Introduction
This is the second “old yarn” installment on albertnet (inspired by my pioneering effort “The Cinelli Jumpsuit”). This is the kind of story that would normally be a “From the Archives” item, except I’ve never before written it down.
Bike crash on Golden Gate Bridge
During the late ‘90s—I remember because I was still living in San Francisco—I had a catastrophic ride on one of my favorite bicycles of all time, Bomb Pop. I named this bike after the popsicle that had the same red, white, and blue coloration, one color fading into the next. It was a Guerciotti, the team issue for an old pro team. When I was still in college I’d bought it from one of their guys, who’d never even built it up.
Just a couple weeks before this ill-fated ride, I’d replaced almost all of the components on Bomb Pop with the newest Shimano Dura-Ace, and even put new wheels on it. I had seriously considered just replacing the whole bike because this was the longest I’d ever owned a racing frame, and couldn’t be sure how sound it still was. (Steel rusts, after all, and I lived near the ocean.) So, before mounting all the new parts, I stripped the frame all the way down and had a framebuilder inspect it. He scrutinized it, even took it outside into the sun to see better, and summed up his inspection with the simple statement, “I’d ride it.”
Back then, all my bike rides started with a trip through the old, defunct Presidio army base and then over the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin County. It was almost always windy on the bridge, and a bit tricky because even though they segregated traffic, with pedestrians directed to the walkway on the east side of the bridge and bicycles on the west side (each protected from car traffic by a tall barrier), you tended to encounter confused tourists who either couldn’t read the signs, didn’t notice them, or felt some need to defy them. Meanwhile, it was a bit tricky getting around the bridge stanchions because it was narrow through there and the wind buffeted around and you had to keep an eye out for those rogue pedestrians. On top of that, around the stanchions there were giant steel plates over the concrete which were slick as snot on rainy days or even when there was just a lot of fog (which wasn’t rare).
And, there were the other cyclists to deal with. As described here, I often fell in with this or that random rider to take turns drafting, especially when it was windy. A lot of these riders were as seasoned as I, but then you also had to contend with tourists on rented bikes (wobbling all over the place, usually), and then the aggressive quasi-cyclists who took it as a personal affront when you passed them, and would sometimes put up a fight. I remember on one cold, damp day I passed some dude (non-Lycra, cheap road bike) who subsequently charged past me and stormed off ahead. I thought, oh dear, this guy is gonna try to keep too much speed around the next stanchion, and that steel plate is gonna be wet, and he’s gonna totally stack. Sure enough, when I got to the next stanchion he was on the ground. Steel plate is way harder than pavement and I’ll bet that really hurt. I helped the guy up and got him back on his bike—fortunately, he wasn’t seriously injured—and he seemed really ticked at me, like it was somehow my fault he crashed.
But that was a different day. On the day in question, the beginning of the end of Bomb Pop’s useful life, the road was dry but it was very windy and I was out of the saddle, just past a stanchion, sprinting back up to speed, when suddenly (to quote some Euro pro from a post-race interview), “I was going, and going, and then I was not good.” Out of nowhere, I found myself crashing face-first into the steel plate.
It’s peculiar to crash face-first. A more typical crash would involve sliding out sideways (which is preferable because your head usually doesn’t even touch the ground) or hitting something with the front wheel and flipping over the bars. In this latter crash the entire bike rotates around the front hub, so it’s not really a face-first crash; it usually results in a head-first crash which of course is not good, but there’s always the chance that your tuck-and-roll turns the whole thing into an acrobatic stunt, so you come all the way around like a gymnast and can come through miraculously unscathed. One time, in the UC Santa Barbara community of Isla Vista, I rode my commuter bike down a steep boat ramp at low tide to attempt a gnarly jump off the end, which I executed almost perfectly except that my front wheel landed first and was stopped dead in the deep sand, and I was launched over the bars. This could have been bad—I wasn’t even wearing a helmet, this having been biking home from class, not on a training ride—but I somersaulted in the sand and came up on my feet, arms outstretched in a victory salute, celebrating, I guess, how totally fine I was. To my astonishment, when I looked back (presumably at some pal who was with me), I saw some guy with a camcorder who’d filmed the entire thing. Damn, what I’d give for that footage!
I’ve only crashed face-first twice in my life. The first time was on the Broadway bike path in Boulder, which runs parallel to the road with a nice median in between. Alas, at the spot where I crashed the median was a rock garden rather than the grass featured in other sections, so that’s what my face landed in. I couldn’t figure out why the hell I’d crashed, and my forensic investigation (which began immediately) turned up, before anything else, a bunch of ball bearings. WTF!? Then I noticed that the steerer tube of my fork—this is the tube that extends from the fork crown up to where the top of the headset is, where the handlebar stem is inserted—had snapped.
So, this being only the second time I’d ever crashed face-first, I was just as befuddled as the first time. Right away I noticed that my front wheel was farther away from the rest of the bicycle than it’s ever supposed to get. The second thing I noticed was that my chin was gushing blood like an open water main. (Okay, fine, I exaggerate—which is easy to do when you’re bleeding.) The third thing I noticed was—and this was eerily familiar—ball bearings! WTF?! Again?
(Wait—stop! I just fact-checked myself. I vividly remember watching little headset bearings rolling across the steel plate, but as the astute reader would be quick to note, the 7700-issue Dura-Ace headset used cartridge bearings. So this particular detail is the embroidery of memory. It makes a better story, but simply isn’t true. I could go revise the previous paragraph but I shall let it stand as a reminder that memory can be flaky. But don’t worry, the main facts of this tale are accurate because frequent oral retelling of the story keeps them alive in memory ... it’s only when I go to flesh out the details “on paper” that I run the risk of fabrication.)
