Tuesday stories of adventure? [WARNING: Long and rambling content]

[Davey]

Hey, where's the weekly rotation thread? I'm doing a short tale of adventure but feel free to post your weekly rotation instead. Just to give it a musical tie-in, this tale was concocted while listening to Depeche Mode Exciter.

My first "real" bicycle was a Nishiki, but not just any Nishiki, it was their first aluminum frame racing bike, all polished tig-welded joints - super strong with great fit and finish. Cool bike and I loved it, especially the Mondrian inspired color scheme. Anyway, that bike and a few riding buddies led to a lot of fondly remembered adventures, including a couple rides down the California coast, from Santa Clara down to San Luis Obispo. And you don't know what a harrowing ride is until you're racing down a steep hill along the California coast with rain hitting you in the face, on a twitchy lightweight racing bike with about 40 pounds of supplies in panniers that were never really intended to be mounted on such a short wheelbase frame, with a big truck barrelling down the road behind you and no room for it to safely pass or you to get out of the way!

So on the first trip down the coast we head out over the Santa Cruz mountains through the mist and start dropping down until we find the traffic stopped, waiting until a wreck up ahead is cleared. The three of us are in front of all the cars, talking to the flagman who finally tells us to go ahead and he'll let the cars go a little after us since we pleaded with him to give us a break. So we're blasting down the rain-slick road but smiling like big idiots cause we're all alone with no cars to get in the way, and then we round a corner and my smile turns to a look of panic because there's a railroad track running diagonally across the asphalt dead ahead, with slick-as-snot rails glistening in the morning light. And way, way too late I catch the sign warning bicycle riders to WALK their bikes across the tracks! Yeah right, at about 40 mph. So we're headed across in single-file with me in the middle. My buddy in front makes it OK but I must've held the brake too long cause I was sliding down the road on my side before I even knew what had happened. And even worse, I take out my other buddy behind me. So I jump up all worried about my bike, especially since the handlebars seemed to be headed off in the wrong directions, and started to yank them back around, oblivious to the tortured lycra threads that have given way to expose a big raspberry on my right hip, when all our heads snap around at once to that unmistakeable sound of a jake brake on a big truck being applied way too close. So we hustle over to the side of the road trying to get out of the way of the angry drivers, as they mouth insults at us from inside their cars, and assess the damage and make repairs. And it's not too bad once I get the handlebars back in the right position and realize that the big raspberry on my hip isn't really all that bad, even though my shorts were kinda trashed. So it's back on the bikes and on down to Santa Cruz for some lunch, except at a safer pace this time. Cause the day was still young and there were many more miles to ride before getting to our first night stop at Big Sur.......