Today was just as sunny, and almost as warm as yesterday. It felt colder because the wind was gale force. I took the mid-drive because it is more like sailing a sunfish in high wind, than the cargo bike. I had to lean way over in crosswinds. I saw the watts jump from 250 to 600 in gusts. Into the wind, the motor was pulling hard to maintain 20 mph down a grade that normally would have me coasting over 35 mph. Pretty fun.
I got to my lunch stop in the stripmall, in Gordonsville, and was leaning the bike against the building, when I heard a loud bang. I turned around to see two cars wrecked right in front of the entrance to the mall. An Accord was sitting in the middle of the road, with the front end lying on the ground. The driver's front quarter was crushed. A Corolla was facing the opposite direction, several car lengths behind the Accord, and about four feet up on the grass of the school yard. The drivers side was wiped out from the back door to the rear bumper. The rear wheel was hanging out at an angle. They had hit at a glancing blow. Nobody was badly hurt. Both drivers got out and walked around. A few feet closer to center, and they would both have been very bad off, or worse. Ate lunch watching the cops, fire truck, and rollbacks.
On the way home, I decided to cut through Green Springs, as I had two days ago, on the cargo bike. This is a very secluded area. You hardly ever see a vehicle. I stopped to pee.
As I was getting back on the bike, two bleary-eyed, good ole boys, in an old Chevy S-10 pickup, rolled slowly by. They looked like two of Snow White's missing dwarves. Bushy grey hair and whiskbroom beards, requisite feed caps. Probably a quart of the favorite libation between their knees. They weren't traveling over 25 mph, so I soon was coming up behind them. We went down a hill, and were coming up the next, when a postal jeep, with open sides came down the narrow road the other way. The mail driver must have been a friend of theirs, and he blew his horn as he passed, and stopped. They stopped further on. I was wondering if I had enough room to go around between them, when the backup lights came on. I was looking in at the driver's rearview mirror, but he was looking out his side mirror, to clear the jeep. I holler at the top of my lungs, "Hey!! Hey!!" I start hobby horsing backwards down the hill as fast as I can. I get back far enough to pull around his right side. I slam the side of his truck with the side of my fist, and roll up next to the passenger window. Sleepy rolls it down, grinning. I say, "What the f__k! Were you f__king trying to back over me? Wake the f__k up!!" I took off and didn't see them, or anybody else until I was back out on paved roads. Who would imagine you could almost get killed on a deserted, dirt road, in the middle of nowhere?
