Terrible to learn of Ed's death. Joining SBO in 2007, soon after the purchase of my 1980 Cherubini Hunter 36 (the one foot shorter "little sister" of Ed's Cherubini Hunter 37), I often would encounter Ed's useful posts. And he readily chimed in to assist my newbie me to get a handle on my projects.
He will be missed on the Cherubini forum. Undoubtedly he will missed much more by his real life friends and family.
The circumstances of Ed's death hit very close to home for me. As with Alan12210 and also Bob R, I too came within hair's breadth of duplicating the outcome of Ed's bicycle accident. From the description in the CantonRep.com Article that Rich Stidger included with his opening post, the circumstances were very similar.
I have cut-and-pasted below my "incident report" that I drafted soon after my October 2015 accident ... Many friends and relatives wanted to know the details.
Even before my accident, I had become very nervous about road biking. Too many near scary situations over the years. And increasingly alarmed as more than a few friends and acquaintances got serious "road rash", or bruised, or ended up in emergency rooms.
I am riding again from my home to the boat. But that's only on a dedicated pedestrian/bike path which covers 90% of the way. Then I take the back roads and paths for the remaining 10% to minimize the number of vehicles to share the road with.
Other than that, road biking for exercise is a thing of the past for me. Just not worth the risk. Equal too or even more risky than riding a motorcycle.
Here's my account. Wish that Ed's outcome was better .... so he also would still be here to describe his experience.
.......
On my bicycle, a SUV coming in the other direction made a sudden left turn across the road. I saw the movement immediately out my peripheral vision and hit my brakes harder than I ever had on a bicycle. Otherwise, for sure I either would have been hit or I would have crashed into the side of vehicle. Just before I came to a stop, just before I was about to release my brakes, my front wheel locked. And within a micro-second I was flipped over the handle bars. The top of my head with the full weight of by body above was the impact point. Without a helmet, my skull would have been shattered. (Inspecting the helmet afterward, the stryofoam inside was broken and cracked in multiple places... evidence that I hit hard.) Instead, the shock transferred to my neck. The driver did stop. I shook myself off. Just seemed that I had strained some neck muscles. So I only scolded the the guy for being so careless and sent him on his way. I contemplated continuing my ride, but decided to turn around and retreat the 5 miles over the hill back to home. Put some ice on the neck, had a beer, and watched the 49’ers losing once again on TV. After about an hour, I asked Susan (my wife) to drive me to the Marin County San Rafael Kaiser Hospital ER for an evaluation. The ER doctor initially also thought that I had just pulled the muscles. But as a last comment before releasing me, he said that if I would like a CT scan just to be sure, he would order. Yes, of course I would like! The CT scan revealed pretty significant breaks of the C1 and C2 vertebrae. Same two that paralyzed Superman Christopher Reeves. Kaiser’s spine injury center 90 miles away in San Jose quickly accessed the electronically transferred CT image which was instantaneously available to them. They declared the breaks stable. The scan did not show any soft tissue (disc rupture) trauma. A full recovery was the prognosis. The ER staff put me in a rigid neck brace, gave me some Norco, and sent me home. Expected duration in the neck brace is 3-4 months. X-rays will be required every few weeks to access the healing progress.
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