Chapter 11 is posted. Chapter 12 will be sent to jetson63 before the weekend is over, and will be posted on 8/10. There is a distinct possibility that Chapter 13 may be delayed until the 24th as I will be traveling to a destination race that takes place on the morning of the 17th.
I am part of a weekly running group. More precisely, the rest of the group runs. I speed-walk a circuit around the shopping center where we all meet. When we all come back to the running store where we meet up, we hang out for a bit, shoot the breeze, and occasionally go out for coffee or a bite to eat afterward. They're a good bunch of people.
One of the group's organizers is a lady about my age who is more driven and has more energy than many people half her age. She works 10-hour days, meets up with us to run four miles after work on Monday, meets up with another group after work to ride her bike 20 miles on another evening, and somewhere in the middle of this she also runs a household with two young, active boys.
A month and a half ago, this lady - who I will call Kim to protect her privacy - was out with her riding group, training for the triathlon she was planning to do over Labor Day weekend. Sharing the road with her was a young man in a sedan who not only was texting on his phone, who not only was high, but who wasn't even supposed to be driving as his license had been suspended.
I'm not exactly sure of the circumstances, but his distracted self turned his car in the direction of the bike lane and the group of riders that were there. He hit Kim and, had she not been wearing a helmet, she likely would have been killed. As it is, she sustained a severe concussion, major road rash, and several broken bones, one due to the car running over her before it stopped.
Oh, and her back was broken, leaving her a paraplegic, possibly permanently (they still aren't sure yet).
People ... I know that there are cyclists who act like complete asshats in traffic. I know there are runners who will flip you off if you don't move your car clear to the other side of the road to get around them. On behalf of the road-racing community, I apologize for them and I am embarrassed to have them stand as the kind of representative of that community you seem to encounter most. I'm not asking you to like them. But please, I am asking you to be careful around them - and me - anyway.