Thank God for helmets

[bluegoose]

A brand new Giro Atmos likely saved my friends life this weekend.

Short ride report this week from the Tour of the unknown Coast.

We started out with the main peleton on a beautiful Saturday morning with temps in the mid-40's and partly sunny skies. It was a huge main pack, the largest I've ever seen at this ride, probably 300 guys (and gals).

We made it to the the base of the first climb at mile 9 in good shape about 30-40 riders back from the front. The lead group took off with one of my buddies in it. The other 4 of us settled into the second group for a series of rolling hills. My legs were feeling great at this point. We settled into a little pace line with about 8 or 9 guys rotating out, moving along at about 23-25 mph. All of a sudden one guy comes sprinting around us from the back of the line to take the lead of the pace line. I was thinking thats kind of weird to do an effort like that with 85 miles and 9,000 feet of climbing to go.

We settle back into a rhythm with new guy at the lead. About 60 yards before we were to make a left hand turn onto Hwy 101 he hits his brakes hard. No hand signals, no hazard in the road or anything. I'm in 3rd position at this time. The guy in front of me brakes and swerves hard to the left to miss the lead guy. I brake and swerve right to miss him, missing his rear tire by probably half an inch. The guy behind me, a buddy of mine, taps my rear wheel and veers right into the guard rail. The guy behind him, also my buddy, hits his rear wheel hard, loses control and flips over his handlebars, landing on his left hip and smashing the back of his head into the pavement. I looked back just in time to see his back toward me flying through the air and hitting the pavement.

By the time I circled around and got back to him, he was just moaning and rolling back and forth on the ground. He was pale and his eyes were on a different planet. We worked hard to keep him awake while someone else called the ride support line. He started to come to about 5 minutes later, wondering what had just happened and where he was. Interestingly enough, he knew his name, address, and phone number the whole time, he just didn't know where he was.


Long story short. He was in varying degrees of never-never land for about an hour. The ride support medical personnel never came. My friends wife eventually came to get us, about an hour after the wreck, and took us back to the starting line. There was not a single medical person there. They said there were a couple of ambulances on the course about 40 miles away. So we decided to take him up to Eureka, about 20 miles away, to get a head CT due to the loss of consciousness. Everything checked out okay, and they called it concussive syndrome and told to stay off the bike for 2-6 weeks. He was not happy, as he is headed to Maui this weekend with some good riding planned.

His helmet was cracked in about 8 places, his sunglasses were toast and his $600 Polar computer flew off about 10 yards away into the grass and had the face plate cracked pretty good. One of his saddle stays was also broken clean through. But orthopedically, he came out amazingly well, with only a bruise on his hip.

So I got a brisk 15.92 miles in this weekend, and I paid $50 to do so. But my buddy was okay, so I guess I am too. My other buddy in the fourth position right behind me was pretty shaken up by the whole thing and is not too sure about continuing the whole ride-biking thing. My buddy in the lead group did very well, finishing in the top 20 overall.

But we had a great day yesterday, spending several hours at the beach after church before both of my girls projectile vomitted on the car trip home.