May 2006 - Brush with death

After Robin's full recovery at the summit we continued the bike ride and everything seemed quite perfect. The remainder of the ride was miles and miles of downhill! In contrast to the early portions of the ride, the final miles were predominately on a four lane country highway where the speed limit was 110 kilometers per hour (about 70mph).

The road itself was smooth, but the shoulder where the bicyclists were riding had occasional pot holes and broken pavement. The ride organizers had meticulously marked the hazards with red spray paint, so they could more easily be avoided. I expect we easily exceeded 30 mph on several portions of the descent.

Arriving back at the car seemed quite a relief - we had completed a fifty-three mile hilly ride in a foreign country. We'd gotten through Robin's health issues at the summit and now we were done for the day. As we changed our clothes and packed the car we recounted portions of the ride.

As we talked about the long downhill portion, Robin matter-of-factly recounted an event that had happened to her. She stated that on one of the fast portions of the downhill she had been caught off guard by a portion of broken pavement. At the last moment she saw the red paint and without thinking she had swerved to the left to miss a pothole in the shoulder. Just at that moment, two sports cars were passing by her on the highway (doing approximately 70mph). Before she knew what was happening she saw the first car pass just inches from the left edge of her handlebars, with the second car following right behind.

Listening to her story and its ho-hum delivery left me feeling cold. Trying not to show concern I asked why she hadn't mentioned this earlier and she said she had not wanted to bother me about it while we were on the ride.

We continued with our packing of the car and finally got on the road. On the drive back to Montreal I thought through the significance of the event in my head. I've been involved in two serious bicycle accidents myself, but nothing would have compared. In my mind I pictured the first car hitting the edge of the left handlebar, sending the bike tumbling in the road, with the second car following from behind. It wasn't a pretty picture. I couldn't seem to stop my mind from thinking through what would have happened next. There would have been an ambulance, maybe a trip to the hospital, but somehow I didn't think she would have survived. I thought, what would have happened after that? Certainly I'd call home for help, my brothers would have arrived that night or the next day. We would have had to travel home separately from Robin.

For the first time in all our years together I had pictured the possibility of Robin dying. My mind even thought through the arrangements involved in transportation back to the United States. Holy cow - how did I get on this train of thought! I seriously considered the possibility that maybe we should just stop biking. Who needs this sport anyway?

By the time we'd arrived back at our hotel I thought better of saying anything to Robin. She hadn't made a big deal out of it. Life is already full of risks. To have suggested sheltering ourselves would have seemed backward from the way we were living life. I guess I figured we'd both learned something from the event, and somehow we would just continue on with our lives, somehow being lucky enough to avoid danger and death into our old age.