By Ben SerottaTwo days after being hit by a pick-up truck my day is so routine it struck me that something is missing in this moment. Maybe it’s all the greetings and positive comments that have come in on Facebook, email and forum threads that give me pause. They are the little reminders that I am about the luckiest man on the planet today, doing my average day routine, just two days later.
Risking the appearance of being a self absorbed narcissist, here’s a quick recap:
I was riding along on a glorious Sunday morning on one of Saratoga County’s fantastic rural roads- great pavement, good shoulder and little to no traffic. Nursing a hyper-extended knee injury I was going at a nice tempo on a relatively flat road, head up, hands on the hoods. I was wearing a white jersey given to me courtesy of Cyclefit and GPM10 and my red/white Catlike helmet. I was very visible and I could see clearly.
Suddenly coming in the opposite direction, a full size dark colored pickup came into view and he turned towards me as if to intentionally hit me (it wasn’t until after I was on the ground looking around that I understood he was turning into a driveway, his driveway).
What happened next is hard to reconstruct. What I remember first and foremost was being angry as hell that somebody was driving this truck at me…and “how dare they fuck me over.” Whether or not I actually let loose an audible tirade or not, I can’t say for sure, but in a millisecond my brain was letting loose a very long expletive. No life flashing before my eyes, no thinking of regrets, just absolute rage that somebody was testing my resolve to live. I remember straight-arming the top of the hood and pushing off hard, you know fullback style. Maybe that’s what saved my life and my body the first time.
I remember the sensation of impact thinking my hip and femur were dashed…then landing on the ground and yelling. I also realized that I could still see and hear and that the truck was still trying to move forward towards me, revving its engine slightly.
I think my bike saved my life the second time. Noticing that something was well wedged under his vehicle the driver finally stopped and put the truck in park.
Two days later, I am getting previously unrevealed glimpses, momentary flashes of the time between recognizing imminent peril and sitting up on the ground, calmly talking to and with the bewildered gentleman who had almost turned me into pizza mista in his driveway. I remember asking for quiet while I checked in with all my body parts, discovering in disbelief that everything was still attached and better yet still moved on demand. No pools of blood either.
I looked up at the driver who was red faced and frightened, either from what had been coming out of my mouth or fear over what he’d done, or might have done or all the above. I realized, that he was as surprised as I …he clearly hadn’t seen me or if he did, it didn’t register, I knew he hadn’t intentionally tried to run me over. But I’m glad that in the moment, that’s what I felt, for the strength it gave me. “Today, we’re both very lucky. You didn’t kill me,” I told him and he readily agreed.
Today I looked more closely at the bike and I am even more convinced that the bike saved me during the truck’s second attempt to produce coque au Ben. Every component on the bike is trashed:
Both wheels are bent, split, spokes snapped, tires blown. Brake levers busted. The aluminum seatpost bent and saddle sheared off as they made contact with my inner leg (probably the nastiest looking bruise I’ve ever had); the right pedal and mooring are ripped out of the crank arm, the front brake is bent, the rear brake bolt snapped.
But the frame and fork? The fork did not snap and is true. The left rear carbon stay has a crack, but it is intact.
Stepping outside of my biased role here at the company….I swear, this is awe inspiring to me and should be to anyone else. Everyone here who has looked at the bike is in awe and they should be. They should be proud too. I am also sure that in this day and age when sales, product and marketing are focused on “stiff and light” that there is probably no other carbon bike in the world that would not have become a thousand pieces of carbon shrapnel while giving way to a 2 ½ ton determined pick-up truck. Surely at minimum I’d have had nasty splinters to deal with in addition to whatever other carnage probably would have happened.
I absolutely believe that I owe my life in part to Mike Lopez, Serotta’s bona fide carbon wizard, and our combined design philosophy, and as well to the people who execute to that with perfection every day, whether in carbon or steel or titanium…the ethos is always there. I owe them all thanks and praise for a job well done and for being there with me in a moment of crisis.
Hermenegildo Acevedo, Bryar Sessleman, Celestino Lopez, Brain Smith, Baltazar Lupercio, Frank Cenchitz, Javier Mora, Anthony Seberger, Ronald Rehkopf, Celestino Williams, Joshua Mock, Caleb Sesselman, Jeffrey Wager, Travis LaPrairie, Shane Haberland, Arron Kopp, Darren Brachetti, Scott Hock, Patrick O’Farrell and Mike Lopez….thank you all for doing it right, every day…you are awesome and I love you.
Closing thoughts (for now).
Continuing my post mortem of the bike. I’m glad that I continue to use Deda aluminum bars and stem….and Thompson aluminum seat post….they didn’t break or shatter either, nor did my Campy Shamal rims (did break, didn’t shatter), probably sparing me nasty wounds and helping to support the truck… there was a good pecking order to strength in this accident…
We didn’t intend to build my MeiVici to withstand the weight of a full sized pick-up and I don’t recommend that anyone else goes out and tries seeing if their bike of any brand fares better. On the other hand my faith in our design integrity is further reinforced…build to last, build for the real world, build every bike as though it’s our last statement. And so is my confidence in carbon fiber construction that’s done right. There are hundreds if not thousands of photos and videos on the internet of failed carbon product…but you can be sure it has nothing to do with choosing the wrong material, it’s in the design and execution where the difference is made. It’s why our carbon BB has more than 70 separate pieces including a titanium sleeve…and a lot of other stuff that elevates Serotta carbon beyond other carbon.
Are our bikes overbuilt? I don’t know for certain…but I do know they are not under-built and with only a small weight penalty over the uber-light stuff I am pretty comfortable with where we are at.
I could easily start on a tangent now, hypothesizing that the increase in pro crashes has a correlation to overly light & stiff bikes (not necessarily harsh, but stiff), but I’ll save that for another time.
Hoping to share the road with you,
Ben
No comments:
Post a Comment