Be careful!

I am by nature kind of a cautious rider anyway, (too new to the sport to trust my skills completely, and too old to be reckless), but recent events make me pause and consider the nature of this sport. Most of you are aware of Ron N.'s meeting with a car last week which resulted in a number of fairly serious injuries, and last night the teamFIRE ride was cut short by Kaelly's encounter with a section of road on NW 12th that was horribly patched by some road crew that though it appropriate to leave a 10 foot long, three inch high ledge at the edge of the patch running parallel to the road - and right on the other side of railroad tracks, which only made this section harder to ride through. Her forearm was hurting her pretty badly, and we waited until someone could come and take her for x-rays. Hopefully it was just a bad bruise.

Ron was hurt in the same area of town, when a car following another car which was pulling a boat hit him on a road where there is no room to bail out. From now on, when there is a median without a shoulder to the right (or anything else that narrows the lane so that a passing car has to stay in the same lane with me), I am going to take the lane until the road widens. If the car has to wait, too bad. On the south end of town, that situation exists to a degree on 14th street - although there is a little bit of shoulder there.

Anyway, be careful - especially out north. Hopefully the normal weather pattern will assert itself and start blowing from the south again.