MadRhino said:
E-beach you got this all wrong.
Do I really have it all wrong? I don't think so. I just happen to believe living with constant pain is a bad thing. How do I know? I have my own aches and pains that hurt all the time. Who needs more of that? Nobody.
MadRhino said:
Skilled riders with long time experience don’t believe they will always be saved, unless they are total idiots.
Skilled riders......OK, I am moving on to 55 years of riding bicycles. It will happen this June. And motorcycles, my 47th year will be about May. I have ridden bicycles and motorcycle in the densest traffic in the world, high speeds and low speeds. I have been doing it for decades. I have also trained on road bikes to the tune of 150 miles per week, for years. I have ridden motorcycles into the deep desert, at high speeds, to places where no man has ever walked, at least not willingly. I have climbed steep hills on motorcycles, and bicycles. I have descended at high speed on both as well.
Skilled riders?
Before mountain bikes were invented I was cutting the loop off the back of the sissy-bar of my Schwinn Stingray and tucking it under my banana seat. And then clamping some sort of bar into my handlebars to form a crossbar so that when we rode (my buddys and i) down to Fox Hills, before there was a mall, when they were still dirt hills, the handlebars wouldn't collapse when I got air-born down the main hill for at least 50 feet of air before I hitting the bottom of the hill and skidding left through the 90 degree turn so not to go over the side of the 20 foot drop-off.
Lecturing me about skilled riding will certainly fall on deaf ears because my cycling experience is dense :wink:
MadRhino said:
........Old riders who are still riding fast and dangerous conditions are perfectly conscious, because they live with the pain of all the bad crashes of their life, on cold and rainy days especially.
Yep, and that's why "expecting to get hurt again" is a really-really stupid idea. Expecting to ride in a way where one is not put into a situation where they will get badly hurt again is a much better idea.
MadRhino said:
It is just that some riders are accepting the consequences, and don’t let pain or fear dictate they way of life. I did accept a long time ago that I might die in a crash, or by accumulation of consequences. I just think ‘so what’, it is our fate to live, suffer, and die. Death is smiling to us all, some of us are smiling to her in return.
Well like the young say "Live fast. Die young. Leave a good looking corpse.
Well, here is the thing, not everybody wants to die early. Or live with pain. And once you crash hard, pain may not be your only way of life. Like this poor guy.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-injured-bicyclist-20170927-story.html And, yes he got money, but that is mostly going to pay for 24/7/365 nursing care. Do you really want a catheter and someone to go at you bottom with rubber gloves every day because your bowls don't function anymore?
Don't think that death will get you quickly, or peacefully, like some sweet peaceful summer rain on your forehead. You may suffer for years before you go....
Or, you can take my advice and be smarter about how you ride.
My guess, sad to say is that you wouldn't make it in my town. And I say "sad to say" because I appreciate your input around ES. I really do!
However, I don't care if you have a plan A or a plan A and B or a plan A, B and C, that is still not enough around here. If you think learning to lay your bike down will save you, well maybe where you live, but around here the next car will just run over you and may not stop to even look at you. If you think I am exaggerating, then google this once a week for a year.
"Los Angeles bicycle killed hit and run"
https://www.google.com/search?q="Lo...and+run"&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1
It is a never ending crime sheet. And I mean never ending!
In any case I say safe riding is better then egotistical assumptions about how good you are. Besides, you or me, we can never control how the other guys is driving. It only takes one time.
So my suggestion to ES members is to not think you are in total control when you ride, because you aren't. :wink: