Weekly Beatdown

The guy ahead of me made a career out of his trip to the bathroom and I missed the B group roll out. My bridge attempt was hopeless. Darn traffic lights. "Cat up Dave." Yeah, yeah. At the top of Sawnee I waited and jumped in with the A group, which was riding aggressively, but not faster than I could hang on to. Maybe it would turn out to be a good day.

Crash!

Not me, but a rider up the road. The A group was flying through a disorganized bunch of C group riders and one of the C riders went down. It was mean. Busted ribs, a lot of bruises, even more abrasions, and a deep puncture wound to his right shoulder. I took some First Aid courses way back and I was doing my thing, but it turned out we had an actual ER doctor in our group too. Score. I've been in too many of these bad-injury/first-responder situations. I don't even get jumpy any more. That's too many. I was joking with Todd that somehow my presence must be causing them. Typhoid Dave.

There are few sounds that make me feel as confident in humanity as those that precede the arrival of emergency medical services. Sirens, chopper blades, a fire engine's horn, the idling engine of a helicopter, hustling footsteps... "We're here to help you, all of us, whatever you need, whatever it takes." It's like that. I hope I never get jaded to it.

After all that, I was not especially motivated to ride. I led the remaining C group. We probably rode like 8 miles, but it was good. The best time I've ever had riding 8 miles at 10 miles an hour.