If anyone isn't aware, the town of Newport, RI has a large tourism industry. I've learned over the last 3 years that cycling and tourists are not a good combination. I've had close calls before from people paying more attention to what they are doing while driving than looking at the sights. Anyway, today I came real close to eating someone's license plate for lunch.
I was just in the first 5 miles of my ride. The first part of the ride is a straight, rolling road. I was unfortunately on the Tri bike. This means that I'm in the aerobars. Due to the fact that I was on a slight downhill, my speeds were fairly fast. Well, all of the sudden, a 20 year old decides to back out of his driveway from the opposite side of the road as me to head the same direction as I was going. Even though I was in the middle of the lane, the kid either didn't see me, or didn't look. I jump off the aerobars onto the brakes as fast as I can, which isn't all that easy, and start slamming on the brakes. As I do, a lady comes running out of the driveway screaming trying to get the kids attention to pull back in. For some unknown reason, he decides not to move. Which turned out to be a good thing. I had only one option: head left into the oncoming lane and turn into his driveway. Because he was sitting in the middle of the road, the car coming the other direction had stopped. The woman came over to me asking if I was ok. I was just shaken a bit.... so I clipped in and headed back out. As I'm leaving, the kid tried to say something but all I hear is the woman (who I assume was the mother) yelling at the top of her lungs at the kid that he could have killed me.
After this incident, the decision was easy to avoid Newport at all costs, especially on a holiday weekend! My weekday local evening rides may have to stop...
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5 comments:
That's frightening and I'm so glad you are ok! Lately, I'm more nervous about riding on the roads than ever before. Even the quiet times of day don't seem so quiet anymore. Haven't really blogged about it or talked about it much, but I've been feeling pretty overwhelmed by the road conditions and traffic.
Just had my first ride back on the road today....maybe I should stick to the trainer, I also had a car go across me without looking, not a close call like yours, but you have to ask the questions about drivers........
I just came over from Sarah's blog. Glad that you managed to get out of the TT bars and onto the brakes. I'm always scared to use TT bars on roads for exactly that reason. Did you get to check out your max heart rate? Bet it was sky high?
Interesting... I actually replaced the battery in the heartrate strap because it wasn't connecting to the Garmin that morning before the ride. I'll definitely have to check it out!!
Went back and checked my heartrate from the Garmin. 121 bpm before, 151 bpm when I got going again. The quick spike could also be from jumping back onto the road.
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