Matt's crash and Gabriel's Farewell

Bike touring and blogging are an interesting yet challenging combination.  On the one hand each day tends to offer a multitude of interesting, exciting, and humorous experiences that can be written about.  On the other hand biking all day leaves little time to chronicle the experience in a blog, particularly when camping without access to a computer.  Gradually our technique for telling our story has evolved and I thought that the last few blog posts have been collaboratively written in a story telling manner.  However, the writing style that I am most comfortable with is still a first person narrative, and so that is what I want to use now to write about Matt's crash and how it impacts my experience with the tour.



On Monday July 16, Matt, Ryland, Lorenzo, and I visited the Adventure Cycling Association headquarters in Missoula, Montana.  It was an awesome experience and we ended up staying longer than planned, finally heading out around 11:30 AM.  We headed north next to a two lane highway en route to Flathead Lake where we planned to camp for the night.  We were planning to ride about 70 miles that day, which was a pretty reasonable goal even with the late start because it stays light until 10:00 PM at this time of year.  After riding for about two hours and a bit over 20 miles we saw a gas station off to our left.  Since we were riding in a pretty desolate area it seemed like a good idea to fill up on water pretty regularly.

As we approached the gas station were riding single file in the breakdown lane along Highway 200.  Lorenzo was in the front, followed by Ryland, then Matt, and finally me.  The speed limit on the highway was something like 65 or 70 MPH, because Montana has high speed limits.  We had experienced cars buzzing past us most of the day, but the part of the road we were riding on seemed pretty safe because we were to the right of rumble strips and we had a nice sized shoulder where we were riding.  However, the high speed of the cars, the wind, and the volume of traffic made it difficult to hear cars approaching from behind.  When we approached the gas station I wasn't sure if the others were going to want to stop so I was thinking about asking Matt if we should stop.  But then I saw him slow down a bit and signal with his hand and so I knew that the plan was to make a left hand turn into the gas station.

When a car wants to turn left it usually uses its turn signal and slows down until the lane of oncoming traffic is clear.  The traffic behind the car making the turn is expected to slow down or even stop if necessary.  For a cyclist the procedure is a bit more tricky because the cyclist must check for oncoming traffic as well as traffic coming from behind.  Also the traffic is usually moving much faster than the cyclist and unwilling to slow down.

As we were preparing to make our left hand turn Matt looked ahead for oncoming traffic, then turned his head quickly to look behind, and then started moving the the left across the rumble strips.  Meanwhile Ryland started looking back and I was just starting to turn my head as well.  As I was turning my head I noticed an SUV that I had not heard at all.  A feeling of horror flashed through my mind as I realized that Matt was moving directly in front of an oncoming car.  The whole thing happened in a split second because no sooner had I noticed the SUV than I saw it slam in to Matt's bike sending him and his bike flying through the air.  At some point Matt's bike broke in two pieces, one piece went flying 200 feet or more down the road while another piece skidded 50 feet into a ditch on the other side of the road.  One of Matt's bags exploded sending his cycling clothes flying everywhere while Matt landed on the highway in the lane with oncoming traffic.  Thankfully there were no oncoming cars at the time (not surprising of course since we would not have turned into oncoming traffic).  Ryland and I immediately stopped and ran over to check on Matt and I started trying to call 911 (it turned out I did not have cell service, but someone at the gas station was able to call).

The next hour was a bit of a blur and I'll probably write more about it later.  But the short story is that Matt was fully conscious the whole time and amazingly only suffered a broken ankle and some small abrasions.  He won't be riding his bike for a couple of months but he will make a full recovery and the injuries are not too serious.  But he will have to stop the cross country trip for now.

When I did my first tour with Matt two years ago spending a week riding from Santa Cruz to San Diego he was already talking about his plans to ride cross country after he graduated.  At the time it wasn't something that I was considering at all.  But after a couple of amazing tours and a lot of riding I decided that I would take the time off this summer to take part in what would be a once in a lifetime opportunity to ride cross country for two months with one of my good friends.  Matt and I both have things that we need to get back to after the tour was over and so we needed to get to Portland, Maine, by early September.  And thus far we have been staying on track keeping a pretty aggressive schedule even though we've gone through a bunch of awesome places that would have been fun to spend more time in.  Meanwhile Lorenzo and Ryland have more flexibility with their schedules.

As I was biking back to Missoula after Matt's accident I realized that I no longer had the motivation to ride hard for a month and a half to make it to Maine by early September.  All of us need some downtime to recover from this experience.  Hopefully Ryland and Lorenzo will be able to continue in a week or so and take their time going somewhere.

I am going to fly back to Virginia on Wednesday and I will stay with my parents for a couple of weeks before going back to Santa Cruz.  For me PortlandCruz will have been an awesome experience riding about 2000 miles from Santa Cruz to Portland, Oregon, to Missoula, Montana.

I plan to write some more on the blog in the upcoming weeks as I look back at the photos and remember the experiences.  And I look forward to reading stories from Lorenzo and Ryland as they continue on with the adventure.  But for now I think the most fitting ending to the trip is the picture of the four of us at the Adventure Cycling Association headquarters taken on Monday morning before we headed out towards Glacier National Park.

At Adventure Cycling Association Headquarters

Our picture up on the wall at ACA