Is “Bulled” Worse Than “Doored?”

The October before last, I suffered the worst nightmare of anyone who cycles in traffic:  I was “doored.”

I ended up with 30 stitches and a lot of aches and pains. Still, it could have been worse.

At least, I imagine getting “bulled” could be even more painful.  And the driver who doored me didn’t run from the scene! 

He Survived Combat. Then His Bike Blew Up.

Once upon a time, before X-boxes and I-phones roamed the Earth, kids actually wanted--and sometimes got--bikes for Christmas.  So, after my first bike shop laid me off early in the Fall, the owner asked whether I could come back for a few weeks in December and early January.  

I was surprised that he would want me, even for a few days, in the New Year.  I would learn that some of the bikes we sold for Christmas would be brought in for adjustments, as promised by the shop.  But other kids brought in bikes their parents hadn't bought from us.  Some of those machines were really twisted.  Even more serpentine were the stories they told us.  My favorite came from the parent of a kid whose wheels had folded into the shape of a certain Bachman's snack.  

According to that kid's supposed role model, the wheel assumed its form when the kid "turned the corner" and "the rim bent."

Now, I admit that my knowledge of physics was, at best, rudimentary.  So perhaps you, dear reader, can forgive me for not understanding how something made from two layers of steel could just fold over when a 65-pound kid turned it at a 45 degree angle.

Oh, and that kid's parent wanted us to replace the wheel--for free--on that bike, which wasn't purchased in our shop or, as best as I could tell, any bike shop.

Perhaps you can thus understand my skepticism when anyone claims that a bike fell apart as he or she rode it.  I know, well, that some bikes aren't very well-made, but very few are so shoddy that they will disintegrate under you as you ride.  I mean, I've heard of Lambert's "death forks" snapping when their riders hit bumps, and of various parts failing in one way or another under normal use.  But I don't recall any bike snapping at its frame joints during the course of a routine ride.

That is, until I came across the story of Ronnie Woodall.  

The Austin, Texas resident was riding along 4th street when the welds broke on his $1600 All City bicycle and sent him flying face-first into a construction fence.

The head and down tubes separated from the steer tube.  The result that Mr. Woodall's nose all but separated from his face.  It was "barely hanging on by this left side of my nostril, across the top," he recalls. The impact, which pushed his head back and twisted his neck,  "blew out out all of the vertebrae in my neck," he explains.

His doctor estimates that it will take $2 million to care of him medically in the future.  All City is a brand from Quality Bicycle Products.  According to a company statement,  QBP has  inspected the bicycle and claims to "have not found evidence" that "the bicycle spontaneously came apart," which is "something that, in our experience, bicycles simply do not do."

Whether or not the bike fell apart at faulty welds, or whether there was some other mitigating circumstance, there is another part of this story that is ironic, almost to the point of being incredible: Ronnie Woodall, a retired 30-year Army veteran, suffered his worst injuries, not on a nameless hill in some distant, forlorn country, but on a bike that cost more than most people in some of those distant, forlorn countries make in a year.  And it happened in the middle of the 11th-largest city in the United States.

The Only Way You Can Pin Down A World-Class Rider

A few cyclists who are even more dedicated (to what, I don’t know) than I am, or are simply more Retro-grouchy than one of my favorite bloggers, has a pair of wheels with wooden rims.

Once upon a time, such wheels were de rigueur.  After all, wood is light (at least compared to metal), strong and resilient.  All racers used them until Mavic developed alloy rims.  While road riders embraced this new development, track racers used wooden rims until they were banned for competition during the 1950s.

Why were wooden rims banished from the velodrome?

Well, when an metal wheel is crashed, it bends or crumples.  But a wood rim is likely to shatter. That is made all the more likely because on track wheels, the spokes are tuned to a higher tension, and the tires are pumped to higher pressures, than on road bikes.  

The result of an “exlpoding” wooden rim was often a cloud of wooden shards that could shush-kebab riders or spectators.

Decades after the ban on wooden rims, many velodromes have wood surfaces. Nobody anticipated such hazards from them—until now.

Lorenzo Gobbo suffered a previously unheard-of mishap.  Apparently, when he went down, his pedal scraped up a half-meter length of the track that ended up in his back—and pierced  his  lung

He is expected to make a full recovery.  But  you have to wonder: how many other cyclists  have come out of a race looking as if they’d  been attacked by an  by an archer?