It Must Be the Week for Crashes

 My friend John led another long bike ride this past week. I recently wrote about John's craziness as a ride leader, and so I was marveling at how perfect this ride was. He has pre-ridden the route so we knew where we were going. We were riding the surprisingly good trails through Prince Georges County, headed to Lake Needwood. The weather was perfect. Yeah, we got stopped a little short of our goal by a downed tree which blocked the path, but no matter - we were all having a good time. And then Jim went down.

We were on the Northwest Branch Trail, ducking under East-West Highway. The trail runs alongside a creek, and the whole thing descends to get under the road, so you speed up a bit from the downhill. Going under the road, the trail is narrow, with a railing on one side and a wall on the other. Somehow Jim misjudged it. I think he hit the railing, or he just have lost his balance. In any case, his bike went down and he hit the ground hard. I was behind him and saw it happen, and the way he hit the ground I thought he might have been seriously injured. Jim is, after all, one of the older riders in a senior citizen bike group - an octogenarian, he only this year switched to riding an ebike. He ain't young, but he's tough!

Crash location (courtesy of Google Maps)

The rest of us gathered around him. I implored him to stay still and not move but, ornery old bird that he is, after a few minutes he got up, and we saw that his face was bloody, his glasses were trashed, and one eye was already swollen shut. He was soon up and walking around, ignoring my request that he sit down, or at least lean on the railing. He had said he felt a little dizzy, and I was worried that he might take another fall. fortunately, he seemed generally OK, and the bleeding was superficial and stopped quickly.

Bike crash victim

Anyway, the next thing we had to do was to figure out how to get him out of there. As I mentioned, we were right at the crossing of a major road. Another cyclist and I scrambled up the embankment and could see that we were maybe a quarter mile from a shopping center (and a Metro stop, it turns out). We considered getting Jim and his bike up to the road and walking him to the Metro stop and having someone escort him home, but decided that was a bad idea. We would call 911.

Jim's Apple Watch was ahead of us. It had detected the crash and had dialed 911 for him. This is a nice feature (and it works!), except that even under the best of circumstances it's hard to have a conversation on a watch (sorry, Dick Tracy), and that problem is even worse when you're distracted from just having crashed and are surrounded by cyclists asking if you're all right. Jim was having an unproductive conversation with the 911 dispatcher via his watch. We hung up and called 911 from a cell phone. To their credit, they immediately correlated our call with the incident report they had received from the Apple Watch. To our dismay, it was hard for them to figure out where to send help, since we didn't have a street address. "The Northwest Branch Trail, right where it crosses under East West Highway" is actually a very precise location, but apparently not the kind of location specification they're used to dealing with. We saw an ambulance go by on East West Highway, but it didn't stop. Eventually, a pair of cops found us and they communicated with the ambulance to guide it to our location.

Since Jim was able to walk, he went on foot (holding onto one of the cops for support) about 500 ft. to where the ambulance had stopped. Then they put him on the stretcher, loaded him in, and took off to the ER. The cops took his bike. Jim had called his son, who was on his way to meet him at the ER. At that point, the remaining group members cycled back to the start. We heard from Jim later; he did get a couple of stitches in his face, but was otherwise OK. I'm certain we'll see him back out on his bike soon!

That was Tuesday's crash. Thursday's crash was something I saw only from a distance, but it was strangely enjoyable. Regular readers of this blog know that I'm not a fan of rowers. They're the most inconsiderate river users, with an attitude that they own the river and that everyone else has to get out of their way - after all, you can't expect them to ever yield to you since they're facing backwards and can't see where they're going. Also, for the last few years the Washington-Liberty HS rowing team has been launching from the same dock my kayak group uses. This isn't usually a problem, but for the past few weeks they're been having some sort of Learn to Row program and have been clogging up the dock just when we want to use it - the previous week we had cooled our heels for 20 minutes waiting for a bunch of novice rowers to get out and haul the shells up off the dock. So, I admit to having schadenfreude over rowers' mishaps.

We launched without incident (the rowers weren't there, thank goodness) and headed up the river. As we passed under Memorial Bridge we noticed four eight-person crew shells racing down the river alongside Roosevelt Island. They were moving fast, with coaches on motor launches egging them on - clearly they were racing each other. But there was a problem in that there was a motorboat anchored just off of the south end of Roosevelt Island, right in their path. Now, the coaches should have noticed this and directed the rowers to turn left. I think the presence of the obstacle should have been clear to them as they passed under Roosevelt Bridge, at least 1,000 feet - roughly three football fields - in advance. But they didn't react. Instead, they kept egging the rowers on, and only very belatedly switched to yelling at the rowers to change course. Unfortunately, a sixty foot long, eight person crew shell does not turn on a dime. The last thing I heard the coaches yell was, "Don't Hit the Boat! Don't Hit the Boat!" Then we saw one of the shells stop abruptly as it, well, hit the boat (the other shells continued the race).

Fortunately, the hit didn't seem (or sound) hard. The shell didn't flip over or sink. No one wound up in the water. The coach's launch was right there to help. I'm guessing that the power boat wound up with nothing more than a scratch. But it was very satisfying to see the river lice screw up in a way which was so obvious that even they couldn't deny their screw-up.

So, have fun, but be careful out there!