Saturday, June 18, 2011

2011 SMR 19

First things first - got this video of a rattlesnake near Junction... 


JB had a garage flat and called to say he'd be late so it was just me to the Junction.  I got passed by a steady stream of single riders... about one every 5 minutes.



The only guy I passed caught me back up a few minutes later.

At the Junction there was a downed tree all cut up... couldn't figure out where it came from though.


When I went over to take a photo of it, I almost stepped on the rattler!



I heard a siren down the south side somewhere and hoped it wasn't a rider.  Went up to Livermore Overlook but couldn't see anything from there.  Also heard a helicopter and thought I might even see an emergency airlift from a great perspective... nope. Then JB called and I rode back down to meet him and we took the snake video and then went down SGR.  There was a fire truck and some rangers next to a damaged car and some broken glass but we couldn't figure out what had happened; they had the autos stopped in both directions but were letting bikes through.  I first heard the siren just before 9am so the accident was probably 15 minutes or so before that.  We went through the area probably between 9:30 and 10:00 when it was just wrapping up.

At the bottom we met a MTB guy who admired JB's Della Santa and said that he had TWO Della Santas and used to race with Roland Della Santa and had worked at bike shops all over the area including The Bike Route in Concord where I bought my Ciocc in 1985, and California Pedaler where I bought my Merckx in 1993, and some other ones I never heard of.  Anyway, he had heard that the incident on SGR was a descending cyclist who hit a van going up; didn't seem to match with what we saw (blue car) but his info seemed to be good.  so I don't know if they airlifted the rider out and I was just too late for the helicopter, or if they ambulanced him down SGR and the helicopter never landed.

Then back on Danville Blvd.  Didn't get any cramps... good day!

3 comments:

Jo Lynn said...

I was a cyclist caught up in this accident Saturday. A cyclist coming down, hit a VW wagon on the driver's door. He was in a lot of pain as they put him on a stretcher and airlifted him out. I was hoping to find out how his is so I am searching Google. That's how I found your post.

Diablo Scott said...

Thanks Jo Lynn - I don't remember if the blue car I saw was a VW wagon, possible there was more than one car involved but it looked like the response team was wiping down the inside of the dashboard and windshield and cleaning up some broken glass around it.

Hitting the driver's side door sounds like either the driver was in the wrong lane or the cyclist took too much speed into a curve. It wasn't a blind corner and seemed like an odd spot for a crash.

Diegomayra said...

The "only guy" who passed you is in need of a serious summer cycling tan. I had to double-take to make sure he was wearing white leg warmers in summer.

Cool snake vid.