Terrestrial “black-holes”

This black-hole story is no space adventure, but rather a simple reminder to remain extremely careful at all times everytime we ride our bicycle.

First, just picture a bike path that narrows into a tight road under-path, shared with a small creek. Like any underpass, even with some light, it's quite dark, making visibility quite challenging especially on a bright, sunny day.

That's where I got my wife and me into, this past Friday as we were getting back into the saddle for the first time, this season. As it narrows to about 4 foot wide at the entrance to the tunnel, the path is now covered with wood planking, with the tunnel wall on the right-hand side and a 4-foot concrete fence on the rider's left.

This is how I entered the underground passage, without much visibility, and failing to see that the creek had overflowedm, covered the narrow boardwalk with 6 inches of water.

I almost instantly felt my bike slipping from underneath me, my right shoulder hitting hard the concrete wall to the right,  bouncing me even harder  to the left, while getting me off my bike before I hit my rear chest with full force  the cement fence to my left.

The end result when that flying prowess was over amounted to 4 broken ribs, which was consistent with the 4-foot wide path and the 4-foot concrete parapet. Ouch!