Friday Follies ~~ Show Off

It’s a wonder any of us survived to reach maturity.

Racing is a form of show-off behavior.  What is it about a bicycle that makes us want to do silly things on it to impress others?  There are many manifestations of this urge.  Some do it with racing, either in sanctioned and official races, or in street races that are sometimes called “training rides.”  Some do it by learning and performing various tricks and stunts.  And then there is the “ride with flair” school of show off behavior.

In my early twenties, I lived and rode in the mountains of Virginia.  In my town there was one particularly vicious hill.  Once one had climbed this thing, there was a road that ran along the length of the spine of it.  At one end was a T-junction with a busy commercial street.  At the other was a cul-de-dac.  At the bottom of the cul-de-sac was the entrance to the local hospital school of nursing.  I should mention that the road surface sloped sharply down, all the way to the sidewalk in front of the school entrance.

My friend Russel happened to live on that street, close to the nursing school.  We knew when the school afternoon shift ended, and a large group of young, and mostly attractive students would be leaving the building.

It was a summer afternoon.  It had rained and stormed, but the sun was out and shining.  The streets were still wet.  Russ and I decided to ride down to the school and “check out” the nice ladies as they left.

As we entered the top of the blind loop we could see that the student nurses were already exiting the building.  That was when the imp of the perverse whispered in my ear.  My heart jumped, and I accelerated the bike down the hill.

I was going at a terrific rate as I banked over to make the turn at the bottom of the hill, and I was still under acceleration, in the big ring, and cranking it.

At the bottom of the hill, at the apex of my turn, physics took over.  Gravity, aligned with centrifugal force, and my tires exceeded their coefficient of adhesion on the wet road surface, then my inside pedal struck the pavements.  The bike washed out from under me.  I slapped into the pavement, and demonstrated the truth of Newton’s First Law of Motion.  I slid right across the drive, entangled with my bike, and came to rest, ingloriously crunched into the curb.

Massive road rash, and a broken crank.

I did attract attention.  There was no shortage of medical help available.  I never managed to get a smile from one of the nursing students, and I didn’t ever date one of them.  The last thing I heard one of the young women say, as I was wheeled away from the crash scene on a stretcher, bound for the emergency room, was "Hmmpf!  Show off."

The Great and Weird Road Dragon Bike Contest

Contest Question #5) What is meant by “overall average speed?