Beautiful weather this morning and a big group went up Mt. Lemmon, starting from Le Buzz. Darien soon took off on his fixie, Frank Barnes(the Norwegian) also grinded away, big ringin' it. Peter Bech closed the gap and made it look pretty easy, I found it hard though and seeing 300+ watts on the display confirmed the intensity. Peter soloed off towards Darien while I stayed with Frank, who was planning to go all the way to the Ski Valley! So was about half of Tucson, as we soon had an endless line of cars passing by, lured by the six feet of snow on the upper slopes. Peter and Darien powered on up ahead, Frank went into spinning mode and I tried to push 260+ watts to Windy Point or where ever we would regroup. Right before the road work at mile 10, a car nearly hit me, while he swerved and crossed both the yellow and white lines! The line up at the red light was twenty cars deep, so I passed them and went up towards Bear Canyon.
All of a sudden I was hit by that same guy and I went flying off my bike. Luckily he didn't run me over and he stopped immediately, to see if I was all right. I was a bit shocked and told him I just needed a break. A bunch of climbers saw the incident from a close distance and they said they would witness if needed, left their names and numbers and took off. But a guy called Don Beckhorn, who had been driving in front of the swerving guy, came to my assistance and said he knew that guy would eventually hit some bike rider as he was all over the road. Don told the man to keep quiet, stand by his car and find his insurance documents, while he took pictures of the car, license plate, the driver, my wounds and the damage done to my bike. He then called the Police and they arrived and interrogated both Don, the driver and me.
I was very grateful for Don to take his time to help me out, as I was a little confused and probably wouldn't have taken all the necessary action. Little by little the other bike riders came by an Dan, Frank and Peter and Darien patiently waited until I was ready to carefully ride down the mountain. I'm pretty sure the guy was DUI (Driving Under the Influence). His speech was a little blurred and incoherent. Hopefully the Police officers didn't let him drive on, but I'm afraid they just filed the case and let him go on. He was in a hurry he said...
I got a bit stiff and very cold standing there for 30+ minutes and was shaking dangerously on the way back down to the warm desert floor. At the bottom the Police had stopped traffic going up the mountain and there was a line of cars of maybe 200 cars, going all the way to Houghton!!!
Back home I showered, assessed the damage, took some photos and called Jon Roberts who told me to get some antibiotic ointment called Neosporin. I felt a bit dizzy and I'll have to see if I've suffered a small concussion. Well a good nights sleep will do good, I hope.
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