I Am Not An Expert Traveler

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Well, it's been a long time and I apologize for that. Stuff has been happening! I'm now on Strava, I wrestled and killed a bear, I started a business, and I'm down in Georgia for Speedweek. Contrary to popular belief Speedweek is not actually a a trip to Georgia where I do lots of drugs. I'm down here to (surprise) race my bike.

Speedweek is an annual tradition where bike racers converge on the fine, sunny states of Georgia and South Carolina to participate in nightly National Criterium Calendar 'twighlight crits.' I will be racing in the dark, in really fast circles around a small city block, with hopefully very intoxicated people cheering me on, who will also hopefully not throw full cans of beer at me. Another great hope of mine, (could one possibly call it a longing?) is to come back with all of my skin. 

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Purchasing my plane tickets this past weekend was a tad horrifying. I decided to fly down to Georgia as opposed to driving for several reasons. One, that I don't think my poor car could take it, two I don't think my legs could take that, especially after their stellar performance in the USGP cross race after 16 hours of driving to Kentucky, (way to go, legs) this past fall, and three because I simply don't think my brain could take it. I had planned to arrive in Georgia fully sane, not foaming at the mouth with a pile of roadkill that I have collected brimming out of the trunk of my car. So I flew, and I successfully employed the Jeremy Powers trademark Airport Ninja tactics.

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Airport Ninja-ing is a delicate art, one that takes guts, bravado, and cunning. It goes something like this:

Approach the ticket counter lugging a giant bag with your bicycle packed inside of it, the bag possibly says 'VELO' or 'I'M A BIG BICYCLE' on the side of it.

"Hello there, such a fine day, beautiful weather inside this terminal. I would like to check this bag."

"Is that a bike?"

"A bicycle? A Velocipede? Perish the thought! Never would I lug around such an unwieldily article, nor would I ever participate in such raucousness as bicycle racing."

"Ok, so what is it?"

"It is a large carbon display for my work, a display that displays every aspect of the work that I clearly do."

"Is that a helmet hanging off of your bag?"

"Safety first."

"Fine, that will be the normal price of if this where a piece of luggage and not the exorbitant price that I would charge you if this where a bicycle in the same size bag for the same weight."

"Excellent. This transaction went exactly as I hoped it would."

Yeah, the fees for flying with a bicycle are outrageous and I do not feel bad at all for fudging the truth just a tad. Not that I'm recommending that of course. Kids, never lie; unless it is to save yourself hundreds of dollars at an airport when you're getting blatantly ripped off because of your choice of sport.

If it were a weight thing, or a size thing, I would be a bit more understanding, but no, it's literally when they hear that word, BICYCLE. If they don't know it's a bike, it is possibly HUNDREDS of dollars less. 

While my luggage transaction did not quite go as scripted above, I did manage to airport ninja the crap out of my bike. Trade show displays for the win.

Alternatively, I could also just tell them it's filled with 50 pounds of cat vomit, and that I am a researcher, studying cat vomit.

'Must I do it again?'

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Jerks.

Anyway. So I flew to Georgia with all of my bicycle accouterment, my bicycle, and 50 pounds of cat vomit. Because I decided to purchase my ticket through CheapOAir.com I was able to get a screaming deal on a plane ticket, which was great except for the fact that half of my flight was on a train.

A train? Oops.

I was a little worried about where I would put my giant bag of bicycle on this train, but I looked it up and the internet assured me that I would be able to fit it onboard. I probably should have called and spoken to an actual human about this, but humans are terrifying, and like many of my generation I have a healthy horror instilled in me about the act of speaking on the phone to people I don't know. The internet never lies, right?

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So I get onboard this train, and oh look, THERE IS NO WHERE TO PUT A HUGE BICYCLE BAG. 

The train is moving and I am standing in the middle of the aisle, wide-eyed with horror, with the whole damn car staring at me like I'm some museum spectacle on display. I awkwardly pushed the bike bag to the end of the car in the hopes that there would be some magical compartment, smashing into peoples feet and arms along the way. At one point I tried to lift the whole thing into an overhead compartment only to realize that once I'd gotten it halfway there I couldn't lift it over my head by myself and I was about to drop the whole thing on some ladies head.

Great.

I managed to shuffle it to the front of the car again and then I stood there with this look of, OH GOD WHY ARE YOU ALL WITNESSING THIS HORROR, plastered onto my face. Then out of nowhere a nice man showed up and together we muscled and crammed my poor bike into some weird little compartment next to the bathroom. I then sat down and proceeded to act like this was all totally fine. Meanwhile I was recovering from the fact that I had just sweat through my jacket and reached my target heart rate and adrenaline levels for the day purely on public embarrassment.

Oh god don't look at me.

