The plan was to meet at Z's place in Kirkland for a 9:30am rollout on the tandem with a few Zoka teammates. I decided to drive 520 this morning, only to find out that it was closed. Great. I turned up 15 minutes late so we didn't really roll out until nearly 10. That caused a wrinkle since we planned to meet other teammates along the route at Redhook Brewery and Z didn't bring his phone, so had no one's numbers to let them know.
As the four of us cruised towards RedHook, Cole and Joe moved up the road ahead of Z and I. A guy in a green car comes along and blares the horn at them. Both of them were riding on the shoulder and weren't impeding him at all. They waved and then the guy became completely combative. He stopped his car and screamed obscenities, then tried to swerve into Cole. WTF? After a few tense minutes the guy finally turned off the road, still screaming obscenities and being a royal jackass. How in the hell do people like this have licenses to drive?
We made it to RedHook, shaking our heads about our encounter but didn't see either of the two teammates we were supposed to meet. I had my phone so after a few calls to track down numbers we got in touch with Rick, who couldn't figure where the hell we were. We finally connected with him but unfortunately our other teammate, Greg, gave up on us and headed home. Sorry Greg!
Shortly after leaving RedHook Cole got a flat, but was quickly underway and met us up the road. After that was the most exciting moment of the day. Z and I had just come down a steep descent on the tandem when I heard this unbelievably loud "BANG". I remember thinking, "What the hell? That crazy guy in the car isn't shooting at us is he?" Then I quickly realized something was wrong with the tandem and we were going down.
Z and I hit the deck, but luckily he was able to get us slowed down before we crashed, so aside from bruised hands, hips, and my bloody road-rashed knee, we were in pretty good shape. I think both of us were in a little shock that we had crashed the tandem. Our CSI instincts kicked in and we figured the front tire tube blew with such force that it blew the tire right off the rim. There was a massive hole in the tube and about 7" of sidewall was blown on the tire. Crazy! I took some pics of the damage. If you look closely you can see $$ in the tire (a sad attempt at a tire boot).
Z did an absolutely amazing bike handling job. We were pretty much riding on the front rim but he managed to get us slowed enough so we fell at probably 7-8mph rather than the 14-15mph we were going at the time. We couldn't believe our luck. Just a few seconds earlier we were bombing down a steep descent. Had that tire blown then we would have been hospital bound.Our awesome teammates rode back to Woodinville to get us a new tire and after a while we were underway again. Z and I were both a little apprehensive at first and it was hard to go very fast. We had to descend Novelty Hill, which was really unnerving. It didn't take us long to get our confidence back though and after a short while we were cruising along with little trouble.
After the crash everything finally smoothed out and we were able to do a 55-mi ride with around 3000' of climbing. Not too shabby after a tandem crash eh? We even managed to stop by Greg's house to apologize and let him know about our fiasco. He was happy to see us!
We took off at 10...figured to be done by 1 and ended up finishing the ride close to 5. Awesome eh? The good news is that aside from some scratches the tandem is just fine. Both Z and I are ok too. I'm starting to get some new bruises to add to the collection but nothing is too badly hurt. Once I finally cleaned my knee I realized the road rash is pretty minor, but it still stings. Stupid road rash.
All in all...a fun day!
1 comment:
WOW! LUCKY.....THAT'S MY GIRL!
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