6/23/2012 Ride Re-Cap

The day started with nice weather, a good group of riders. We took the usual route for the typical Saturday ride to St. Mary Road with a loop around the Ascension Cemetery. We were riding in double (non-rotating paceline). We were able to stay close together and maintain decent pace for a good part of the ride. As we were getting more comfortable with each other in the paceline the speed was going up. With about 15 miles to go we had an unfortunate accident. We had three riders go down at about 27 mph with two others narrowly escaping the crash. One rider seemed to be injured the worse. He was taken to the Lake Forrest hospital and was found to have broken collar bone and shoulder blade in addition to several areas of road rash. His new carbon bike also sustained the worse damage - a broken chain stay. Another rider had a lot of road rash and several badly bruised areas, but was in good spirit and declined to have a trip to the ER for check up. He also discovered that his carbon handlebars were broken too. The third rider had some road rash and damaged front wheel, he also declined to be taken to the ER and appeared to have avoided major injury. It was a quiet ride back home with generous spacing in the paceline. The injured rider that was taken to the ER was released home after being tested for additional injuries.
As they say biking is inherently dangerous activity. We will all use this unfortunate accident to learn and become better and safer riders.

Here are some pictures from the scene. The broken bike pictures are too graphic to be posted.