Zboatman's Journey

It is the end of April and you know when you ride enough miles something “sub optimal” is going to happen, law of averages.  I know it, I expect it, and it is part of my mileage goal, I am confident I will most likely miss six weeks of riding in a 12 month period. Over the last 3000 miles I have averaged a ground encounter about every 1000 miles. For the last three times it has involved water on the roadway. And yes, I do not ride any more if there is water on the road/trail/path. Well at least I am trying to not ride…

I was riding Thursday night and was about ¾ of the way through my ride zipping along at about 20 mph going through the outside of a roundabout in a neighborhood with NO traffic. It was a bit warm around 82 dry, glorious and no wind. That means NO WIND, which is significant here in Texas. I was feeling good, and I headed into the roundabout on the far right turning to take the first “out”. It is a little S move in and out.  A simple move to the left into the roundabout and a little move to the right and out of the roundabout or so I thought.

Well there are some fairly large boulders on the side of the road on the grass. They are on my right and far enough off the cement roadway that I don’t pay much attention to them.

As I get to them, having passed two of the five my front wheel gets to the third boulder. Unseen by me was a 3 to 4lb rabbit having a pre-dinner salad I expect. The grass is really green with all the rain we have gotten so lush and great tasting grass it was. This is a fun neighborhood to ride, nice homes and very smooth cement streets. Well I must have startled Mr. Rabbit about the time my front tire got to his face. This would have put him right into my spokes. I believe his initial reaction was to bolt across the street to safety in the very nice shrubs of the $700K house across the street. Surely it would have injured him permanently with his little face poking out the other side of my spokes till he got to my forks which would have killed him, permanently… I would have been flipped off my bike and I would be sending this email from my hospital bed, I am confident of that after reliving this moment several times.

Well that silly wabbit was not about to have his dinner interrupted by some fat dude on a bike so he did the most logical thing a rabbit could think of, if you can’t go straight, jump for your “blinking” life as high and as far as you can.

He cleared my tire easily and rammed his little head smack dab into my left handle bar and left hand. This was easily a good six to seven feet of aeronautical theatrics. It was at this point I noticed him as he smacked in to my handlebar. This caused to a good 2ft swerve scaring the Beejezus out of me. But when I am going twenty, I always have a solid grip on my bars and recovered from my swerve to see Mr. Rabbit walk at a wobbly fast pace to the other side of the road. No major damage from what I could see to that silly Wabbit, but he certainly was saying to himself, what the hell just happened?

After a moment, I immediately thought what the hell just happened.

Well it was not my day to kill a rabbit and go to the hospital, so again I get to ride another day happily in Texas.

I found a video of the roundabout, it was filmed in January after significant drought. This was filmed on a head cam so it is a bit jerky. Think of the grass as six inches long, and lush green.