Last Saturday we returned to the Van Fleet Trail and rode the second third, from the Bay Lake Trailhead to the Green Pond Road Trailhead, another round trip of about 20 miles.
As we were riding on the straight, flat, paved trail in the middle of nowhere, no motor vehicles to worry about and almost no other bicyclists, I laughed a little at our habit of wearing bike helmets. When we began the practice, wearing a helmet was awkward and several times we forgot to put them on; now it's nearly as automatic as buckling our seatbelts in the car. But a trail like this is safer than just pedaling down our very safe, isolated, residential street.
Or so we thought.Along the way we met another couple of very fit and active bicyclists about our age. The wife was building herself back up after a very bad accident on that very trail. She was tooling along at about 18 miles per hour when suddenly a raccoon charged out of the grass and banged headlong into her front wheel. What happened to the raccoon after he sped off across the trail they never learned, but she crashed full force into the pavement, splitting her helmet wide open. She regained consciousness after about five minutes and the ambulance came about half an hour later. (It shouldn't have taken so long, but they had trouble finding a 911 operator who had any idea where the Van Fleet Trail was. Pretty odd, considering Google finds it immediately.) She's doing fine now, but was in the hospital for three days. From the state of her helmet, I imagine the outcome would have been quite different had her head hit the pavement unprotected.
One interesting wildlife note: On the return trip we saw nearly two dozen tortoises, including a few big ol' granddaddies. Going in the other direction we had seen not a one.
