WOE!

When I started yoga I didn’t ride my bike on yoga days. I’m stronger now, and have started to do both on some days. Today was one of them. One of the Big Creek trailheads is a very short detour from my route to yoga practice.

Maintenance crews were painting the dashed center line today. Heading out, I passed a man driving the mobile painting machine. He was paying careful attention to getting the striping just right. There was another man in a small maintenance vehicle following closely behind. They were headed toward me in my lane. I moved to the open lane and passed. I wondered if they could actually hear me call the pass as noisy as the equipment was. They were facing me, but I called it anyway because they were multitasking.

I stopped and took a picture of a wet paint sign a little further down, then posted it in the trail FB group to let people know maintenance was happening on the trail.

As I was heading back, the guys were further down the trail in the same lane going against traffic. Passing them this time meant simply staying in my own lane. I’m really sure now that they can’t hear us call passing over the noise because after I passed the follower, when I was maybe 10 feet from the paint machine vehicle, the driver turned into my lane without warning.

I yelled “Woe!” I’m pretty sure he heard that. I was pretty shocked. We both hit our breaks. I haven’t inspected my brakes recently enough, thankfully, that didn’t bite me. I’m pretty sure it was the first time I ever hit my breaks hard enough to put air between my back tire and the pavement. I have rim breaks, not disc breaks. Don’t get me wrong, I flew over my handlebars once, but when that happened, it was because I hit a curb. I waved at my postman and while I was distracted, boom I missed the sidewalk ramp and hit the curb. Apparently it doesn’t take much speed to go over the handlebars and you can do it at a near stop if you hit something abrupt like a curb (or a paint striping machine).

This was different. This was my back tire lifting up because of how hard I clenched my rim breaks (which are less likely to send you over the handle bars than disc breaks).

I wasn’t going fast this time either. My top speed lately has been well below the speed limit and I was taking it easy before slowing for the crew. I was stunned that he didn’t look before he turned, stunned that there was apparently no communication between him and the follower and stunned that my back tire lost contact. When we both stopped, I could have reached out and touched him. We just looked at each other.

We didn’t speak at all except for my shocked shout “Woe!” that happened earlier. If I interpreted his look correctly, it said “Wow. Are you ok?” If he interpreted mine correctly, it said “Why did you do that? How did I not fly over the handle bars and knock you off that thing? How did we both avoid a trip to the hospital?” After those looks, we didn’t really seem to have anything else to say to each other. My bike seemed functional. I finished my ride. The bike chain tattoo on my calf seems to be the only consequence.

Close calls are the best builders of gratitude. I have a big dose right now. Always expect the unexpected when you’re out there.

Until next time, have a glorious day, and we’ll see you on the trail.