My wheel; my responsibility.

This sequence captures the most terrifying moment of my Elk Grove weekend. My wife's uncle, Efrian Martinez, who saved our wedding pics because the "real" photographer sucked balls, was on point once again. Thanks Efrain!

So, there is a break off the front. I rotate through and pull. The next rider pulls in front of me before he passes my bike. He bumps my bars and almost touches my wheel (I grabbed the brakes.) No big deal. We keep riding. I should have given him more room than I did because once he's on the front the pace slows a lot. At the time, I'm not sure if he is purposely slowing the field or if he is just tired. Anyway, I coast...but clearly don't slow down fast enough. We cross wheels but I'm leaning the wrong way. I grab the breaks, hold my breath, and pull as hard as I can on the bars. It looks super dramatic--more dramatic than I remember it being. I'm mean, it happened in like 1 second.

In the first photo, at that exact moment, I am thinking...this is it...crash time. But luckily no one was to my right when my wheel came free and I shot off to the right side. I look back to see how bad I almost made everything, and seeing no seriously shaken riders. They may have thought that I was just pulling way away like some crazy people like to do to "get the hell off the front." So there was some yelling. I don't care. I'm feeling really, really lucky. I get my right foot clipped back in and slide back into the field and count my lucky stars. Lesson learned.





whew...