ride report by peter.

 

a brief summary of the ride up until the interesting bit:

• nice pace along mounts bay road and up past king park
• doug was out with his very very close friend (on a tandem)
• even though the sign said scarborough beach road, the guys on the front still wanted to go straight
• got through osborne park unscathed and started the rolling hills
• pace got very fast, it hurt
• john overtook a car at the lights as they changed to gain advantage (1 hoon point deducted)
• regrouped at west coast hwy, didn’t notice that gregor was not there (we need a buddy system)
• cruised along till we reached jerry’s house
• pace was on again all the way to the swanbourne shops
• john (and others) went through a redlight (another hoon point deducted)
• regrouped, gregor’s friends asked me if i had seen him
• cruised along to claremont and into dalkieth, pace was not on at all
• jonny deceided to have a crack and lisa jumped on his wheel
• i remember seeing them just off the front as the group came around that tight left-hander onto jutland parade
• lisa was reeled back in and i told her good try as i came past
• suddenly there was a yell, a scrap of bikes on tarmac, the thump of bodies on tarmac and the squeal of brakes…

 

ok here is what i can gather what has happened. 

we were starting to wind it up to go up the small rise along this stretch so the pace was not immense, but high enough so that people were starting to push.  the road was straight and relatively clear of obstacles, bar a gum-nut (or a honkey-nut as the sandgropers call them).  john’s front wheel hit the nut and flicked the handle bars around causing him to topple straight onto his right side.  with the pace on, the following riders had no where to go. 

now i think that chris hit straight into the back of johns head, ripping his helment off and sending chris over the handlebars.  ryan was taken out by johns bike and came down hard on most of his left side.  jerry then also ran into the back of john and i think may have collected his unprotected head with his chain ring.  brett pulled evasive action to avoid hitting ryan and john’s bike by jumping the kerb, while russell also went to the kerb and stopped when his groin hit the head stem.

so, i was far enough back to not have to brake hard and i ride up to john who is still in the foetal position.  i saw him get collected by jerry and was a little surprised that his helmet was off.  after hearing that chris had seen fit to remove that for him with his bike, it kind of made sense.  there was blood coming off the back of his head and starting to pool on the road.  riders immediately dismounted and began to pick the pieces and people off the road.  luckily there was no traffic around us at the time or it could have made it worse.

we got john off the road and in less than 30 sec, he was asking about his bike.  trying to tell him to not worry about the bike as there was blood coming out of his head.  jerry was in a pretty bad way as well and had coped a fair blow to his nose.  chris reckoned that he was ok and i didn’t even realise that he had gone down at first.  ryan had a nice chainring imprint on his back where a bike had landed on him.  most of the guys had fair chunks of skin off and a lot of claret was going to waste.

as we congregated on someone’s front grass, some of the neighbours came out to see what was going on.  it turns out that dr mark knew one of the ladies and she was a nurse.  a few old towels were brought out to stem the flow and we thank them for their assistance.  john had called his wife to come and pick him up and unfortunately i did not get to hear that conversation, although i have a fair idea what it would sound like.  jerry, however, would not ring his wife and went the second option of ringing melvyn as he only lives around the corner.  he was out taking pictures of the group so was not far away when it happened.  just the wrong spot for a true money making action shot.  anyway, if jerry’s son james is reading this, tell your mum that the accident was a lot worse than your dad probably said it was.  there was blood everywhere.

we sent the majority of the group on towards the coffeeshop so that there was not such a large group of people standing around not knowing what to do, while about ten of us stayed with the injured.

so melvyn came to pick up jerry and he also took john and his family back to his place for some running medical repairs.  after doing the same for lorraine a few weeks ago, it seems that he may need to set up a 4077 MASH headquarters in his garage.  however, we thank him for looking after the guys when they needed it.  chris and ryan were ok to ride back to the coffeeshop, although i suspect that chris was a bit worse off than he claimed to be.

so, some of you may ask why should we report on something like this as it may make our club seem “unsafe” or “dangerous”.  well the fact of the matter is that what we do has an element of risk about it and sometimes it doesn’t matter what you do there is something as small as a gumnut that can take you down.  the important thing for our group is how well we deal with it and how well we look after the other riders.  our group has been involved in a few crashes recently in some of the races that we have been doing and that is always a risk.  in our training rides we try to minimise the risk and splitting the group is one way of doing that.  we didn’t split on this ride, but the gumnut didn’t discriminate either.  knowing who you are riding with and making allowances for others behaviour is also a way that we can keep things safe.  you don’t always get this at races as you may only see the same people once every few months.  however, there are certain behaviours that we shouldn’t tolerate, so if you think that someone is putting you at risk, then have a word to them, or let me know and i can try to rectify it.  keeping the ride as safe as possible is our number one priority and i think that this is shown by the attitude of the group when it comes to avoiding running lights and knowing when to push the pace up.

anyway, i hope that the injuries heal quickly and that there is little damage to those expensive machines that they were on.  i think that the incident showed how well the family pulls together and i thank those involved for their efforts.  stay safe.