Crashing into 2021 Like Skin Doesn't Matter
The last time I crashed my bike, I was running late for a train to a film set (I'm a part-time horror movie actress because there is nothing funnier than shooting those things). I was hurtling along a cycle path which ends in a t-junction situation with a pavement and I took the corner with the wrong foot down.
Luckily, there's a high railing there, which stopped me falling into the road. I cut my hand up a little but mainly felt like a twat for temporarily forgetting how to ride a bike.
I fell off my new Ribble gravel bike a couple of times in December too. While I've ridden with SPDs innumerable times on road, I've never used them off-road. My ass met the ground three times on one winter ride, all while either stationary or almost stationary.
But crashing? That happens rarely.
Enter Dog A
I was cycling along the riverside path 10 days ago, which is half foot path, half cycle path. There's a white line dividing the two for a stretch until a strip of grass marks the divide.
Normally busy in summer and other warm weekends, it's currently pretty busy all the time, any day of the week. It's not just a path shared with humans either, there's a large population of swans that live alongside it too, a few resident little egrets and a whole host of ducks.
I like to think I'm a fairly observant cyclist. For a start, I've been riding my entire life and it's been my primary way of getting around since I was about 4. I'm well aware that Things Leap Out At You and You May As Well Be Invisible.
I'm also a little on the partially-sighted scale and have lost a few slabs of peripheral vision. This mostly means that I bump into supermarket shelf corners sometimes and people think I'm ignoring them if they're holding something out to me on my left. Mostly, it just means I have a considerably larger blind spot to check, which makes me pretty careful as I move through the world.
I've slowed down ultra-cautiously for many a dog in my time, particularly since living in Exeter and even more particularly in the last 12 months, when there appears to be ten times the quantity of dogs out and about.
I've come to this conclusion:
- Dogs are the only animals that run towards danger
- Dogs do not understand the difference between cycle paths and footpaths
- Concrete hurts
So, I was cycling along, probably around 12 mph but hard to say because a) I didn't have my speedo on and b) even if I had, I wouldn't have been able to look at it because I was looking where I was going.
The cycle path, for once, was actually clear of pedestrians. Since social distancing has come into effect, the lines have blurred somewhat as pedestrians are forced onto other paths to overtake each other. I get this. But on this day, it was clear.
There were a couple of women walking together with two dogs, one of which was trotting along by an ankle while the other was running up the opposite bank.
As I cycled past them, this dog was suddenly no longer up the bank but running across in front of its owner and straight out onto the cycle path. The only thing I had time to do as I watched my 23 mm tyre slam into the side of this exuberant creature was think, 'fuck, I'm going to kill it.'
Skin meets concrete
Every cyclist knows that it takes approximately minus 1 second to go from upright to concrete in damp conditions. I lay there trying to regain some semblance of action but all I could hear was the dog owner saying, 'I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, are you okay?' outside my head and oh god it'll be dead, I've killed a dog, inside my head.
'Let me pick up your bike,' said the dog owner. At the time, I couldn't understand why she was so keen to do that; my bike had already crashed, it could hardly get into more mischief now it was horizontal. In retrospect, I think she'd just recognised that she couldn't help me up because #covid, so this was her next best option to help out.
'Is the dog okay?' I started to pick myself up gingerly but couldn't quite bring myself to expand my view. I was utterly convinced it would be lying, panting its last breaths, a few metres away.
'Oh god she's fine!'
I looked up and there was the dog, bounding away down the path like it'd just won the lotto, towards another couple of cyclists.
The owner went off after the creature and her companion asked me repeatedly if I was okay. I stared after the dog, waiting for it to collapse from severe internal bleeding but it really did look fine.
It wasn't until the companion asked me if it was okay if she went off to help catch the dog that I realised I was just standing there, doing nothing at all.
I cycled home and got back into the flat to cry with the shock and peel off my leggings to ascertain why I was in so much pain.
The crash took a healthy chuck out of my handlebar tape and upset my back brake a little but I was riding my old road bike, which has seen considerably worse so it was a lucky escape for everyone involved.
The fall also tore a not-insignificant hole in my OMM Kamleika jacket, which I only discovered a couple of days later, having been limping about the house and not going outside. Plus there are now holes in my jumper, gloves and leggings (elbow, knee, shin...).
This is probably the point in the post where I give you, diligent reader, some advice. But frankly, I have none. Dogs happen. The only way to avoid every crash is to never ride. The best you can do is pick yourself up again, dust yourself off and shake the paw to concede a stalemate.
Until next time pup. Until next time.
