Cyclist Assault on the W&OD

This never happens.  Sexual assaults?  There have been a few over the last 15 years. Collisions?  Of course.  Cyclists hit by vehicles at crossings?  Sadly, several.  Angry words exchanged?  Every day, I am sure, and several within my hearing.

But “road rage” attacks?  Never, until I heard this on the radio a couple of days ago:

A bicyclist was seriously injured Sunday on one of the area’s most popular bike trails when another cyclist reached out and struck him as they passed each other, authorities said.

It sounds horrible.  Somebody just reached over into the other lane and smacked another rider.

But wait; there’s more.  In the expanded Washington Post report, the story goes on [I disavow and deplore the painfully clunky prose you are about to read]:

According to the sheriff’s office, the victim was headed west and reportedly on the center line of the trail as he tried to pass two other cyclists. A cyclist going in the opposite direction purposely extended his arm and struck him on his helmet, the sheriff’s office said.

The westbound cyclist fell to the ground, the sheriff’s office said. The other cyclist rode off to the east, the sheriff’s office said, heading toward Ashburn Village Boulevard.

In a statement, the sheriff’s office said the suspect in what they described as an assault wore a white/light green shirt, a helmet and sunglasses, and was about six feet tall.

According to the office, his bicycle was said to resemble a time trial bike or a triathlon bike. The bars on the bike were “aero bars” and his helmet was an “aero” helmet covered with a sun shade that covered half his face, according to the statement.

Now it’s a whole different thing, right?  Clearly the “victim” was on the wrong side of the yellow line, not “on” it.  Check out the photo, taken at a place not far from the incident;

The W&OD Near Ashburn Village Boulevard

there’s not enough room on that section to pass without getting out of your lane.

So it is easy to infer that the “suspect”, the tri-bike guy with the white/light green jersey and the aero helmet, was faced with a speeding cyclist coming at him on his side of the trail, passing other bikes headed in his direction on their proper side of the trail.  He had no place to go except way over to the edge or off the trail.  The shoulder varies in width and quality, but it’s never a good place to be forced onto at a second’s notice.  It’s easy for me to see why the “suspect” would want to smack the “victim,” or true assailant, who had put himself, the “suspect,” and others in harm’s way.  Not that I am condoning a deliberate attempt to injure another cyclist in any circumstances, but the “victim,” it would appear, got what was coming to him.

It was a Sunday afternoon.  It was a rare (for this spring) warm April day.  The cyclists being passed were probably going slowly.  They might well have been a family.  They, along with the dog walkers, the septuagenarian couples taking walks, the second graders being taught how to ride their bikes, the riders stopped on the trail to take a cell phone call, and the rest of the human comedy that occupies the Trail on nice weekend days, can’t be expected to know or follow the Trail Rules.  If regular riders want to get out there on days like that, they have to ride slowly.  Period.

So it’s a shame it happened, and I am glad such events are very rare.  Two guys trying to squeeze too much intensity out of a rare recreational moment.

But I bet I know one guy who’s not going to be wearing his light green kit, donning his aero helmet, or riding his tri-bike for a while out on the Trail.

Copyright Arnold J. Bradford, 2018

National Pastime

It’s April and the baseball season has started.  As a Nats fan I’d know the month without a calendar from the mere fact that Adam Eaton is on the DL.  Over the last three days we’ve been given reason to remember why this sport is our “national pastime,” amusing, entertaining, and thrilling us consistently for six months of competition and then another of postseason drama.

Three days ago the up-and-coming, but not there yet, Atlanta Braves jumped all over the ex-defending champ Chicago Cubs to lead 10-2 after 3 ½ innings.  It was still 10-5 going into the bottom of the 8^th.  But in that frame the Cubbies scored nine runs, transforming a 5-run deficit into a 4-run lead.  This feat was accomplished not by a lot of long, loud hits thundering off Cub bats.  No, it was more the two hit batsmen, the wild pitch, and the 5 walks (four of them in a row, three of them RBI walks) that did it.  The Braves got two outs on the Cubs before the first of the nine runs scored.  The two singles and a double, the only Cub hits of the inning, were almost incidental.  The Wrigley crowd went home happy.

Bartolo Colon gets all of his 285 pounds behind a pitch.

Next, a couple of days ago it was the all-Texas showdown between the Rangers and the Astros.  The Astros are the current defending World Series champs.  So naturally the Rangers sent out Bartolo Colon to quiet them down.  At 5’11” and 285 pounds, Colon is baseball’s version of a sumo wrestler.  He is rotund, but beneath the outer layer of fat lurks the body of an athlete, apparently.  Colon has pitched in the big leagues for 22 years, nearly a quarter of a century.  He’s been with 11 teams in both leagues, and as a member of the L. A. Angels he won the Cy Young Award in 2005, when he also led the AL with 21 wins.  Possessor of an efficient, low-stress delivery, he pounds the strike zone and pitches to contact.  But he is 44, and he almost didn’t find a team this year.  Yet against the Astros he was awesome.  He carried a perfect game into the 8^th inning, and positioned the Rangers to win in ten, 3-1.  Forty-four, and nearly perfect.  Go figure.

And then there was last night’s Nats-Mets game, and another improbable rally.  As with the Cubs, the deficit was five runs, the homestanding Mets having racked up a 6-1 lead behind the strong hurling of Jacob deGrom, leader of a strong starting rotation and at least a couple of pounds lighter this season solely by virtue of former beard and flowing locks shorn to conventional athletic standards.  He carried his handy lead into the eighth, but after opening the frame by sandwiching a pair of hits around a whiff, he had thrown 103 pitches.  He was relieved, and the fat was in the fire.  Three more hits, a hit batsman, and four walks (2 of them RBIs) later, the Nats were up 7-6.  In the ninth the Nats got one more on a leadoff homer, and it looked like they’d need it after the Mets’ Asdrubal Cabrera doubled with one out.  But in an inexplicably bonehead move, he attempted to steal third with the tying run at the plate and first base open.  He was out.  One out later, the Citi Field crowd went home unhappy.

What other sport can beat this combination of skill, derring-do, and luck, triumph and defeat?