You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
Child 1 and I were riding last night on the road.
Unusually, we were not on our bendy bar bikes.
It was dark, wet but a perfectly normal ride on a country lane - we had a full array of lights and visible jackets on with helmets and (unusually for me) gloves.
I always ride behind him with a slightly wider position to help with road presence.
In the briefest of moments I must have caught up with him, our bars touched, mine went under his and we both went down.
Child 1 went towards the verge, I ended up in the middle of the road hitting the ground hard.
Luckily a) nothing was immediately behind us but a moment later two cars flew by at 60 and b) it was wet so I ended up sliding rather than tumbling.
Child 1 was fortunately relatively unscathed, but the main contacts points for me were my elbow and knee with the lightest touch to my helmet (ooh er Mrs). Thankfully my lightweight trousers and jacket did a remarkable job of keeping the cuts clean of gravel and debris
Child 1 was up first and immediately ran to me in the road but I shouted at him to get back off the road as I had no idea what may be coming. I explained afterwards that I wasn't telling him off but my focus was his safety.
We got up dusted ourselves down and carried on to where we were going.
As the aches and bruising have set in today I find myself thinking we were incredibly lucky but I feel very much uneasy about it.
I acknowledge that it was a freak accident - we've done that ride plenty of times but I cannot shake it from my head and am dwelling on the fact it could have been a lot worse.
Not sure exactly why I'm posting ...
Give it a bit of time, it's still fresh and raw.
Good points were that you were highly visible, and that your positioning did exactly what you wanted, it put him into the (safe) verge, and you into the (dangerous) road.
It's also ok for children to see that you are extremely careful around dangerous things - that's a very valuable lesson that may save his life one day, even if it upset him in the moment.
Let it heal for a bit, and then work out what you want to do next.
Glad that it's only pride, paint and chrome that has been hurt.
What Kramer said.
You've had a huge shock. You had the presence of mind during the incident to think clearly and avoided a serious situation. Many people have been in that position (some not always able to be so calm). It's quite normal to re-think and allow time to let the shock of what happened sink in.
Take care of yourself for a few days.