No, the failure wasn’t a used handlebar stem this time. Again, the steerer tube failed, but this time it sheared off right at the fork crown. Probably sweat from riding the stationary trainer had accumulated and caused it to rust.
As I got to my feet and hauled my bifurcated bicycle out of the path of biking traffic, the words “I’d ride it” echoed in my head. So much for the framebuilder’s inspection! Now I faced the problem of how to get home when my bloody bike—literally bloody, as my chin was still dripping—wasn’t even walkable. If I’d brought the tools necessary to disconnect the brake and gear cables I could have carried most of the bike over one shoulder and the rest under my other arm, but as it was this was really awkward, especially clack-clack-clacking along in my cycling shoes. My chin was hemorrhaging the whole way, leaving blood droplets on the ground like a trail of breadcrumbs. Finally I made it to the San Francisco end of the bridge where there was a pay phone. (Cell phones were pretty widespread by this time but I was not an early adopter.) I tried to call my wife but it just rang and rang … she was out for a run.
At this point I was noticed by a group of grade-school aged Asian girls. I couldn’t figure out where they came from—this was in the evening, past the hours for a field trip—and there wasn’t a single adult among them. They looked very freaked out by the blood running off my chin. One of them came forward. She was wearing a very smart outfit, like a private school uniform, adorned incongruously with a fanny pack which she proceeded to root through. She produced a travel pack of Kleenex and pulled some out. Trembling slightly—equal parts fear and concern—she held them out to me. I suspect she spoke no English, or perhaps just didn’t know what to say. I thanked her profusely and began applying pressure to my chin. At that moment I heard a siren. Some fool had called an ambulance!
Last time I’d been taken in an ambulance was after a mountain bike crash in Tilden Park. For $600 I was driven the equivalent of two blocks, to where a helicopter could land. My insurance (through the university) covered only $100 of it. That expense gave me a lifelong antipathy toward ambulances, and I sure didn’t need one now. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely could have used a proper rag to stanch my chin with, instead of the rapidly disintegrating Kleenex, but I didn’t require a stretcher, a neck brace, a sirens-and-flashing-lights trip though a big city, and an outrageous co-pay. So I did the obvious thing: I hid. Fortunately I was obscured from view (behind the pay phone and the pillar it was attached to, if memory serves) and the paramedics never spotted me. I peeked a couple of times and they were just wandering around looking for some guy who’d crashed his bike. For some reason the Asian girls decided I was hiding for good reason and didn’t rat me out. Eventually the ambulance drove off.
I got back on the phone, failed again to reach my wife, and was stumped. Who else did I know who could come get me? I was in that phase of life where I’d moved to a new city after college and spent most of my time working; beyond that, I passed my time cycling and taking walks with my wife, so I didn’t have much of a social group yet. But, there was always the help desk.
The company I worked for offered computer network services to large corporations, with 24x7 tech support, including escalation to network engineers for thorny problems. Thus, there was a pager rotation among us, such that each week somebody was on-call around the clock. So I called the Network Operations Center and asked the tech to page the engineer on-call. The tech asked for the company name. I explained there was no company, I just needed the on-call to come pick me up after a bike accident. The guy was plenty perplexed and finally opened a trouble ticket, being as vague in the report as possible. Eventually he bridged in the on-call who, after a good laugh, agreed to come fetch me. He arrived before long and drove me home. Surprisingly, my wife still wasn’t back from her run.
I had time to shower, clean up my road rash, and take a seat in the living room with a book and a good thick washcloth to continue the pressure on my chin. The bleeding hadn’t stopped but the pressure helped. When my wife finally arrived, I assumed a pensive pose, hand on chin (obscuring the cloth), while we had a brief conversation. The point of this (as described in this handy accident reporting guide) was to ease her into the news of my accident, while showcasing how okay I was, so she wouldn’t be excessively alarmed. After a couple minutes I casually remarked, “I took a bit of a spill on my ride today. I should probably head to the ER and get looked at.” Only then did I let her see my chin, and she agreed we should head over right away.
This being San Francisco, parking would have been tricky at the hospital. Our car was parked at least five or ten minutes from our apartment, and as the World’s Cheapest Man I refused, especially in those days, to ever pay for a parking garage. Plus, it was only a 20-minute walk to the Saint Francis hospital. It was surprisingly non-crowded and they had me stitched up in no time. Two nurses got in an argument over whether I should cover the wound or leave it open to the air. The doctor didn’t take sides, but did ask me if I had a general practitioner. This got me a glare from my wife—sore subject—and I confessed I did not. “Good,” the ER doc said. “Stay away from hospitals … they’re full of sick people.” My wife and I walked home and got on with our evening.
(In case you’re wondering, I was able to get Bomb Pop back on the road pretty quickly using an ugly green replacement fork, just barely visible in the photo above, which I got from a friend. This was a stopgap, of course, now that I couldn’t trust the rest of the frame anymore. My next frameset was Full Slab, which you can read about here.)
My little stunt with calling the NOC and paging the on-call earned me some notoriety at work in the days following the accident. I already had a reputation as a thrill-seeker after some of us got in trouble for goofing off during a snowmobile ride at a company offsite (turns out if you over-steer and goose the throttle you can do a sweet fishtail, sending up a dramatic spray of snow, but that the rental people frown on this sort of thing), and for a high-speed jet-ski crash at another work offsite. Several colleagues gave the stitches in my chin a good, close look. I got to tell the story of the concerned but frightened Asian tourist girls and the proffered Kleenex. On Friday afternoon our manager held his weekly team meeting, and as it wound down, he said, “Okay, one more thing. Who’s taking the on-call this weekend? Because Dana’s riding!”
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