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I then proceeded to ride the train to New Jersey, where I ripped my bike out of it's tiny prison and ran off the train car as fast as humanely possible. And by ran I mean lugged all my shit off the car at a slow pace with people grumbling and walking slowly behind me. I then had to carry my bike bag and all my luggage up four flights of stairs because the troll-escalator was going the wrong way. Damn you, escalator.

This is all before I had to do the airport ninja of course, so I was quietly preparing myself for them to open my bag in front of everyone and call me a dirty liar and charge me one million dollars to fly my bike.

Public shame knows no bounds when you're traveling.

But that didn't happen. When it came time to check my bike and get my ticket, I very stealthily did the self check in and then handed over my large, but within acceptable parameters, bag of bicycle with only one question of, 'what is this?'

I smoothly replied that it was equipment for a trade show and my bike was ready to be loaded onto the plane. Phew.

Seriously though I think that whole debacle gave me heart palpitations.

So here I am in Georgia. Everything is a highway, there seems to be only fast food and lots of fried chicken and Waffle Houses. I did the Athens Terrapin Twilight Crit last night, but that will be a story for my next blog. Spoiler: I do still have all my skin.

The Accident

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Three years ago I was hit by a car. 

Unfortunately this is something far too many cyclists experience. We are all at risk for this accident simply by the nature of what we do. We share the road with cars who outnumber us, outweigh us, and sometimes brush by us so close it makes your adrenaline fizz and your hairs stand on end.

There are many articles written on the issue of car-cyclist interaction and the ethics of such. We are too often seen as an annoyance, a fly on the windshield, not a living, breathing human being with a family, a job, a life. How many times have we all been 'buzzed' by an irate driver who wanted to teach us a lesson for getting in their space, for being on their road? Too many times I'm sure. My favorite analogy for this I read on the internet some years ago. Threatening a cyclist with your car is the same as walking up to someone on the sidewalk and pointing a gun at their face. As we all learned in driver's ed a car is a deadly weapon. Threatening a cyclist with a car is assault with a deadly weapon. Would you threaten someone with a gun simply because they were taking up too much space on the sidewalk?

Is this what it's come too?

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I've had many interactions with cars that have left an absolute foul taste in my mouth. I abhor the interaction with a driver where they accuse me of being some car-hating, un-showering, tax-dodging idiot because I happen to be riding a bike. Oh no good sir, you've caught me! It's true that I don't drive a car just like you, I've never worked a day in my life, I pedal around weaving all along the road tossing flower petals in the potholes and I haven't showered in a year. Give me a break. You would think I'm exaggerating but unfortunately I've been accused of all of these things!

But I like trees...

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With all this malice, and this ignorance floating around for cyclists you would think that every accident was a deliberate attack. In my case however this was not so. In so many instances the driver gives the same excuse: "I didn't see them."

I was hit by a car, and it wasn't by some gun-toting, 12-cylinder driving whacko with a thirst for my blood. It was a guy with his young daughter in the back seat. He didn't see me.

I'd like to tell you this story, of how I was hit by a car, and the ramifications it has had on my life as a cyclist.

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It was November, my second year racing 'cross and I was trying to squeeze in a training ride before darkness. It was chilly, so I was dressed in my full winter ensemble, thermal jacket and booties included. I completed my loop and I was heading for home. There are several different ways to get back to my house, but that night, for efficiencies sake since it was getting dark I chose the route through the center of town.

I crested a little hill and was picking up speed into the downslope. The lane coming in the other direction was bumper to bumper with traffic, the headlights bright, lined up in a row. Most of the time I have a habit of giving drivers I see waiting to make a turn a little wave as I'm approaching. I try to make eye contact and let them know that I'm coming faster than they think I am, please don't pull out in front of me. That evening I saw a car on my right waiting to make a left turn. I remember thinking to myself as I got closer to him that there was no way he would be able to make the left turn, the traffic going the opposite way was so clogged.

I was wrong.

As I reached my maximum speed for the small descent, probably something between 20-25mph, he suddenly pulled out in front of me. I remember thinking, ohSHIT I'm not gonna make it! I swerved to the left, towards oncoming traffic in a last desperate attempt to avoid the hood.

I took the impact on my right side, in the front of my bike and on my right leg and foot. I remember vividly being popped up into the air, detached from my bike at some point, turned completely upside-down. Time seemed to slow, and I had a moment of contemplation, upside-down flying over the hood of a car like some airborne camel, limbs akimbo. Oh. Fuck. This is gonna be bad.

I hit the ground in the middle of the road, and then popped up like a daisy. It was absolutely surreal. I was standing wide-eyed in the road, traffic stopped both ways, clutching my leg. This must be what deers feel like after they get hit. I had a moment of elation. I can stand! If I can stand it means I'm alive! This seems to be some sort of reflex I have. Even when I've slid out and crashed in a race my first instinct is to stand up. I am the mole that will not go down in whack-a-mole. 

