From first glance Prescott seems like a killer town to use your bicycle as a mode of transportation. Dorothy, one of my advisors at the office, rides her bike everyday. Jason even rides his some days. I quickly jumped on the bandwagon, or my bicycle, and started riding it everyday to work. After about a month of riding to and from work everyday, I realized drivers in this town do not respect bikes or even pedestrians. Someone once told me that everyone that rides a bike in Prescott gets hit by a car at one point or another. With only a few weeks left of the internship, I was thinking I would get through my time in Prescott without getting hit by a car. I was wrong. On Sunday morning I was running kind of late so I hopped on my bike in a hurry. As soon as I was gaining speed down the hill in front of the Safeway by my house, an old man driving a big Nissan Truck pressed the gas and hit me on my left side. Luckily for me I am a skateboarder so when I launched off my bike and hit the concrete, I wasn't hurt really at all. The adrenaline was running on high and I felt no pain. After speaking with the local firemen and police, I called Jason and told him what had happened. He heard the angst in my voice and let me take the day off. I went back home, poured myself a cold glass of water, and sat in my backyard thinking about how bad the situation could have been. It was definitely a life changing experience getting hit by a truck on my bicycle.
Before that had happened, we made a trip out to Castle Creek Wilderness to see the devastation from a fire that had burned a year or two prior. We did a bunch of trail work and had a very productive weekend there. Here are a couple cellphone photos of the devastation...
