Interesting article about biking in DFW

Jazon71 - 2008-09-24 9:27 AM

I thought this article was great. It really speaks to how riding in DFW can be like navigating a battlefield. I hope that the increase in popularity will eventually force area cities to do something about our safety.

 

sumthin's wrong with the link.....

Jazon71 - 2008-09-24 10:16 AM

It's on the dmagazine.com site under "features & entertainment". The article is entitled "David Feherty got hit by a car and lived to tell about it."

For an Irishman, I’m usually pretty quick-witted, but it took me at least a month to figure out that I was very seriously injured. It was pollen season at Augusta National, and although it wasn’t as bad as in previous years, outside the house I always share with Peter Kostis and Verne Lundquist, there was a layer of green dust on the hood of the car every morning. I had survived one sneeze at home, but it had shocked me to the point that I was terrified it might happen again. During a sneeze, the rib cage expands and contracts violently, which is not good news for anyone with broken ribs. Chip the Floater would shoot out like a boomerang and take his time coming back, leaving me incapacitated for several minutes after each sneeze, again in agony and struggling for breath.

Unfortunately, I had neglected to share this information with Verne, who on the morning of the first round was reading the local newspaper while I was eating a massive bowl of Kellogg’s All-Bran (a wise move if you’re on painkillers and would like your eliminatory efforts not to feel like you’re giving birth to an asteroid). I had already successfully stifled several snotbursts with the old thumb-on-the-roof-of-the-mouth trick, but apparently the human sneeze is an adaptable little bastard. If you deny it an exit, I don’t know, maybe some of them turn into farts or something and find another way out. But the cunning alpha sneeze is determined to ensure the survival of its species. It learns to avoid producing the usual welled-up feeling that serves as a warning of its imminent arrival. I don’t know the science—perhaps it was hiding behind my tonsils or something—but this one just jumped out of me like a gunshot. I spackled the wall of Mrs. Zimmerman’s kitchen with a mouthful of liquid wicker and went down into the fetal position.

Verne, always cool in a crisis, lowered his paper and peered at me over the top of his pince-nez, a little concerned. At this point, I could do nothing but roll around like I just took a Randy Johnson fastball in the twin’s bullpen. Verne let me go for about five seconds, then sprang into action with remarkable agility for one so rotund, dropping to one knee over me. That’s when it hit me: I was about to get mouth-to-mouth from Verne Lundquist! “In your life,” I thought, “have you ever seen anything like this?!”

Now, I love Verne dearly, but not in that way. I was fending off his gallant attempts at resuscitation with one foot when Kostis walked in, took one look, turned on his heel, and left. A good decision. Verne and I both survived, but had Kostis stayed, someone might have died laughing.