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- Newsgroups: rec.bicycles.soc
- Path: sparky!uunet!psinntp!wrldlnk!usenet
- From: "Michael Smith" <p00004@psilink.com>
- Subject: Dog meets bike (Was: Whatcha get...)
- In-Reply-To: <1992Dec29.164614.7798@Happy-Man.com>
- Message-ID: <2934741514.1.p00004@psilink.com>
- Sender: usenet@worldlink.com
- Nntp-Posting-Host: 127.0.0.1
- Organization: Performance Systems Int'l
- Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 22:35:24 GMT
- X-Mailer: PSILink-DOS (3.3)
- Lines: 57
-
- >DATE: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 16:46:14 GMT
- >FROM: Joshua_Putnam <josh@Happy-Man.com>
- [....]
- >The basics of the accident: coming around a corner at ~28mph, I
- >saw a woman jogging towards me in the traffic lane (there is no
- >shoulder on that side of the road, just a jogging path on the
- >other side). She was leading two terriers on leashes, and moved them
- >off to the edge of the road as I passed at the center line. Just
- >before I reached her, one of the dogs was startled by a car
- >engine starting. The woman lost her grip on the middle of the
- >leash, letting the dog yank it to its full length of over 10
- >feet. The dog ended up less than a foot in front of my wheel,
- >and followed me left as I tried to dodge it. I ended up hitting
- >it amidships, about the bottom of the ribcage.
- [....]
-
- My condolences on the accident. Hope everything mends quickly.
-
- Your description of what happened is uncannily like an accident
- (fortunately for me, less serious in its consequences) that I once had.
-
- Also coming down a hill (this was in Riverside Park in New York City, of
- all places) on a multi-use path. Nasty pools of mud and glop on each
- side. Coming toward me on the path, a woman *on a bicycle* with a
- scrofulous-looking terrier-oid doglet running beside her on a leash --
- on her left side, I should add. She (the cyclist, that is)
- and I were each keeping to the right, but poochie decided to go wide
- (i.e. to my right). Understandable, I guess, since it wasn't a very broad
- path, and his alternative was to go between us. I was just trying to
- figure out what I was going to do about the leash stretched across my
- path when canis domesticus invalidated any plans I might have formed by
- reconsidering his strategy and darting back toward his mistress --
- right in front of my wheel. As with you, a catapult ensued.
-
- I still can't figure out why my middle-aged skeleton didn't take a few
- fractures. I *think* that I must have flipped enough to land on the back
- of my head and the area between my shoulders; I seem to recall actually
- coming through the flip and getting back onto my feet in the same
- motion. Must have been something to see; I probably couldn't reproduce
- it in a million years.
-
- Of course, the New York punchline to the whole thing is that the dog's
- mistress was quite annoyed at *me*. The wretched creature was completely
- unhurt, naturally -- again, I was thinking of the quadruped, not the
- biped, although the latter, too, suffered nothing worse than emotional
- distress.
-
- In retrospect, I have to admit that I probably was going too fast for a
- multi-use path in a crowded park. But I still think that taking a dog
- out cycling -- on a leash! -- is a spectacularly silly thing to do. So
- my accident was partly my fault, partly hers. Yours, by contrast, sounds
- like nobody's fault -- just one of those things.
-
- Again, best wishes for a speedy recovery.
-
- --Michael Smith
-
-