Stories: Bike Accident in Valence
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| I had several near-death experiences on my Mission. The most remarkable was one evening while serving in Valence. My companion & I had finished visiting a family and started home on our bikes. The family lived at the top of a hill and our apartment was at the bottom of the hill. So we started down the hill, going pretty fast because it was close to 9:30 and we didn't want to get home late. It of course was very dark out, and it was raining pretty heavily. I was flying down the hill, and suddenly near the bottom of the hill I saw a large truck, a car carrier, backing out of a driveway. It backed all the way out and completely blocked the road. There was no way around it. I jammed on my breaks to slow myself down, but because of the heavy rain and the wet road, my breaks failed. I gripped the breaks hard but I wasn't slowing me down at all, and I was fast approaching the truck. My first thought was that I was going to die! But then I thought there must be a way out of this. I thought of jumping off my bike, but decided against it because I could seriously hurt myself given how fast I was going. So I decided instead to veer to the right and try to hit the curb instead of the truck. So I did, and I slammed into the curb full-speed. My bike fell over, I fell off my bike, I got up, checked myself out. I was okay! I then looked at my bike, which I expected to be mangled. One broken reflector! That was it! I then looked in front of me and found that I missed hitting the truck by less than 3 yards. The truck driver was furious, but my companion was laughing. "Elder Provoncha, I was so sure you were gonna die. I said to myself how the heck was he gonna get out of this one?" I was very soon after that emergency transferred out of Valence because the mission president (rightfully) concluded that my eyes needed to be examined and that I was a dangerously incompetent bike rider. I had my eyes examined and I got glasses, and I never served in a bike area again for any significant length of time. |
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