Do you have a lucky cap?
Dear Tracko,
A week ago this past Sunday, my roommate Stephanie was involved in a car accident while riding her bicycle through town. She was t-boned in the middle of an intersection, due to a neglectful driver who claimed that, “she didn’t see her”, despite two other witnesses in adjacent lanes both stopping and realizing my friend was in the middle of the intersection. She was not wearing a helmet, and hit the car windshield head on, being thrown from her bicycle, and bouncing across the asphalt before coming to a full stop.
Stephanie started riding in early February. At the time, we were dating, and as I myself am a bike enthusiast, I wanted to get Stephanie riding as well. Spending some of my rainy day fund, I purchased for her a Raleigh Venture; a steel hybrid 6-speed that’s well suited for around town jaunts. I never anticipated what would happen next.
Within the end of the month, Stephanie was commuting 20 mile round trips to school everyday. Living in San Jose and attending school in Monterey, she would take the bus early every morning to Marina, bike in tow, only to floor it from the bus stop to campus, a 10 mile venture up-hill just to get to campus. Most beginning cyclists would have scoffed at the idea. Steph took to cycling like a fish in water.
But the love didn’t stop there. Before long, I was teaching Stephanie the finer points of bicycles, the types of bikes, brands, parts, basic bicycle maintenance. She started beating me home on her little Raleigh from our grocery store jaunts. I was impressed, and damn proud.
Then came the time in every cyclists life where she started looking into cycling gear. Upon seeing that your shop’s caps were up for sale again, I immediately put in an order for myself, only to have Stephanie jump on the band wagon as well. Within a week, we had our GSC hats in our hot little hands. I have multiple caps and cycle through them pretty regularly, but as the GSC cap was her first, Steph would wear her cap religiously with every bike ride.
As it would so happen, she happened to be wearing her GSC cap during the accident. The car t-boned her at 30 mph; considering that she wasn’t wearing a helmet and struck the windshield head first, it was a miracle her neck didn’t snap instantly.
She called me within minutes of being struck. She was in a state of shock, and I immediately grabbed my roommate’s car and headed down to where the accident occurred. By the time I got there, she was already being loaded into the ambulance, her GSC cap resting on the handlebars of her abandoned bicycle.
For the next few hours, I had to wait while the Police finished their report before I could touch the bicycle or cap. The cap sat their hanging so delicately, taunting me the entire time. I had no idea if she was stable or in and out of consciousness. I had no idea if she had split her head open or broken her collarbone. I had no idea what to do with myself.
After a few hours, I was allowed to remove the bicycle and cap from the road and head back to the hospital to check in with Stephanie. Much to my surprise, despite hitting the windshield head first, Steph’s GSC cap was completely unscathed. No blood. No tears in the fabric. Only the sweat marks on the brim that had occurred from her cycling with the cap on everyday. I chuckled to myself.
Upon reaching the hospital and finding Stephanie in the ER, the first question out of her mouth was, “Is my bike ok?” I informed her that her Raleigh had made the ultimate sacrifice(both wheels taco-ed, frame bent out of alignment) and that there would be no salvaging it. She swore under breath. Her next question caught me off guard, though I admit I was half expecting it, “Did you grab my cap?”
I smiled and pulled the cap out of my messenger bag. She broke into a large grin, followed by laughter upon realizing that the cap itself had escaped any harm. Stephanie herself ended up having to have three staples put into her head, as well as go into surgery to have her fractured ankle set with screws and a metal plate. She’s expected to make a full recovery in a few months, and looks forward to being able to cycle again.
I’m not a religious man. Superstitious at times maybe. Perhaps it wasn’t an act of God that saved her the other night, but there is definitely some kind of luck stored up in that GSC cap of hers. Keep going strong. Should we ever wander our way down from Northern California, we’ll definitely be paying your shop a visit.
-Cain