Blather on Bicycling

By now, most La Grande cyclists have discovered that Foothill Rd has just been tarred and bouldered. This puts our spring time trial location in jeopardy. Rad Doc and I were out for a 4.5 hour ride in the rain the yesterday, circling the valley on our cyclocross bikes. We decided to head over and take a look at Foothill to assess the damage. It hadn’t been broomed yet so I got off my bike and hunched down for a close inspection. Unfortunately, the cragged rocks that I tried to move were stuck to the tar. Unless we get more really hot weather, I’m afraid we’ll be TTing on mountain bikes next spring. I’ll remain optimistic because Foothill is the best place around to time trial, despite the wind.

So we kept cruising down Foothill in the rain. Then, what happened next was frightful.  Usually my discourse is laden with sarcasm, but my explanation henceforth will be completely unembellished. In geek language, ”</sarcasm>”. A southbound car came around a corner at rally-car speed. We were riding side by side on the inside of the corner, going the opposite direction. The driver lost rear wheel traction and began sliding sideways with the front of the car pointed toward us. I had a slow-motion, life-flashing-before-eyes experience and foresaw the car careening straight into us. A similar incident happened to me while driving in Texas. A car fishtailed to the right and then came straight across the road into my lane, fortunately missing me because I mashed the gas pedal to move out of his way. In this scenario on my bike, I reacted by riding straight into the ditch. Rad took a wait-and-see approach, almost like he was playing chicken with the car. Not a bad approach, since he won and somehow the driver scooted past. The car was a amber bronze metallic colored sedan and we know it wasn’t our cycling friend Pro Bono Ciclo (who also drives a similar looking car), because Rad Doc saw the driver’s mustached balding overweight carcass during the stare down. So we survived that near death experience; yet another reason to reduce the speed limit on Foothill and maybe add some speed bumps on top of the gravel.