The dangers of riding with a Desert Coyote

I rode the Tour de Cure today, a fund raiser for the American Diabetes Association. Thank you to friends and associates who stepped up with donations on short notice to allow me to reach the fundraising goal required to participate.
There were several reasons why I rode today. The first was that like most, I have relatives who have diabetes. The second was that one of my blog readers wanted to ride her first century, and a few of her facebook friends had warned of taking time to ease into it. She had never ridden more than about 65 miles before, and has not been riding that long. I challenged her to ride the 100 mile route, and in return offered to cheer her on, and let her draft me the entire way.
I arrived at Hillsboro Stadium just after 5AM, in time to eat a provided light breakfast. My riding partner for the day arrived about 45 minutes later. We got a "before photo" as we prepared to start off.


The organizers were a bit delayed in getting us started but we finally got on the road. The morning air was still as we made our way westward from Hillsboro.


We rode up into the hills in the Helvetia area then back down to the valley in the Roy area. It was about 8:30AM as we began to feel the first puffs of wind coming from the north. It was a light cross wind and no real problem but foretold of a headwind later in the day as we'd be pedaling from the Newberg area back toward Hillsboro. I mentioned to my partner that later in the day she'd want to tuck in behind me pretty closely to take advantage of the draft. She immediately came like a rocket from my left to tuck in behind me. I turned my head slightly to remind her to not cross wheels only to hear that sound of bike hitting ground before I could say anything. I I looked in my mirror and saw her tumbling across the pavement. I was riding near the edge of the pavement, and there was probably a 4" drop from the pavement to the gravel shoulder at that point. I presumed with her speed that she had overshot me and put a front wheel off the road and went down.

Evidently what happened is that she clipped my rear wheel. I never felt a thing, as is often the case I'm told, but it turned her front wheel and sent her crashing.
The impact knocked the wind out of her, and tore up her brand new riding attire. :-(
There were some pretty deep abrasions on her knee, and a banged up elbow. The bike was in pretty good shape suffering only a few scratches on a brake hood/lever which was also tweeked a quarter turn. I "untweeked" it and checked brakes and gearing. The bike was good to go, the cyclist was questionable.

The motorcycle support arrived fairly quickly. Unfortunately it was just the first of a couple of times today that I'd find that motorcycle support was little more than a guy with a cell phone.


I was, as usual, carrying the "ouch pouch" that Cascade Bicycle Club supplies riders at STP. I did the best I could with what I had to clean, disinfect, and protect the wounds from contamination.

I told her that I didn't NEED to ride the ride today and we could turn around and go back if she wanted. She said she'd ride and see how it felt. We shoved off and proceeded on.


I was leading, but from time to time I'd drop back and ask her how she was doing. We'd discuss the injuries a bit, but it always came down to that she wanted to continue on.

When we got down near Gaston there was an opportunity to follow the 65 mile route instead of the 100 mile route. She'd have no part of shaving 35 miles off. We continued on through Yamhill and Carlton then turned toward Newberg. As we neared Newberg I experienced the only idiot driver of the day. There were about a half dozen riders in my close proximity. A car was coming the opposite direction down the highway and an impatient driver behind that car passed with not really enough clearance to do so. Unbelievably, the third car in the line decided to pass also. As he came around the slower car he braked a bit and moved back a couple of feet before deciding that he was bigger than a few bikes and came out into our lane in full force with the throttle wide open. One of those cases where "might makes right". If not right, at least there wasn't a lot we could do about it.

We rode the remainder of the route without much incident. We stopped only minimally at the rest stops, just enough to grab a quick snack and refill water bottles. The day was warming up and would reach the low 90's so we did our best to stay hydrated and fueled. My friend noted that her elbow hurt worse than the knee, though the knee looked worse, but she kept pedaling.

The official route only mapped out to 98 miles, and if one is going for a first century it really needs to be the full 100 miles. I mean, how would you feel if you knew you only rode 98? ;-) When we got about a mile or so from the end I made a turn on Jackson School Rd then to Meek Rd before returning to Evergreen Rd giving us a few bonus miles.

We rode into the finish with 103 miles.


and received a cool token reflecting our accomplishment.



We met up with some friends at the finish and we ushered our injured cyclist to the nurses manning the Providence first aid tent. The nurses, utilizing far better training, and better supplies tended to our injured rider (who just finished 103 miles. Woo Hoo!)


We were advised to make a trip to an Urgent Care facility to have x-rays taken for a possible broken elbow. They put her in a sling. We loaded her bike....then went to the far side of the stadium to eat our post ride meal. Priorities you know! We then made the trip to a nearby care center.


After an hour or so our friend came out with, if not a clean bill of health, at least the knowledge that no bones were broken. The arm was already turning black and blue however. I'm sure she will wake up in the morning feeling quite sore.

Early tomorrow morning it's off to ride 137 miles (with 10,000 ft of climbing!) around Mt Hood with a few folks. None of the folks today took me up on the offer to join us. ;-)

With two miles of pre-ride futzing around the parking lot this morning I ended up with 105 miles.

........road bike.......rollers.........mtb.....lifecycle.....total
Today.......105..............0.............0..........0.........105
Jan.........474..............0............21..........7.........502
Feb.........530..............0.............0..........0.........530
March.......502..............0.............0..........0.........502
April.......524..............0.............0..........0.........524
May........1003..............0.............0..........0........1003
June.......1016..............0............10..........0........1026
July.......1008..............0.............0..........0........1008
YTD........5061..............0............37..........7........5105