After being on the bike for a while now, I have started to realize the imminent dangers entailed with cycling.

It had never hit me how seriously dangerous this sport is. I always knew that there was the potential of me getting hurt, but I never realized the seriousness of it until recently...

The Saturday before our three-day spring break trip/ride was our 50-mile Saturday morning, training ride. It was a cold overcast morning and it just was not my day.

As we were descending a hill, all the riders spaced out and staggered to give each other more room. As I neared the bottom of the slope, my front tire inched into a pile of asphalt gravel. Preparing for what I knew was coming next, I unclippped my left foot...and before I knew it, my front tire slid out from under me and my tire went perpendicular to the frame of the bike and I went down. STRIKE ONE.

Luckily, the injuries were minimal. I took Tae Kwon Do for 13 years of my life, so I was taught how to fall correctly to avoid major injuries. I tucked my shoulder and rolled into the fall, avoided hitting my head, somehow unclipped my right foot, grabbed my bike, and stood up. I would like to think that it was a pretty graceful fall. I came out of this crash with just a bruised left elbow and a small, half-centimeter scratch on my knee. I avoided road rash because I had my longsleeve fleece on. All in all, it could've been much worse.

Then a few miles later (if even that far) we were biking by a couple buildings when I heard this explosion come from my back tire. The ride all of a sudden became a lot more rough that it just was and Carolina yelled to me that I had a flat.

We pulled over to the side of the road so I could tend to my flat, only to find a three inch drill-bit lodged into my rear tire. STRIKE TWO.:

After fixing the flat, we continued our ride. On the way back, during a hill climb, I lost my focus and ran off the road. Nothing too bad, just a one foot drop off the asphalt. STRIKE THREE.

Third time's the charm, right? Like Carolina told me, if this third thing didn't happen the same day, who knows when it would have!

That day was just one unlucky day for me. I realized only some of the many different obstacles I'd have to overcome during the ride. I had never gotten a flat on my Felt until this day. I had never taken a fall until this day. I had never run off the road until this day. And even though these three things did happen, I have started to realize that these are only a few of the many obstacles I'd be experiencing this summer.

But what doesn't kill you makes you stronger right? I know have a better idea of how to deal with these things if I ever encounter them again.

Hopefully...they well be less frequent and hopefully I won't have to deal with multiple problems in one day.

Only time will tell!

-Thaison