[Bent] Round Valley ride of doom

[Old Pokey]

I feel like I won the Darwin award.  Don walked over the bridge carrying his
bike.  He put it down on the other side and then went back and took my bike
from my hands.  I just had to follow him without falling.  Steve says that
I panicked and hesitated mid step causing me to lose my balance.

All and all, I am happy to have come out relatively unscathed.  I am willing
to do this ride again, but only after the bride is fully repaired.



On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 8:33 PM, Rich Sadler <richsadler at comcast.net> wrote:

> The best thing I can say about the ride was, it could have been worse.
> Six of us met for the ride-John Tetz, Don Jacobus with his new moving
> bottom bracket FWD homebuilt, Steve Friedlander, Dick Ludwig, Andy
> Milstein & me (Rich Sadler) All went well until we came to a closed
> bridge over the Raritan. We decided to cross anyway even though the
> footing wasn't so great. While passing the bikes across, Andy slipped &
> fell about 10 feet off the bridge abutment. He looked pretty bad- bloody
> nose & groaning so I called 911. Andy is tougher than I thought, though
> & got up eventually. The ride left just before the cops pulled up,
> leaving me to deal with them without spilling the beans that we crossed
> illegally.
>    I caught up with Andy & the rest of the ride in Flemington, where
> Andy's wife collected him. She was understandably horrified & took him
> to the hospital to get checked out. He called me later that evening- no
> broken bones, they stitched up a cut on his ankle, & he's pretty sore-
> what a relief!
>    So now we were five. On the first hill out of Flemington, Steve's
> chain broke, & in the process, ripped his rear Derailer apart. We
> weren't able to pry his chain out of the rear sprocket, so we  cut the
> chain, leaving a piece jammed there, which prevented the freewheel from
> working. We took the rest of the chain & turned his bike into a single
> speed. Steve gamely rode the next 12 miles in one gear, taking his feet
> off the pedals on the downhills as they flailed away in front of him. In
> fact he made it up all the hills but the very last, steepest one on
> Allerton without dismounting. John, Dick & Don rode ahead with Steve's
> car keys so that he could come back along the route & pick him up.
> Either they underestimated Steve's fortitude or they stopped in a bar on
> the way back, because John pulled up when we had the worst hills behind
> us & only a mile to go.
>    So, not a great MARS ride. While it doesn't rank up with Andy's
> catastrophe, on the way home the clutch in my car started slipping! It
> was just one of those days you'd like to skip.
> Rich
>
>
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