From: budn@hpmwtd.sr.hp.com (Bud Noren)
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles.misc
Subject: Re: Tao of Crashing
Date: 2 Oct 92 17:09:51 GMT
Article-I.D.: hpmwgde2.45320004
Organization: HP Santa Rosa Site (SRSD MWTD)

tomk@netcom.com (Thomas H. Kunich) writes:

>No amount of training can compensate for the inability to react as
>fast as traffic accidents occur.

But you neglect the time dilation phenomenon inherent in bike crashes.
To wit my first and only encounter with the front end of a late 70's 
American Behemoth.  

It happened riding home in the gathering dusk of a fine September evening 
in Indiana.  I was actually fretting about what a bad idea it was to 
ride with no lights in the near dark, and regretting how the days were 
ending so early.  An enormous beast of a car stuck its nose out into my
path from an intersection to the right.  The driver apparently wanted
to make a left and head down the street I was on in the other direction,
but he must have stopped short on seeing me coming.  "No problem," I
thought, and I veered out into the road to swerve around him.  This 
would have been a workable plan had he not decided to gun it and
try to get out there ahead of me.

That's when the time dilation began.  It seemed there was ample time 
to muse on the inevitability of the impending impact and about how 
cruel life could be at times, and finally to formulate a new riding 
strategy that included the upcoming violence.  I figured I was about
to meet the driver's side front bumper at about 20 - 30 degrees from
head-on, and though I had no formal training as an acrobat, under the
circumstances I could probably pull off a front sommersault while soaring
over the hood of the car, which appeared to be roughly one acre of sheet 
metal.  All this was do-able, I thought, if only my feet would come loose 
from the clips and straps and I could tend to my own fate and leave the 
bike to its own dealings.

Everything went smoothly after the much hoped for departure from
the bike except for one miscalculation.  As I flipped forward over the
hood, the car did not remain static, passively waiting for me to fly
by.  It continued forward so that my back hit the passenger side 
windshield with enough authority to make it cave in and take on that
spider web appearance that safety glass is made to do.  This impact,
of course, introduced a new, slightly upward component to my flight
path.

Still, I thought, the worst of it was over and all things considered, it
hadn't gone that badly.  Just as I was congratulating myself, a new
sense of general anxiety gripped me and I couldn't shake it.  The reality
of the situation was that I had yet to come back to earth and there
was some pavement looming large in the future.  My elbows, which had
somehow gotten themselves over my head, hit the street first and my knees
then came crashing down.  This is where time stopped dilating.

I remember looking directly upward into a street light which swamped
out what must have been the first evening stars.  Suddenly, I was
siezed by a powerful thought, "MY BIKE!!".  So I did my best to make my 
way over to it but after only getting part of the way there I felt 
compelled to sit down again.  At this point a very sightly young lady
came running out of an apartment building exclaiming how she heard
the crash and how she was a nursing student and she knew just what to do.
'Just what to do' seemed to consist mainly of poking and pulling and
squeezing parts of my body and asking if it hurt.  Under other circum-
stances this might have been kind of pleasant, but all that I could
feel at that moment was a very strong rising nausea.  The only words
I was able to mouth to the kind woman was, "I think I'm going to 
throw up."  She moved back a bit and said something, It sounded like, "Ew".

Anyway, I was eventually able to walk away from that one.  Had to carry
the bike, though.

-Bud