I was bombing Goodwick Hill and back pedalling to activate the coaster brake now and then to scrub speed when all of a sudden I felt the crank wind all the way around. It's not supposed to do that but luckily I'd read up about it and knew what was going on. When a coaster brake gets too hot it stops working or 'fades', which means, without a second brake your basically going to die.
Goodwick hill is pretty steep, it climbs 100 metres above sea level in 1km and when your brakes go you get up to warp speed pretty quickly. I had about 2 seconds make a decision, do I bail or try and make this side road coming up? There was a side road about fifty metres away that veers off to the left that goes uphill so I had to use all my skills to turn up it to avoid crashing. Luckily there was no traffic coming and I swung out across the road and aimed for the side road doing what felt like a bazillion miles an hour and shot uphill for about a hundred meters before coasting to a stop.
That was a heart stopping moment but I kept my head and made it. I knew my experience as a bmxer would come in handy one day. I only had to wait for about a minute for the brake to cool and start working again then I was able to carry on down the hill and along to the beach and into work.
No comments:
Post a Comment