[wdb]

Originally Posted by Bicycle Bob

Then there was the lovely night I was doing 20 instead of 30 on a hairpin turn because my girlfriend was having to do the shifting, and crowding my steering arm.

Am I the only person here with a mind dirty enough to be conjuring up all kinds of 'young love' images?

I had one abrasion, but had ridden mostly on my U lock, which I carried by sticking it into both my front and back pockets.

That has to be the oddest testimony for U-locks I have ever heard.

Originally Posted by MetroMPG

Man, it's so good to read someone who's aware of rear crash risk!

That reminds me of two stories, both from the same relative era, early 1980's.

First story: It's springtime, sun is out, roads are dry, visibility is spectacular. I'm on a 4-lane road, the type with stop lights and cross roads and a lot of traffic -- and school bus stops. A school bus does indeed stop, lights blazing, and I and all of the other cars around it stop as well. With the exception of a woman in a Volvo wagon (don't get me started on women in Volvo wagons) who was tending to her kids in the back seat instead of the road in front of her. All of which I learned by looking in rearview mirror, as her car hurtled towards me. There was a guy in front of me in a BMW. He must also have been looking in his rearview mirror, or perhaps it was the screeching tires that caused him to look. At any rate he very quickly assessed the situation and pulled his car forward and onto the shoulder; I popped my car into the space his formerly occupied, and the Volvo screamed sideways to a stop in the space formerly occupied by me. The kids on the bus had their faces pressed hard against the windows, eyes wide. I wanted to kiss the feet of the Bimmer guy, but instead we both made manly nods towards one another and went on our way.

Story the second: cold, wet winter morning, early (I started work at 6am in those days). Cold and wet enough to be freezing on the roads as it turned out. I was driving on a two-lane road in an MGB roadster, two tires on the gravel shoulder for some vague semblence of traction, flashers on, low in third gear. The road crested a small rise and then dipped down, and at that spot a poor soul in a very clean-looking first-gen Mustang had slid off the road backwards and gone maybe 50 yards into a field, leaving two tire tracks in the snow. Footprints led away from the car; must have happened some time ago. As I was taking all this in at my very leisurely pace I happened to peer in my rearview mirror to find a girl *flying* up behind me in a Le Car. She crested that rise and her car piroutted very neatly and proceeded to slide off the road backwards. Down the exact same tracks left by the Mustang. Her car came to an abrupt stop against the front of the ponycar, smushing the bumper and breaking the headlights. I stopped and went over to render aid. She got out, looked at her car, decided it was driveable, got back in, and drove out of the field. In the exact same set of tracks left by the Mustang. That poor Mustang owner was going to come back and find the front of his car smashed in, and no sign (other than footprints) to indicate how it happened.