How an idiot on the 401 costs me my ride at the provincial championships

This time last year was my first mountain bike race since arriving in Canada. This year it would be my 16th race of the summer and as I was cruising across Toronto on the 401 highway late on Saturday evening, I was looking forward to getting back to the place where my mountain biking in Canada all began the year before. Practice had been cancelled earlier in the day in order to preserve the course from the downpour that pushed through Southern Ontario that morning, but the weather was to be great for Sunday. Then I glanced at a bright light closing fast in the corner of my car's right hand mirror.

At first I thought it was a cop as he raced across three lanes as quickly as he was moving forward and dropped right in behind me on my bumper. I waited for the sieren to sound all the while looking at my speed which was not anything considered unacceptable for the 401. The car several lengths in front of me was travelling at a similar speed as were those on the inside. It was free flowing traffic at a steady speed.

But right about that time I knew it couldn't be a cop ... he was driving far to recklessly and just as I thought he was about to run into the back of me he swerved out into the inside lane to me and in one motion back in towards my car. I don't know if he was trying purposely to push me off the highway and onto the fast lanes shoulder or whether he was just blind drunk and completely mis-judged where the front of my car was, but I like to think it was the later. Either way I had no choice but to bank onto the shoulder all while he screamed right across the front of my car missing me by very little, went right up behind the car that had been in front of me, and back to the right across a car that had been in the middle lane as he proceeded to weave his way across all lanes in and out of cars up the highway and into the distance.



I didn't get a chance to get his license plate for at about the time I moved into the shoulder I hit what I assume was a pot hole causing a loud bang and the blowout of my left-rear tire. That the car stayed straight at those speeds was shear luck on my part. Whoever was behind me had left enough room for me to merge and I worked my way cautiously across the lanes to the inside shoulder where I felt it would be less a death trap to stop in.

I rolled along a little in the hope I might find an exit to the collector lanes and then off onto a side street but I could tell the tire was badly damaged and when I seen that the next exit was onto another highway I knew I had no choice but to park up on the express lanes shoulder and hope nobody blazing past at 120 km/h lost concentration for a moment.

I guess it says a lot about how much I was looking forward to getting home and into bed ahead of the next days race that the first thing I thought about when I came to a stop was who would be open on a Sunday morning to fix this and as a result how on earth was I going to get to the race now with a tire blown to pieces.

I reached for my phone to call for help ... I know how to fix a puncture but there was no way I was about to fix a wheel that would have my ass hanging out over the highway. I was going to call my wife to get the number of someone who could either tow me to safety or was willing to fix it.

Then the phone battery died.

What on earth did people do pre-mobile phones I asked myself and then I got my answer. They waited for help. Just moments after stopping, the driver of a tow truck pulled in just ahead of me and reversed up. Seeing the chance to make a few bucks in aid of a car in distress 'the vultures' -- as we like to refer to them -- had circled and landed quicker than I could have imagined.

Given my predicament, I was in no position to turn down the help. Not even when he said it would cost me $200 to be towed away and have the spare tire put on. Faced with walking across the Highway to find a phone box and back again to greet whatever help came for me, I accepted his offer. He hitched up the car and drove me to safety where he fixed the car, took my cash and left me with the slow drive along Toronto's side roads back home.

My hopes of racing the next morning were done for. I had no chance of getting the tire fixed in time and was resigned to the fact that some idiotic moron who would have done the world a favour had he rolled his car off the road further up the 401 -- so long as he didn't take anyone with him, of course (and he didn't, I checked) -- had cost me my ride in the provincial championships. And I know it isn't as though I was going to win and I was riding in nothing more than the sport class 30-34, but that isn't the point. I was bloody frustrated and angry at the whole thing.

This drunken excuse of a human could have killed someone out there ... and make no mistake, had the swine caused an accident, he'd have probably been the only one who walked away from it as often sadly the case.

Later on Sunday I went out on my road bike instead. It was a beautiful day for a ride and I put in 42 good miles at a steady clip of 19.2 mph. It felt good. I may have been unlucky to have missed my race; but in another way I was lucky to be alive. There's always next year for the provincials.