Chapter 7

One of the first things they teach young riders, all full of themselves and their seeming immortality, in all the good professional team cycling camps, is how to fall off of the bike so as to do the least amount of hurt to your body. They don’t really give a shit about the bike, which is the first thing a recreational rider involved in a crash asks about; they care about the asset, aka your skinny little ass! In camp, they work you through as many possible situations where you, and your skinny little ass, becoming separated from your bike is a very real possibility.

One of the situations they spend what at the time seemed like too much time on is crashing on a descent. All these young guys think they know how to go fast on a bike, I mean, that’s why they’re in camp, right? Because they are already fast on a bike. But spend a week in downhill boot camp, and the smart rider finds out pretty quickly that you don’t really know Jack about descending. And the dumb ones? Well, there’s always those division two teams...

Although pretty much everything about road racing is about speed, learning to really fly on a descent is an almost Zen-like experience. All the really good descenders get a sort of glassy-eyed kind of look when you ask them to describe what they do to go so fast. This is quickly followed by the cycling version of the “no shit, there I was...” story. Anyway, the reason they spend so much time teaching you how to crash is that far more accidents happen on descents than in any other part of a road race, and many of them can be fatal. Period, end of story ... Adios muchacho!

My coaches really tried to scare the shit out of all of us, and we all nodded like good little sheep as they told us all about the horrors of crashing on an alpine descent. Then we all got on our bikes and tried to prove Darwin wrong! Cyclists as a group are a little out of balance anyway, and professional cyclists (and the wanna be’s) are the most whacked out of the lot. Though, I think, it does support Darwin’s theory about survival of the fittest pretty well. Not necessarily survival of the mentally fittest, however...

Most of us had one good spill, and a couple got the full tumble dry treatment. The tumble dry is what happens when you crash with a lot of speed on the bike. Usually, the rider clips out of the pedals (usually!) and the bike does a pretty fair imitation of that poor schmuck on the Wide World of Sports ‘agony of defeat’ bit. Normally, the rider in question also gets to donate a skin sample to the asphalt gods. Anyway, when you finally come to rest, you look like you’ve been in the tumble dry cycle of a clothes dryer. And all the stuff you were carrying is now spread all over the road in what cyclists call a ‘yard sale’. Oh, and your potentially costly sponsored bike is now pretty much toast! Not only did you crash in such stunning fashion, but you now get to ride back to the base camp in the broom wagon ... and get razzed about it for weeks to come. Oh, and the next bike the mechanical staff gives you is a piece of crap. You don’t get a good ride until you prove you can stay on it!

It’s kind of funny what shit drifts to the front of your mind as you are falling off the side of the hill and into God only knows what on your bike. Speaking of which, all that fancy training I was now recalling had made one thing clear: If you know you’re going to crash, start seeking a soft place to land. Hmmm...

“The road itself looks a little hard,” myself says to myself. “And that barrier on the edge might not give a whole lot. Wonder if I can clear that and tumble into the nice ... ditch full of brambles. Shit, that’s not going to do. How about I clear the handlebars, and the ditch, and land in the nice soft grass on the hillside? How about Tinkerbell shows up with her pixie dust! Well, I guess there’s no time like the present to learn to fly!”

And just like that, time returns to normal speed. The bike slams into the barrier and I un-clip and fly superman style over the handlebars. I try to tuck and roll as I barely clear the brambles and hit the hillside at full speed. Though the grass is indeed soft-looking, the ground under it is hard as, well, dirt. Dirt mixed with rocks! The air is driven out of my lungs in a whoosh and I see stars and then Elvis before I come to rest prone on the side of the embankment. And that’s where I remain for I don’t know how long until I return to the land of the living.

“Mister, are you alright?” says a sweet sounding voice as I return to earth, at least in spirit form. My body had come to earth rather forcefully earlier.

“Ohhh, shit...” I manage as a witty repartee while trying to take slow stock of the situation. When I open my eyes, I see a vaguely blond-ish image that seems a little fuzzy and sort of wrong feeling. Fighting to focus, I realize why it seems wrong ... she’s up-side-down.

“Are you alright?” asks my blond vision once more, with a hint of concern now tinging her tone.

“Give me a sec...” I say and groan as I try to move my arms. I hurt all over, but nothing sharp, so I must be okay after all. Slowly, I sort of crab crawl to put my head uphill and then try to sit up, which causes my head to spin a bit. My angel grabs my arm and tries to keep me from doing that, and I go along without much of a fight.