12-30-2020, 06:38 PM
Over the years I have been present when maybe three or four of my riding buddies have come a right cropper, and had to help drag their bike out of a field or roadside ditch. Or wait for recovery to scrape a bike onto a flatbed. I have overcooked an odd bend and had a proper scare but got away with it myself. Thankfully. I was cycling home from work one day when a motorcyclist was tragically killed in front of me when he overcooked a bend and went head on into a VW Golf (that was doing NOTHING wrong). Horrendous, I had to try CPR on him and he died in my arms, literally. I had to go to the Coroners inquest on that one and give evidence. Shook me up and I stopped cycling to work for a good year or so. However. At the tender age of 51 going 52 I think it’s age that makes the difference. What do they say, with “age cometh wisdom” or something like that. We just feel invincible when younger don’t we? Things happen to other folk and if you get caught up in something you just brush it off and carry on. Nowadays I ride and drive much more defensively than I ever did and rarely go much above speed limits. I just don’t want to do it and ride mostly around 60mph. I enjoy my rides and I genuinely don’t care what anyone else thinks. Overtake if you want to. There’s older and wiser folk on here and to paraphrase that tag line about ‘ride every day because one day you won’t be able to’ just captures it perfectly for me. So I think it’s AGE and WISDOM that alters how we perceive risk/danger and how we deal with the aftermath when things go wrong.