The Blasphemous Bicycler

A bunch of people noticed in my Dailymile widget, that I was involved in a collision with a car on yesterday’s commute. At some point, I’ll probably write a big long story about the whole thing, complete with navel-gazing about the meaning of the universe, etc.

In the meanwhile, here’s what I’ve been typing a thousand times in response to a thousand emails from lots of lovely people concerned about my well-being:

1. Are You OK? – As far as I know, yes I’m ok. I’m going to see a doctor tonight tomorrow, just to make sure. Mostly just scrapes and bruises. It was 20 degrees out, and I had a few layers of wool on to cushion my fall.
   Update: — Doctor says I’m ok, but I’m not supposed to ride bikes for at least a month
2. What Happened? – I don’t really want to publicly divulge all the details, just in case for some reason all hell breaks loose and the driver ends up suing me for scratching her bumper with dynohub shrapnel or whatever, I don’t want some lawyer using my own blog against me in court.
3. What about your bike?– Front wheel (shinamo dynohub) totally destroyed, front fork really badly bent. I don’t know if the fork can be fixed or not. Rest of the bike seems ok, but I haven’t really given it a good look.

   Update: — Took the fork over to Pedal Pusher. They said fixing a fork would be totally unsafe, but were not able to find a suitable replacement in their pile of spares, or from any of their suppliers. Fired off an email to Ozwald, to see about having a replacement custom-made.

4. Where did it happen? — Here. About a mile from home.

I live about 10 miles away from BikePA route J, which makes it the closest piece of “official” bike infrastructure to my house. I’ve never ridden on it before, because it’s just a bunch of signs on a really busy 5-lane highway, and I was afraid of getting run over by a semi.

I was feeling reckless today, and I braved the fog and drizzle to gave it a go. It’s not nearly as scary as it seems from a car. The shoulders are about 10 feet wide, and separated from the traffic with a rumble strip.

The 10 miles of 11/15 between my house and where route J starts is a terrible, no-shoulder piece of highway, so I drove to the Haldeman Island Wildlife area parking lot, and rode from there.

“Wildlife Management Area” means it’s a place you can go hunting for ducks and geese in the river.

Anyways, I rode north, past seedy motels, porno shops, and truck stops.

I didn’t get very far before the rain started coming down pretty hard, so I turned around at the Clemson Island Wildlife Management (goose hunting) area.

I’m glad this route isn’t as scary as I thought it was. I think there’s a picnic area a few miles north of where I turned around. I’m going to try to find it next time.

I rode my bike today for the first time in a long time.

Girtong and I went for a ride on the LVRT.

The trail was very busy. I’d say demand for rail trails exceeds the available supply. There were also lots of people walking dogs and not picking up the poop. Disgusting.

After that we went down to the bar for some refreshment.

If you live in a part of the country where you can’t get Lancaster beer, you should probably move.

The other day, I saw on Doc’s blog that the LVRT finally got completed to Lebanon.

So yesterday, I went out to scope the new trail. I parked at the trailhead in Cornwall and rode to the point where the trail used to end, but it didn’t end. It went over the fancy new bridge, and it’s paved(!!!) all the way to 8th st.

Just before the bridge, there’s a new spur trail (also paved) that takes you to South Hills Park.

On the way back, I rode out to the park. It’s a nice park. I found a lovely bench in the shade and sat down to space out and relax for a while.

The trail is eventually going to go to the High School / Middle School, but you can pretty much ride there through the park now.

I gps logged the new parts of the trail, and you can now see the new hotness on OpenStreetMap.

View Larger Map

In other news, the new Rail Trail in Lewisburg is coming along nicely, despite grumblings from local yahoos.

I went out to Stony Creek Saturday for a ride with the Sloth and his neighbor.

It was only about 6 months ago that I rode the entire trail out and back, but this time, I pooped out around Cold Springs road and had to turn back.

How embarrassing. I need to get my butt on the bike more.