit sideways, though my head didn't hit anything. Got up, rolled slowly to get my chain back onto the front sprocket, rode in front of the car that had stopped in my way. Didn't notice if s/he noticed me. Fortunately it was relatively smooth asphalt and not concrete.

2. My back tire came loose as I jumped up a curb. I'm guessing this was precipitated from my earlier wreck, after which I had not checked my components.

3. My chain came loose as I jumped off the curb to cross 610 on Richmond. This was somewhat bad timing cause I was in the street with cars behind me in rush hour traffic mode.

4. Another car was in my way at an intersection. I successfully transferred from sidewalk to street (rode over the grass instead of bunny hopping sideways) and as I prepared to bunny hop up the curb, I noticed a puddle 18 inches across or so between the curb and sidewalk. So I lifted *hard* and cleared that puddle, but there was another puddle just past it and my front tire went *splosh* into it and squirted muddy water on my shirt and hit me in the eye. Doh! I was close to arrival, so I didn't stop in search of water somewhere.

Rinsed my eye, washed my injuries when I got to I-group.