This Space for Rent

Enemy action

A few weeks ago, I was coming home from work when the front tire (a Continental Gatorskin) slipped on some leaves and dumped me onto my right hip with a spectacular crash. This was unpleasant, doubly so because despite having ridden bicycles for about 40 years now I’d never (to my recollection) actually had the stupid bicycle crash like that. So I spent the next three weeks hobbling around in a slowly diminishing state of disrepair, until today, when I first managed to ride to work without creaking any more than my usual run of the mill decrepitude, and then, on the way back from work, slipped on railroad tracks and crashed onto my left hip (and, because the crash happened in slower motion, onto my tailbone, which was an astoundingly painful experience.)

The one common thread for both these crashes (which happened within about 700 miles of each other!) was the Gatorskins that are now sitting on the mlcm. Once is an accident. Twice is not. I’m going to be pulling the gatorskins and going back to the old Nashbar tires that I was using up until the week before the first Verboort preride. And I’ll put the gatorskins back on in the spring after it’s stopped raining quite so much.

Oh, and? Ouch!