Be careful out there

Congratulations to me for not updating this site in one point five years. 🤔

I guess I need to update regarding my progress on 2024 cycling goals:

• Unbound Gravel 100 miles in less than 8 hours - Broke my shoulder a few weeks before the event and did not attend. Worked the expo this year and after another look I am not sure this event is for me but then again maybe it is?

• 13 century rides - Did 4. Shoulder injury stole some motivation and morale. 

• Bring back Fondo Smithers ride from Minneapolis to Duluth. - Did not organize a group ride but did the ride solo on October 12. It was one of my best rides of the year.

• Minneapolis to Elkhart Lake Wisconsin - Nope. We'll see about doing that this year. 

So that wraps up 2024.

This post is about another topic and that is one of awareness and the unexpected hazards that can come your way when least expected.

I was riding one of my favorite routes last Memorial Day weekend. We have family in the Elkhart Lake area of Wisconsin and I like to spend a day riding north through the farm lands and then east to the shore of Lake Michigan. From there I ride along the shore to a point about 10 miles north of Sheboygan at which point I start working my way back west to Elkhart. It's usually 120 - 130 miles, depending upon how I feel.

On this day I felt fantastic and the miles were clicking by. I had ridden past the two nuclear plants along the shore and through Two Rivers and down towards Manitowoc on the way to a 130 mile day. Memorial Drive along the lake side is two lanes going both directions but the outside lane on my side was barricaded off with those thin waist high orange cones due to some construction. The road was fine, closed to traffic, so I just kept riding in that lane confident in the belief that I didn't have much to worry about. 

My next memory is that of sitting in the grass, with my bike next to me, watching two police cars and an ambulance pull up on the road behind me. My head was throbbing and my right hip and lower back hurt so bad I thought it was broken. It was very confusing and I could tell the EMT crew was pretty concerned. They relaxed a bit after they asked me what year it was and I asked them if they wanted to know what year I wish it was. Jokes.

From what I have been able to piece together, apparently I was passing a cross street intersection where another row of those cones was joining the existing row to my left. I think I was trying to split between two of those cones and did not notice that there was some kind of cord that had been strung between the cones. I believe the cord got tangled around my bike, brought it to a halt and launched me forward, over the bars and down on my back and head. If you look close at the above photo you can see the cord wrapped around my bike in the above image.

I'm not sure that I was ever totally out, but I don't remember moving off the road into the grass. I don't remember taking the aforementioned photo. I don't remember untangling my bike from the cord. But I did all these things before EMT rolled up.

Garmin Incident Detection had notified my wife of a problem and she twice tried to reach me by phone before I apparently called her back after what seemed to her to be forever. She did not care for the way I sounded, called 911 and directed them to my exact location thanks to Garmin LiveTrack. This is not a Garmin ad and I am not sponsored by Garmin. But I do endorse those features, or something similar if you don't have a Garmin unit.

Off I went to the ER, a quick 5 minute ride in the ambulance (at $1k per mile I am sure) where I had a CT scan and an X-ray. No internal bleeding and nothing fractured. No road rash. Just a headache, sore back, smashed helmet and scrapped up bike. All in all pretty lucky. Head felt pretty close to normal the next day and a few more visits to the chiropractor will have my back in good shape again.

My point in posting this is that I never thought that there would be some kind of cord connecting road cones that I would need to be aware of. I'll never forget it now however. 

How many other things are lurking out there, waiting to cause problems or injury when we happen to come upon them?

I guess I need to be a bit more vigilant even on the relaxing all-day casual rides.

Stay safe my friends.