We started Day 4 in Stamford CT and were heading to New Jersey, which was about 75 miles away. The day called for rain in the afternoon, but started with some amazingly dry weather. The SRAM crew was getting our bikes all dialed in for the day's ride.
We kept up a strong pace for the beginning of the ride and took full advantage of the nice, dry fall weather. Here's a great spot that we found for a break, look at the fall colors starting to emerge.
We had a planned coffee and doughnut break (wohoo!) at a pretty amazing place in Nyack NY called Gypsy Donut and Espresso Bar. Here are my fellow riders Wes and Jim hanging out and knocking out some salted caramel donuts (mmmm).
Right after our warm and toasty break, the rain started coming down really hard as we made our way south. It was absolutely pouring for pretty much the remainder of the ride, but there was a section of the route where we hugged a side of a hill side that parallelled the Hudson River which was probably some of the best riding I've ever done. The lead group started pushing the pace and it was cool to hang on to their wheel doing 25mph, but then someone decided to launch an attack and this was when you can tell who here gets paid to ride bikes (not me) and who here is an amateur (me) -- all good fun though ;)
Here are some pictures from a clearing on that road where we see the George Washington bridge as it enters Manhattan.
Now all was going well and we were about 5 miles away from the hotel when disaster struck. We were getting into some New Jersey traffic so we were sticking close together, especially given that it was also still pouring down rain. We were going to cross a small river when we all realized (too late) that the bridge was a metal grated bridge which is pretty much a NO GO for bikes with 23mm tires, especially when it's wet.
The front group (including me) hit the bridge section going too fast to stop. I saw a couple of fellow riders take a spill and tried to ride out the bridge without tapping my breaks, but then the grates of the bridge (similar to the above) took my tires in a completely different direction and I ended up slamming my left side onto the bridge surface. Luckily our SRAM cars were behind us and immediately stopped and blocked traffic while we were trying to pull everyone and the bikes onto the side of the bridge. I couldn't move my left thumb or arm and was bleeding from a couple of places and my bike was pretty wrecked too. Our ride leader also got pretty banged up so we decided it best to pay a visit to the ER.
In the end I fared better than my bike. I got a Tetanus shot, X-Ray (all clear) and a few stitches in my knee and was able to ride the next day. My bike on the other hand isn't doing so well, both hoods and handlebars are bent and likely my seat is damaged too. Luckily though, the SRAM crew has a 'spare' bike that I can ride (which is actually a $7000 top of the line Specialized w/ SRAM components and Zipp wheels) -- so not so bad.
