Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Three States And A Few "Incidents"

Something I didn't mention about the Skyline Drive leg, a bit of bad news: One of our drivers, was injured in a pretty serious accident. No one really knows what happened, but aparently Les failed to negotiate a turn and hit a tree, breaking his pelvis and femur and trapping himself in the van. He was medevac'ed out but has a weak heart and when they tried to operate he couldn't take it, so they put him in an induced coma. Word is, he's going to be fine, but he's a long way from there right now. Nice guy too, older German dude, kind of a wistful air about him but you can see he has hipster tendencies...

Anyway, Day Two: This was shorter, 93 miles total but it was just as hilly -- and the hills were steeper -- and just as hard as the first day. We rode through Virginia and West Virginia, and ended up at a Boy Scout camp in Maryland, just getting closed down for the season. I slept in the building used for nature studies; as we were setting up they were removing the snakes and letting them go -- the rats, guinea pigs and fish stayed with us.

The days are blurring, so I'll just mention these incidents here...

Incident One: At lunch one day, we were set up at a crossroad, and some guy in an SUV ran the stopsign & hit a pickup truck. I heard the crash, saw the SUV airborne & landing on the lawn across the street as well as the truck spinning around in the intersection. Minor injuries, but if we'd been on that lawn instead of this one, we'd have all been dead. Strangely enough, the lunch crew originally wanted to set up in the bad spot, but Brian dissuaded them...

Incident Two: This was actually day three I think, but we had to go through a covered bridge; and one of the slower/later guys neglected to take precautions (like slow down, put a foot down etc), got his wheel stuck in a plank, flipped & broke his collarbone.

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