A Little Bit of Everything

Yesterday's ride was a team ride on the Covered Bridge route. I really enjoy the route and use it as a gauge of fitness and training, as it has a little bit of everything tempo climbs, steep hills, false flats, rollers, and technical downhills. Of course, it's also what the route doesn't have (stop signs, stop lights, heavy traffic, too many homes, stores, buildings) that makes the ride appealing to me. When you throw in the awesome natural beauty of the valleys and ridgelines, it's just a great, great ride.

However, yesterday's ride also included a lost teammate and me getting hit by a car (or me hitting a car depending on your point of view.) The lost teammate was the result of him taking a wrong turn near the top of the first climb away from the bridge and resulted in two teammates spending the better part of an hour and a lot of climbing tracking him down. Unfortunately, this was his first ride on the route and he had no clue where he was or where to go. Thankfully, our two "search and rescue" teammates were diligent and found him and had enough gas in the tank to bring him back safely. The other four of us sped for home with the full intention of bringing the vehicles back to drive them home, but after a final phone call they decided to pedal their way back. They looked a little tired, but all survived without too much additional drama.

As the four of us sped for home, I was on the front as we started our descent out of High Ridge. As we dropped onto Hillsboro-High Ridge Road, I noticed a car further up the road backing out of their driveway onto the road. Sensing this car will be in our path soon enough, I sat up and waved to the group to slow and called out "car up." Once the car backed out of the drive and blocked the lane, they began to pull forward and then stopped again in the middle of the road. By this time, we were rolling slowly enough, but also not understanding why the car stopped again. I yelled out to the driver to "go" and she started moving (I don't think she saw us or the car behind us.) Unfortunately, she quickly stopped again and caused us to scatter to avoid a collision. Two riders made it around her left and thankfully there was no oncoming traffic while me and another rider tried to squeeze between the car and the ditch. I didn't make it and banged into her right rear tail light and rear quarter panel. No damage was done to her car (other than my sweaty arm leaving a streak of sweat on her black car), nor was my body damaged. My elbow was a little sore, but I knew I would be okay. I signaled "OK" to the driver, but shook my head in disbelief. She rolled along behind me and at the stop sign I fully figured she'd roll her window down to say "Sorry." Nope. Just rolled on.

I'm thankful God watched over us on our ride. Next time, I'll get everyone's cell numbers before we take off and we'll all just try to watch over each other.