Rider Down

Brian Guerrero

The weekend before my recent unfortunate incident with the asphalt one of our area riders, Brian Guerrero, was on a group ride up in Alabama when there was a crash and he was hit by a passing vehicle. When I crashed last week I was lucky enough to walk away with minor injuries, and although VJ is still on injured reserve with reportedly cracked vertebrae, he will no doubt be back on the bike soon. Brian was not so lucky. While I don't know all the details, I do know that his injuries were very severe and included major head trauma. Eric Heyl of Eastbank Cyclery immediately set up a Gofundme site, knowing that even with the best possible outcome there would be major costs for his family. That was quickly followed up by the Herring Gas Cycling Foundation, which had been set up a couple of years ago for just such a purpose, donating its funds as well. I learned this morning that he passed away. Brian was a well-liked member of the Green Team Bayou Country Cyclists club and was a regular on group rides and mountain bike races. Although I didn't know Brian very well, I'm sure I rode with him on a number of occasions. This morning on the news they were showing the video of a hit-and-run on Magazine Street involving a cyclist who luckily escaped with fairly minor injuries. This was someone who was just riding to work, in the bike lane, when she was hit from behind by a car.

It seems I see something like this almost on a daily basis nowadays.  Perhaps it's because there are just that many more cyclists on the roads, or because the news of these incidents travels so far and wide thanks to the internet. Whatever the reason, whenever we go out for a ride now we always have, somewhere in the back of our minds, the knowledge that we just might not make it back home.  I am always reminded at such times of a conversation I had as a child with my father. After learning to fly in the Army right around the end of WWII, he maintained his pilot's license and would sometimes take us out to Lakefront Airport for little trips over the lake, out over the Chandelier Islands, to Baton Rouge, or any number of little airstrips scattered around Louisiana and Mississippi. I remember asking him why he flew airplanes if they were so dangerous (no doubt that idea came from my mother who was never very fond of flying).  He just looked over at me and said, "Sometimes the enjoyment you get out of something is worth the risk."

No doubt Brian was well aware of the risk. That particular crash might have normally resulted in little more than scraped skin and bruises like the ones I received a week ago, had there not been a vehicle going by at just the wrong time. I've been involved in lots of crashes in group rides and races out on the road, and it's been just a matter of luck that a car or truck hasn't been involved in them. Last Sunday, for example, I was careening down unfamiliar roads in Georgia at speeds in the 50 mph range, held to the pavement by tiny patches of rubber pulling me around sweeping downhill curves on open roads. I was focused on the issues on hand, choosing lines through the turns, regulating speed, anticipating the next braking point, dealing with other riders and the occasional car. That was fun and satisfying, and required sufficient concentration that there was no room left for fearing the possible but unlikely things that could always go terribly wrong. I'm not going to stop riding on the road because even though the odds may have shifted a little bit in recent years, I still think they're largely in my favor, and as my dad would have said, "worth the risk."