I'm in that pile somewhere.

After I realized that I was not a bloody smear on the road, and that I was whole, and relatively intact I remember being flooded with rage, turning towards the car, hobbling at the hood still clutching my leg and screaming expletives.

This must have been quite a scene.

Two very nice ladies who had been driving the other direction were suddenly escorting me to the side of the road and sitting me down on the curb. I was shaking, and I think I was mumbling , oh God, to myself. Before I knew it there was a firetruck, and a police car, and an ambulance. At some point I think I remembered my bike and panicked. Someone had grabbed it for me. It didn't look good but I didn't really have the mental wherewithal to examine it. Later I would realize that the impact had not only taco-ed the front wheel, but had crumpled the fork and snapped it. RIP pretty 'cross bike.

I was put in the ambulance and they took my shoe off. I had to help with my booties because the EMTs were a little bit confounded by them. After a quick examination they declared that I was banged up but probably nothing was broken, I didn't have to go to the hospital unless I thought I needed to. I did remember at this point that ambulance rides, while novel, are expensive so I politely declined. There was enough adrenaline coursing through me that I wasn't feeling much pain at that point.

The policeman asked if I wanted a ride home. I said yes. Duh. What am I going to do, carry my mangled bike and hobble home? I watched them try to stick my bike in the trunk of a police car, jamming the front end in and slamming the hood down on it's mangled wheel. I cringed. I was shepherded into the back for the very short ride to my house. The back? Are you kidding me? My bruises were starting to hurt and the back had no seat belts and was made entirely of plastic. I felt like a criminal. Wasn't I the one that had just gotten hit with a two ton vehicle? Every time he turned I would slide in the seat and slam my bruised body into the door, all the while looking behind me and wincing every time the swaying hood slammed into my bike, which was dangling half-way out of the trunk.

Finally we made it back to my apartment and I was dumped outside of my house. Thankfully my landlord was there and he helped me get myself and my bike inside. I changed, barely looking at my foot. I called my boyfriend and told him what had happened and to come over. I remember hanging up the phone and sitting down on my couch. All the cacophony and the terror and the adrenaline suddenly behind me. I was alone, my foot was hurting. That's when I started to cry.

The actual act of getting hit was not nearly so terrible as I had heard many accidents be involving cyclists. I did end up going to the hospital, and then later to the bar, so really that whole night, stretching into the morning I don't remember as being awful. I was filled with the adrenaline of being alive. It's the aftermath that still has it's claws in me, still, three years after the fact.

I didn't hit my head at all during the accident, and I was praised by the EMTs for wearing my helmet. (Duh, I'm not an idiot.) But in hindsight, with all the mental damage, the destruction of my riding confidence, the scrabbling fear that now lives inside me about what might have been, it sure feels like I hit my head.

My physical wounds healed quickly. I hadn't broken anything and after a few days of an air cast, and a bit longer to walk normally again I was good to go. Even so, it seemed that however much I tried I could not seem to relay that information to my brain. It felt like I had planted a seed, a seed that was growing and overtaking my mental confidence. It wasn't the accident that was terrifying, it was how the accident happened. I had no control. I thought I was going to ride by that car safely and continue to my house, to my life, but all that was interrupted, shattered, when I was hit.

Now I have to live with that knowledge, the macabre knowledge that even if you take every precaution, bad things can still happen on the bike, and boy does my brain love finding those things and dancing them in front of me.

For the first few months I was an absolute mess on a bike. I couldn't go over 15mph down a hill without having a panic attack. What if if a car turns out of that road? Hell, what if a car suddenly decides to come out of the woods? To my damaged psyche anything was suddenly possible. My brain probably could have told me that big foot was going to walk out from behind that stone wall while I was descending and trip me and I would have believed it, and been afraid of it.

It could happen!

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Being afraid of the what if is terrible.

It got so bad I even called a sports psychologist. He wasn't much good because DAMN they are expensive! Eventually however my brain started to process the trauma. Descending got easier, and squelching down the fear that something was going to pop out of the side of the road and crash me got more manageable. Things went back to normal, almost.

I still have problems descending. That seed of fear still lives inside of me, ready to grow strong if I water it. Every time I have to do a fast descent I have to battle with myself internally. I cannot let this fear win, this panic. Sometimes it does, and as my friends have seen it's not good when it does. Sometimes the panic gets the best of me and I have to pull over and turn into a hyperventilating mess on the side of the road, but this is not frequent anymore, thankfully.

But I can control it, and even though it's been three years, it still gets better if I work at it. My confidence is still coming back, in bits and pieces. That feeling of wheee going downhill is coming back, so for those that have been hit, it does get better, the fear does go away. 

The driver who hit me never apologized, never said he was sorry, all I ever heard him say was, "I didn't see her."

So be careful out there, and seriously don't drive a car in front of me when I'm going downhill.