February 25, 2008

Slow Motion Moment

I had one of those made for the movies slow motion moments coming home tonight. The snow flurries had just started to fall making the roads a little wet but nothing too serious. I was biking home using my secondary route. My primary route is the one I commute on between Union Square and Harvard Square. My secondary route is the one that I take when I've crossed over the river into Boston. While I don't ride it as much it's a route that I'm very familiar with.

Overall the route is good minus a couple of bad sections of road. One section has cobble stones on a turn which in inclement weather can be nasty. Another turn has some enormous pot holes. It was at this turn that I had my slow motion moment. As I'm starting to make the turn I'm thinking to myself, "I need to get over to avoid the pot ..." BAM! Skidding across the ground I realized I had my thought a moment to late. Thankfully I was dressed in enough layers to protect myself from the winter weather that I only ended up with some minor road rash on my right arm which took the brunt of the fall. Besides that I'm fine.

I did manage to rip to shreds the handle bar grip and scratch up the brake on the right since that was also skidding along the ground. Overall the most annoying part was the puncture flat I got from the pot hole since that meant having to dry off and change the tube under a wet, dirty, and greasy tire. Thankfully that's all done. Tomorrow's ride into work should be fun as I'm sure I'll found out what part of my body I've not yet realized I banged up.

Tags: accident bike life

April 30, 2006

Weather

Now that I'm biking into work on a regular basis I'm becoming more intimate with the weather. My walk to the T, while about as long as my bike ride, never really felt like I was as exposed. That's probably since my walking pace is much slower than I bike. As a result on a morning like this with some snow flakes starting to fall during my ride in, the combination isn't that pleasing. This is aggravated by the fact that I don't have any fenders on my bike. Most of the snow that was falling this morning was melting almost immediately causing enough moisture to be on the ground to be annoying. Yesterday was worse with the constant rain, but in either case I'd be happy if the weather would just cooperate during my commute :)

Tags: bike life