I went on a 72 mile ride yesterday. It went really well and I felt awesome, except for one thing: I ran my bike into the side of a hill.

 

We were riding out by Nicasio, around 60 miles into the ride. The road is cut out of a hill, so we’re biking along the right-side of the road next to the rock face side of the hill. A friend passes and I turned to yell at her. When I did that, my bike veered slightly to the right. This wouldn’t have been a problem ever, except for a couple of things:

 

1. Apparently, there is a low curb along the edge of the road for about 100m here. Who knew.

2. On the other side of that curb is the rock wall -- which is possibly why the curb is there. This means there’s lots of rocks, big and small, all over the road.

3. We were riding very far to the right of the road and Christine was on my left, which didn’t give me a ton of space.

4. I was a little tired and may have been slightly out of it, but that’s neither here nor there.

 

I think you can guess where this is going. Here’s how it went in my head:

 

 

I scraped along my right side, and flipped over, landing smack on top of a rock on my left side. The bruise is quite large and quite purple. But other than that, I really didn’t hurt myself. However, if you run your bike into a pile of rocks, the bike probably isn’t going to win. I biked the last 12 miles with my handlebars pointing a slightly different direction that my front wheel.