Falling

Hotter'n Hell Hundred was this past Saturday in Wichita Falls. People say you have to ride it once - after that you'll never want to put yourself through that agony again. Maybe someday. We'll see. So, my plan was to ride 50 miles on Saturday. I rode 30. I've decided it's a lot easier to ride with people than to ride alone. I would have bet money that I had been on the bike for three or four hours on Saturday. It ended up that I had ridden for just over 2 hours.

Anyway, I was riding a 30 mile circuit in Flower Mound. I had never ridden the route before, so I constantly had to be checking this map that I had printed out that was folded up and in the back pocket of my jersey. Near the beginning of the ride (I would guess not more than 10 miles into it), I had gone out into the countryside and I was passing by some really nice houses. You know, the kind of houses that make a person think, "Wow, I'll never own something like that." Anyway, my eyes were taking in these architectural masterpieces when I noticed I had kind of ridden off of the road. Now, there was no shoulder and no curb on this country road, so I just angled my front wheel to get back on the pavement. However, there was too much of level difference between the paved road and the ground onto which I had ridden, and I fell...hard. I didn't have time to unclip out of the pedals, so I fell on my entire left side. I was kind of stunned as I stood up. I had this horrible feeling that my cycling shorts were going to be torn and I would be riding back to my truck with one butt cheek exposed (ewwww!). Thankfully, that wasn't the case. My bike has a few scratches on it, and I've got a little bit of road rash, but other than that I'm OK. I woke up yesterday with a terrible backache, and I'm not sure if that's because I slept wrong or because of the fall. Hopefully, that will be gone soon.

So, there you have it - my first official fall off of the bike. By the way, no one was there to witness it. The road was completely empty.

Thanks for reading.