We had our first accident. The roads often have “rumble strips” on them. Those indentations put into the asphalt when the road is built to warn drivers that they are about to run off the road so stop texting and pay attention. They are a major enemy of bicycle riders. It only takes a few seconds of riding on those things with a bicycle to cause you to lose all self control over what you think and what comes out of your mouth,  more than a few seconds I am convinced would destroy your bike and your anotomy or at least do great harm. So you avoid those terrible, aweful things with great attentiveness. When there are guard rails on the road because you are on a bridge or near a bank the rumble strips stop, because obviously they don’t need them. If you are riding on the inside of the rumble strips, that is between the rumble strip and the dirt, and a guard rail is coming there is usually a one foot space to ride your bike on to transition from the inside of the rumble strips to the road side of the guard rail, and because the rumble strips are inline with the guard rail it requires a little S turn to make this transition.  If you are riding over 10 mph it is a bit tricky making the turn. Me being a chicken when it comes to maneuvering my bicycle slow down to about 5 mph to make the turn or I just grit my teeth and run over the rumble strips and move to the outside of them. We had just such an encounter 8 miles from camp yesterday.  I was “drafting” behind John and because we were cruising along at about 15 mph I endured the rumble strips instead of following John’s deft maneuvering of the S turn. Richard was “drafting” behind me and bevades he didn’t  have a clear view of the end of the guard rail around my skinny body hooked  the bottom of his riding shorts on the edge of the guard rail. The result was like one of those steers getting roped at a rodeo, he came to an abrupt stop, and bicycle and rider ended up in a heap on the ground sliding along the pavement. I heard him yell and heard the bike hit the guard rail and looked in my rear view mirror. My first thought was , ” he is dead”. I stopped and got my bike lifted over the guard rail out of traffic and looked back and Richard was up on his feet leaning on the guard rail, and I thought “Thank You Jesus”, but I was sure that he was going to need a ride in an ambulance. But all he ended up with was some very painful “road rash”. He managed to ride his bike a few miles toward camp before the ladies came and picked him up. We all had a good time laughing at him in camp as he “squealed” while his wife cleaned the wounds and bandaged him up. Darn rumble strips, I hate those things.