My First Accident

This past weekend I was spending some quality time relaxing down the Cape, and thought I would go out for a nice long ride on the Cape Cod Rail Trail.  The Trail runs from Dennis up to Wellfleet or out to Chatham.  I chose to do the Dennis to Wellfleet route, as this is a bit longer ride, and I wanted to get about 3 hours in.  The route is great, nice and flat.  The only quips I have is at all the street crossings are stop signs, so it's difficult to get into a great rhythm a lot of the time.

I decided to leave a bit early in the morning to avoid all the family traffic that would be on the trail, so I started at 6:30am.  I made it out to Wellfleet (approx. 26 miles into the ride) by 7:50am, ate some food, and headed back.  The ride was great.  There wasn't much traffic, I was cruising along, enjoy the morning sun.  When I was about 2 miles from the end of the trail, WHAM, my great morning came a screeching halt.

The families started inhabiting the trail in bunches, making my ride more difficult to maneuver.  I had just crossed an intersection, and so I was out of my saddle, sprinting a bit to pick up speed, when a little tike swerved in front of me from the other side of the trail on his tricycle.  In instinctively swerved further outside the trail, where I naturally lost control of my bike.  My front wheel slid on some sand, and while I was wobbling, I hit a brick that was so conveniently placed alongside the trail.  Front roll, crash, front rolls, crash, side roll, etc.

Next thing I knew, I was on the ground, checking for injuries, but only found a little bit of blood coming out of the edge of my fingernail.  So I tried to get up and ride away, slightly embarrassed.  Didn't happen.  I was too shaken up, and it was only due to adrenaline that I was able to stand up at that instant because I fell right over.  Looking back down at my hand, which hurt the most, and blood is coming down more, out of more places now too.  I sat there for a bit, trying to calm myself down and not faint, and with the help of some other riders that stopped to help me (seems to be a trend for me...), I called Laura to come pick me up.

I didn't go directly to the hospital, even though I felt pretty sore, because I wanted to rest a bit and analyze the extent of my injuries.  After some rest, and a clean-up of my hand, my injuries are as follows.

1. Scratched up left hand, with the ring finger being the worst off, with several layers torn off.
2. Swollen right knee, which has subsided at this time.
3. Bruised left quad.
4. Tender left ribs.
5. Abrasions on my left elbow.

Nothing too serious, I was lucky!  Life goes on, and I will take out of this to watch out for kids on tricycles!