Hello everyone,

I wanted to give you all a quick update on today’s ride and finish up later. First all, Iam ok but we had a cycling accident today. I was back riding with the A team today and we had caught all of the early departure riders fairly early which is unusual. Th terrain thus far and been fairly flat and fast with a tailwind. I think that I have described the Cue sheets that we use to provide directions to the riders. It is basically an 8 by 11 piece of paper that is folded into quadrants and put inside a piece of water proof plastic that we keep on the handlebars. When you get to the end of the folded quadrant, we take it out of the plastic envelope and turn to the next quadrant.

Today John F was doing that while riding as we were coming to a stop sign and left turn. Somehow, he lost a bit of concentration and hooked wheels with Mike F.  As they broke free Jon went down violently on his left elbow and hip. It wasn’t just a fall as it appeared to me who was directly behind John that the struggle forced him to go down a lot more violently than a normal fall. I jumped off my bike and told John to stay on the ground as he was in obvious pain and grimacing. I could see that his elbow had a lot of road rash. Pretty soon there was a crowd of cyclists including Wendy and Roberta with nursing backgrounds who took charge. John said that his hip and elbow both hurt badly. An ambulance was called and John was taken to the hospital.

Both Mike’s bike and John’s were damaged. Mike’s derailleur snapped off at the frame and John’s front tire and right brake had damage. The good news on Mike’s bike is that a welder in town fixed it free of charge andMike will be riding tomorrow even though he thought earlier that “my tour is over”. The very bd news that we received just prior to dinner is that Johns has a broken pelvis and elbow. He is at a hospital in Syracuse and will probably require an operation. All of our group are down hearted.

At the accident scene, almost all of the riders held vigil for John before Tracy asked most of us to leave. some of us directed traffic and others made him comfortable. The group rallied behind him as much as we could. It was hard to watch him being immobilized and put in the ambulance. He knew that Mike’s bike was unrideable and told him that Mike could ride his bike not knowing that his bike wasn’t rideable either.

Other than that my ride was uneventful. It threatened rain oct of the day and some of the roads were wet but I was never rained on. The temperature averaged only 69 so rain would have been miserable. We are starting to see more climbing again and we will encounter quite a bit more over the next few days. We only have 3 days of real cycling not including the 18 mile ride into Boston. Dinner was about as quite as I have seen it as most of us were subdued and thoughts and prayers with our friend.

Like many things in life, cycling entails a degree of risk and accidents happen. These type of accidents tend to happen more towards the end of the ride as we let our guard down. We are constantly reminded that traffic is heavy, that roads my be bad, that unexpected road hazards may pop  up, but we still lose a bit of concentration due to fatigue and a degree of giddiness when the end is in sight. John was celebrating, he just lost a slight bit of concentration and went down. It is really hard on the rest of us as well as we are a team and John is an integral part. We know all the effort and pain (he broke ribs earlier in the ride) he has endured and all the 3200  so miles.

All of our thoughts and prayers are with him….

Wendy cutting her BD cake – yesterday

Tailwinds

Chuck

The gentleman who fixed Mike’s bike free of charge

John F in Santa Fe

Wendy’s BD from yesterday