I ride Tuesday and Thursday night on a ride sponsored by Cascade Bicycle club.
This time of year, the weather gets nice and we get a lot of new riders, which makes things a bit more… exciting… than usual.
There are a few of us in the group who try to watch out for everybody – including the new riders. Sometimes it works well, sometimes it doesn’t.
So, last night, we were in the parking lot getting ready to go, and one of our new riders fell over. Now, we’ve all fallen over when we’ve been stopping (I once did in front of approximately a zillion riders at a century rest stop), so that wasn’t any big deal. That was one.
Then, we’re pulling out onto our main street (W. Lake Sammamish, if you know the Redmond area), and one of the front riders slows down to stay at the corner (we use corner people so the group knows where to go), and a new rider runs into her, falls over, and another rider runs into her and falls over. So, we’re like 3 minutes from the start, and we’ve had three riders go down. A few bumps and scrapes, but no real problems.
We then headed down south, where we did a few climbs, including the very painful Somerset Drive.
On the way back home, one of our regular riders had a car turn out in front of him, and he got to play stuntman. Also no injuries, but enough to call police and the aid car, and for me to take the group back so our ride leader could deal with the situation.
I rode all last year without being near any crashes. This year I’ve had two people crash right in front of me, one crash a couple riders ahead, and another crash in my group.
So, what do you think ?