what you don't know can hurt you

April 19th, 2006

Apparently the university decided some road work had to be done and now getting to and from the various buildings has become a problem, depending on rainfall as well as where they decide to excavate next. Little did I think of this today as I was headed for the Educatorium. On the way, there was a section closed off due to road work, with metal fences preventing any traffic. Today the fences were open on both sides, so I decided to go right through it. It was just sand on the asphalt anyway, I didn't give it much though. Almost at the end of the supposedly closed off area (where people walked freely), there was a section of asphalt missing, filled with sand. The gap was probably 1m long and I assumed it was just a thin layer of asphalt missing. As I ride over it, I see my front wheel sink into the sand, turns out it was a bit deeper than I thought. I was going at a reasonable speed, so when my front wheel finally popped out onto the asphalt on the other side, I had pretty much lost control of where I was going. Somehow I ended up crashing right into the metal fence, making a lot of noise. It was really weird, I'd never had anything like this happen before. I did a quick status check of the bike and everything seemed fine. Except the chain had come off in the front and tangled up around the pedal, so dragging it back in place got my hand rather black with grease. Later I would discover something happened to the gears, cause they now skip without warning.

I had a similar accident a few years ago, similar in that once again I didn't see it coming. I was in a hurry to get to school before they close at 11pm, I think I needed a printout or something. It was fairly dark, I was going down a steep hill and then onto a gravel road which again turned downwards. On the gravel, I made a turn and skid. It may have been October, we had had snow, but it had melted. Little did I know that under the dust where I skid, there was a nice layer of ice and there's no way I could have seen it. I hit my head on the ground, started bleeding and I've been much more careful on the bike ever since.

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3 Responses to "what you don't know can hurt you"

  1. erik says:

    Crazy. You should have those two extra little wheels at the back and a huge flashlight.

  2. numerodix says:

    You're the kind of person who would tell Schumacher to "learn to drive" if he cut you off in traffic :P

  3. erik says:

    Yes, actually :D