Good ride, Ugly finish
April 28th, 2007 |I joined Billy, Scotty Rob and Dykes for a nice ride in the western suburbs this morning. We all agreed it was good that none of us went down to Sogn Valley as the legs were not really there. Dykes and Scotty Rob pushed the pace a bit around Lake Minnetonka while Billy and I sat on the back. I am having to re-learn the same lesson that I learned last year: Adequate recovery is far more important than the amount of training when an individual is pushing 40 years of age.
On the Greenway path heading back to Minneapolis from Hopkins we came across an accident only a handful of seconds old. Where the path crosses Blake Road it appeared that a recreational cyclist (shorts, shoes, no jersey, no helmet) had been t-boned by a car. He either attempted to escape being hit by the car, or was knocked down the road a bit because he was laying about 5 meters down from where the path crosses. His shattered bike was laying in front of the car, the driver of the car was standing next to the vehicle in an absolutely frantic state. The smashed front windscreen on the car was a testament to the violence of the incident. The cyclist was in bad shape with obvious head trauma. I took a look around and saw numerous people rendering aid to the cyclist, numerous others on mobile phones calling for help, and others (including Billy) attempting to calm down the overheated emotions of the driver as well as witnesses of the accident. So I decided to get the hell out of the way and rolled to the other side of the road. The initial image of blood and brain fluid on the road was plenty enough for me, I had no desire to see more of that.
Within a few minutes 3 Hopkins police squad cars arrived to take control of the scene. There was not much more that could be done so we made the decision to move on. It was not the best way to end what has been a very pleasant ride to that point. I’m left to wonder about the condition of the cyclist, things were not looking too good when we rolled on.
You see all kinds of unfortunate things on the bike if you ride long enough. You just hope not to be on the wrong side of the unfortunate thing.
Be careful out there.
