It’s likely that someone will steal your bike if you lock it up outside here in metro Denver, especially if it’s a nice bike but even if it’s a crappy $20 bike. If not the entire bike, you might find one of your wheels or even seat missing.
So for that reason, we bring our bikes into the office building, but we’re not allowed to bring our bikes into the building if the wheels are dirty. The building owner keeps this building spotless. It was hard enough to get him to let us bring clean bikes into the building.
Anyway, it rained overnight from Monday to Tuesday and I had to ride through some mud on my way to work. To get the mud off my tires I rode through the grass, which I’ve done with no trouble before. Except this time my tire got caught in a gap between the grass and the sidewalk. My feet were still clipped into the pedals and I hit the ground.
I wasn’t going very fast, maybe 3-5 MPH, but it still hurt like hell.
I record all of my rides in case I get hit by a car because I’ve seen too many cases where cyclists are hit and the driver runs or the driver lies and says that the cyclist is at fault.
Hence, here’s the video of my embarrassing crash.
After recording this video, I also found that I had a bit of road rash on my shoulder and hip and the next day my neck, shoulder and hip were really sore.
My ego was also bruised because I crashed right by a busy intersection 😉
Even though it was a minor crash, I’m still a little shaken up. I’m finding myself being extra cautious on the trail now because I definitely don’t want to crash when I’m doing 12-20 mph.
I went back to try to find the rear light for my bike, but couldn’t find it. Someone must have picked it up. I never used it anyway because I don’t like riding in the dark (I live in an area outside of Denver that doesn’t have many street lights, so it gets really dark and dangerous), so it’s not that big of a deal.
I also need to take my bike into the shop for a tune-up this weekend. Some of the gears aren’t transitioning smoothly and the chain is skipping on the easy gears.
Crashing sucks!