When your car crunches into a pothole it’s sudden, violent, and jarring. Before you even think about a triage of the damage, you’ve unleashed a torrent of questions and expletives.
“Is my car okay? Who the hell decided to leave a meteor-sized sinkhole in the middle of the street? What the hell!”
Having successfully completed my 1800-mile ElectionCycle, I’m confident in declaring without qualification that despite the horribleness of breaking an axle, no pothole hit with a car can compare to the unpleasantness of getting rocked on a bike going 15, 20 or 30 mph.
Let’s say you’re cycling in the city and somehow manage to miss some monster pothole. Chances are you did it in just enough time, and with just enough skill, to adjust your bike into another desk-sized asphalt hole, or equally as damaging, a recently stripped patch of road. As a reward for your efforts you endure a hand to shoulder reverberation, shaking loose the flab you haven’t had time to tighten at the gym. Your firm-ish second chin just became a flapping gizzard.
Forget the bike, good luck repairing your self-confidence.
Whack! from the front tire. Thunk! from the back.
Avoidance is a crappy philosophy for managing potholes, and New York City is the best example of why. They’re everywhere you look and everywhere you don’t. I defy any cyclist (save Lance Armstrong and Levi Leipheimmer) to commute through midtown Manhattan and hit fewer than a dozen potholes, craters, or stripped and rugged asphalt. Tape yourself doing that and I’ll send you a t-shirt.
Despite poor road conditions I cycled through Manhattan almost everyday while preparing for the ElectionCycle. If I needed to get to work, school, bike shops, or friend’s apartments I was on the road fighting the crowds, cabbies, and craters. No matter which avenue I tried, or bike lane I hopped into, the route was guaranteed to be littered with unexpected dangers. Still, I enjoyed riding my bike. Most days I’d even mimic the bike messengers at stoplights. I’d stay clipped-in with my back straight and ass in the air, balancing on my pedals like I was on a fixed gear. But when it came time to depart I was happy to see what the rest of the country had to offer, and there is no better way to understand a country, and its roads, than from the seat of a bike.
The majority of the roads I ended up traveling were rural single lane types, far removed from the smoggy traffic jams and incessant honking of Manhattan. Within a few hours the Midtown skyscrapers I saw everyday were replaced by silos and church steeples. The jaywalking tourists of Times Square and the hurried pace of Wall Street were substituted by cornfields and cattle.
America’s countryside has two things a road cyclist absolutely cannot avoid; scores of road kill and (you guessed it) miles of unpleasant roads. Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi; no matter where you trek on your Trek, an open possum mouth is as likely to greet you as a craggy pothole with asphalt teeth. America is riddled with crappy roads.
The worst of the worst, the crème de la crème of my “Are you kidding me?” American road moments came just a few miles from Dothan, Alabama.
It was late October and I had already survived two days riding through soft drizzles on poor roads in Atlanta and the North Georgia Mountains. My route for the day had me riding along a two lane divided highway for almost 60 miles. By mid-afternoon the rain had picked up and water that was once just a nuisance when it fell from the sky, became a danger when it got spit from the road into my face. I didn’t want a grimy road water bathing me every few minutes so I chose a parallel side road with less traffic and what I presumed would be fewer puddles.
Wrong. The condition of the side road was so terrible, so poorly maintained, that for the first time on my trip I felt like picking up the bike, calling a cab, and just going to the hotel. The asphalt ridges, loose gravel, and potholes hidden beneath the water were throwing me around and creating more doubt in the success of my trip with each pedal stroke. With no choices, and unwilling to quit, I chose to stay on the road. I spent the next 45 minutes in the driving rain, pedaling at eight mph looking out for potholes as my front tire cut through the water like a canoe.
By the time I arrived at my hotel in Dothan the bike and I were totaled. The massive potholes and gravel chewed loose by years of use, forced me to clean the frame, true the wheels, and readjust the gears. The whole evening I cursed and moaned, before I finally decided to relieve pressure and stay an extra day in Dothan. I spent most of the next day in my hotel room recovering from the wind, rain, and roads of the previous day’s ride.
From the beginning of the trip I had kept a diary that I hoped would help me avoid the circumstances that led to the frustration of days like I had in Alabama, but that truth was that I couldn’t avoid the dangers. No matter how well anyone plans, or where they cycle, roads are never in a good enough condition to allay the cyclist’s or motorist’s fear of the next flat tire, bent rim, or broken rear axle.
I was fortunate during the ElectionCycle. Each time I suffered a setback due to poor road conditions I had both the experience and equipment to fix it, or was assisted by a helpful stranger who did. If I hadn’t, I might have been seen alone on a rural back road somewhere in Dixie, bike hoisted on my shoulder, limping past road kill and bitching about potholes.
Video of Dothan rainstorm (check out the road)
