Sure, I'll do that one! I can never remember the name of that road. I just call it "that horribly laid out road that seems designed to kill people" ... But I think it's actually "Bridgeton Hill Road" (only because that's what it seems to be on Google maps.)
So, back in May 2013, I got a FB message from my friend Gary. He was putting together a team to do the Eastern Rapha Gentlemens Ride. I knew nothing about this, but I jumped on board because ... why not? The course was 130 miles that criss-crossed the Delaware with just tons and tons of climbing and descending. For those who haven't heard of it, the Gentlemens Ride is a non-race race where you ride with five teammates and seek to complete the course the fastest. But it's not a group start - teams get sent off in intervals and certain rules apply - you have to stay together, and your team's time only counts if everyone finishes. The course itself is almost always a mixed-road deal where, even though everyone is riding a road bike, the organizer may throw in everything from paved roads to actual singletrack. There was minimal singletrack on our ride - but the gravel portion played key role in how this all played out for me. We were riding along with another team and when we hit the first chunky gravel (which included a creek crossing), I bounced off a rock at one point and heard the unmistakable "pssssssss"of a pinch flat. But there was more to it than that - a spoke snapped and knocked the wheel out of true, so after we fixed the flat, the tire was rubbing the brake. So, knowing we had something like 13K feet of climbing still to go, I solved the problem by just flipping the cable lever up. And then I forgot all about it. Because we had to fix the flat, and then a but later one of the guys on our team started having a cramping issue, we were way off the pace we wanted. So Gary got us doing a rotating pace line along Route 32, which was the only time I've ever done that and it was really awesome - we were doing 25 mph without feeling like we were doing 25 for about 6 miles. So that brought us to the monster climb up Uhlerstown Road, after which we hooked up with another team to pace ride the section that brought us to the Bridgeton Hill descent into Milford. As we started down the descent, the paceline fell apart - two of the guys on the other team jumped, and one of our guys followed. I was right behind that guy so I went to and passed Josh form my team and one of the other guys, and pretty soon, I looked down and was somewhere north of 30 mph about halfway down the hill. And as I looked ahead, I saw the hard left at the bottom. No big deal - I just needed to scrub a little speed. Except, when I went to pull my rear brake, I suddenly remembered that - being a moron - I had unhooked it. So ... yeah.
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The circled section here is the turn I'm referring to. At that turn, there is a stone wall in front of a house that sits there, with a very narrow (but open) gate. My first thought was "I need to aim for the opening", but that idea quickly went out the window because, well, what then? The only thing I knew for sure was that there was no way I was going to make the turn safely at my speed. I tried feathering the front brake while sitting as far back as possible, but that just felt too sketchy and wouldn't slow me down fast enough. So I made the call to do what I really, really didn't want to do - I laid it down. My only other options was to go right into the wall and I honestly thought that would kill me, so I thought laying it down was the best of all the bad options I was looking at. And so that's what I did. I slid down and slammed my elbow on the pavement and let me bike go - it slid sideways a bit and spun around before being torqued straight upward like a lever-arm and it hit the wall right on the non-drive chain-stay. I managed to stop before I reached the wall, but my elbow was fuuuuuuucked up ...
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My elbow a few days later ...
I also had all kinds of assorted road rash on my side. And yet, I popped up, cursed a blue streak from the pain for a bit, and then grabbed my bike to continue. But as soon as I moved it, I realized the frame was broken. So, yeah, my day was done and that meant my team wouldn't get an official time. I think that bugged me more than anything else.
I caught a ride back to the start finish area with Gary's GF who had been acting as our team soigneur. Ultimately, I was able to get the frame repaired by Ruckus - and it's still me road bike to this day!
So that's the story. Total rider error - I did a supremely dumbass thing and paid for it in spades. I guess overall, I was lucky it wasn't worse. Like if I hadn't tried to brake-check until later down the hill, I would probably have hit that stone wall with full force. And to this day, I felt really bad for the other guys on my team that they didn't get a chance to have an official time. They did finish without me, so at least they had that.