Unexpected Adventure On Tuesday Group Ride

Tuesday my bike group was going for a ride East of Gilroy up in the hills. We would start at Mendoza ranch parking lot, so I carpooled up there with our ride leader, my friend Kris.

We headed up to the start, and took off up Gilroy Hot Springs road, a beautiful mountain ride.

On the way back, I started to turn onto Canada road off of Gilroy Hot Springs road. That’s the last thing I remember until waking up with someone asking me questions. Apparently I had slipped on some gravel at the junction and went down, hitting my head, and was out for 5 minutes.

This was out front of the CalFire station, so my friends didn’t even have to call for help, the firefighters came running out. The CalFire paramedics verified I was coherent, got my wounds stabilized, then got me on the backboard and fitted with a cervical collar. They shifted me to the ambulance gurney. My friends waited with me while this was going on. Next I was transported to San Jose Regional Medical center, the closest trauma center.

At Regional they took a Cat scan and it came back normal, so no serious head trauma. I had a more severe laceration on my face which got super-glued, everything else was minor owwies that I have to keep clean. That knee bandage on my right leg was just covering a bunch of miscellaneous minor scrapes. So I got to go home, with instructions to avoid bicycling (or any other contact sports) for several days, and follow up with my primary care doc. This could have been a lot worse, I have scrapes on my hands so apparently stuck them out to brace myself as I was falling. That could have easily resulted in a collarbone break. And my abrasions were minor compared to serious road rash.

Lessons:

• Choose rides carefully
  • Sirrus (skinny tired road bike) is for smooth road rides only
  • use only vado (bike with fatter tires) if anything but a smooth surface (of course, this cannot always be predicted, we thought yesterday was going to be on smooth road surface, but the county is busy repaving these roads).
• reduce volume of bike riding, crash danger is proportional to time on road.

Of course, crashes can still happen, but it’s good to take measures to minimize the danger. Today I am on the mend. The main symptom is a minor headache and some abrasions. All’s well that ends well!