Back in the Saddle Again

With my Colnago C40 still in the bicycle shop waiting for my new fork to arrive, I finally felt good enough to go for a short ride on my Felt time trial bike. The Colnago is sitting in the Trek Bicycle Superstore in San Diego after my crash in the Tour de Murrieta circuit race, in Murrieta, California (see previous post.) It seemed to come off the 30 mph end over end accident fairly well, if you can call having to drop over 6 bills "coming off fairly well." The carbon fiber, aero handlebars are toast, the stem had the mounting screws that hold the handlebars sheared off, and the fork is suspect, though we haven't looked for steerer tube damage yet - just seems the sensible thing to do, as the fork is completely carbon fiber. It was a Look fork that I'm replacing with a slightly heavier Colnago fork that is also carbon fiber but has an alloy steerer tube and should be stronger for when I repeat the accident in the future. The left shifter is suspect but seems okay right now, will know more when I get the bike put back together.

The big story here is my Giro Monza helmet. Without question it saved my life. When the numnut sprinted up on my left and hooked my handlebars with his, he was driving at full speed. My handlebars were immediately pushed hard to the right causing my front wheel to follow and the bike literally tipped straight over and drove me into the pavement head first. I took the impact on the left side of my helmet and was immediately knocked out for several minutes by the impact. The helmet sustained fatal injuries, cracked in more than 3 places - see pics below.

I now have a lot of faith in Giro and have replaced my dead Monza with a new Giro, Ionos model.

Left Side of Helmet

Note double crack on either side of helmet front

Note crack through yellow safety decal