Recovering from a cycling accident
Like all human activities, cycling in a group one runs a risk of accidents. In fact, it is surprising that we were able to cycle nearly every sunday, during more than 15 years, without a serious accident. Surely, occasionally one of us fell or we hit each other however I don´t remember that we had serious accidents. That does not mean that there were no dangerous situations in the traffic cycling in a group. Just before my accident we escaped a serious accident with car which made a strange move while we were skating close behind the car with rather high speed. We all were shocked by the event and were lucky that mothing serious had happened.
A real accident happened to me when we were making a tour in the north-east of the country and we went through a forest. The track was small and curved. By a wrong steering move my bicycle was blocked and I fell over the front of my bicycle and hit the ground on my shoulder. By this fall I broke my shoulder blade. The break was rather complicated and required a small operation. Fore recovery we went to our flat in Tenerife.
These two experiences made me decide that I would not go on with cycling with the group as before. I bought some inline skates and started to explore the surroundings around our house in the south of Amsterdam, close to Amstelveen. I skated alone on the small roads where hardly any traffic was. Coming back from my work I could make a small round in the neighborhood. In the weekend, I skated 60 or 70km in larger area. Note that The Netherland is flat and I didn´t learn to reduce my speed in the proper way. I realized quickly that the procedure to reduce speed of ice skating could not be applied. I made many very pleasant tours along the rivers the Waver and the Vecht and the connected lakes.
A real accident happened to me when we were making a tour in the north-east of the country and we went through a forest. The track was small and curved. By a wrong steering move my bicycle was blocked and I fell over the front of my bicycle and hit the ground on my shoulder. By this fall I broke my shoulder blade. The break was rather complicated and required a small operation. Fore recovery we went to our flat in Tenerife.
These two experiences made me decide that I would not go on with cycling with the group as before. I bought some inline skates and started to explore the surroundings around our house in the south of Amsterdam, close to Amstelveen. I skated alone on the small roads where hardly any traffic was. Coming back from my work I could make a small round in the neighborhood. In the weekend, I skated 60 or 70km in larger area. Note that The Netherland is flat and I didn´t learn to reduce my speed in the proper way. I realized quickly that the procedure to reduce speed of ice skating could not be applied. I made many very pleasant tours along the rivers the Waver and the Vecht and the connected lakes.
I enjoyed this sport and took my skates also with me when I went to Tenerife. There I could skate along the beach and on parking lots but I did not go into the maintains.The video below shows that the skating in Tenerife was much less interesting. I used it only for condition training.