Back at work now and happy to be alive, Steve Mashburn can contemplate the abysmal design of Anchorage's so-called "bike trails.''
Fine though those paths might be for walkers, many of these multi-use trails are among the most dangerous places to ride in a city with no shortage of dangerous places to ride.
Anchorage likes to think of itself as a bike-friendly community, but it is not.
Just because some know-nothings from Outside occasionally come here and declare the city bike-friendly doesn't make it so. Those people pedal the Chester Creek-Coastal Trail route to Kincaid Park, admire the scenery, enjoy one of the few trails safely separated from any motor-vehicle traffic, and think this is somehow representative of cycle routes in Alaska's largest city.
As Mashburn was painfully reminded in September, nothing could be further from the truth.
At 6 p.m. Sept. 23, the cyclist and skier whose downhilling earned him the nickname "Smashburn" was involved in what can only be described as a classic hit-and-run accident:
He was run over by a truck hurrying to cross an Anchorage bike trail to merge with traffic.
As Mashburn described the collision to friends:
He was passing the parking lot of the Planned Parenthood building at 4001 Lake Otis "heading southbound via the bike trail. I was moving at about 20+ (mph), and they were turning at about 8+ (mph). I guess they were trying to beat the oncoming traffic.
"(But) who knows as they just took off after rolling down their window halfway to say that they were sorry; then they took off like they were in some race."
Mashburn said that when he first saw the truck -- a dark blue, 2001 to 2003 Dodge 2500 HD Regular Cab 4x4 -- rolling toward the bike trail, he made eye contact with the passenger.
If you ride a bike much, this is or should be standard practice. Having been hit myself several times, I won't cross a parking lot entrance, a side street, a driveway or any other sort of intersection without making eye contact with the people in the car approaching that intersection.
"His (the driver's) wife saw me, or his girlfriend saw me," Mashburn said.
The cyclist judged that to mean he was safe and kept pedaling. Apparently, though, his approach did not get relayed to the driver of the truck.
The driver kept his eyes turned to his left, watching the traffic flowing north on Lake Otis, Mashburn said. Mashburn knows now that that should have been a warning to stop, but having made eye contact with the passenger and knowing he had the legal right-of-way, he kept rolling.
KNOCKED INTO INTERSECTION
He does not know where the driver was looking when finally he gunned through the intersection. Mashburn simply knows his bike was smack in front of the truck when that happened.
"My leg took the brunt of the impact," he said.
The truck hit Mashburn with enough force to knock him out into rush-hour traffic. He's lucky he didn't get run over and killed after his broken body and smashed bike landed in the roadway.
"The traffic stopped just before hitting me," he said.
Mashburn got to his feet and dragged his bike to the side of the road. A woman at the bus stop just across from the accident ran over to offer help. Mashburn never got her name.
In shock (trauma does that to people), he told her he was OK, picked up his smashed $3,700 Bianchi road bike and started pushing it along Lake Otis toward his Hillside home. Fortunately, he also called his wife, Clarissa.
He'd gone blocks by the time she met him near the YMCA on Lake Otis, and though Steve said he was fine, Clarissa could see otherwise. She took him straight to the hospital.
"At that moment, I was more worked up about my $3,000 road bike," Steve said. Unnoticed, he said, was a nice, clean break to the proximal fibula of his left leg.
Mashburn, who happens to be a designer here at the Daily News, thought his recovery would be quick, but it wasn't. He tried to return to work two weeks after the accident, but there were nerve problems in the leg.
He was eventually put on temporary disability and didn't make it back for six weeks. He's still limping around the building with a cane. That's how I found out about what happened.
Like most automobile-bike collisions in Anchorage, this one didn't make the news -- furthering that mistaken belief that Anchorage is a bike-friendly town.
Like most hit-and-run accidents involving cyclists mowed down by cars, this one will also likely remain unsolved.
LACK OF CONSCIENCE
Police told Steve the cameras on the Planned Parenthood building -- cameras that might have filmed the accident -- were turned off when the collision happened, and that there isn't much they could do to investigate. That's normal.
Anchorage police never found the driver of the SUV that nearly killed University of Alaska Anchorage student Chris Turner in December 2005. Turner was crossing the intersection of Minnesota and Benson when a vehicle running a red light hit him so hard it threw his body 20 to 30 feet.
He was knocked unconscious. He woke up in the hospital hours later with no memory of what happened, his life saved by unnamed good Samaritans who stopped to provide help after witnessing the accident. He spent days in the hospital and months recovering.
He was optimistic for a long time that the driver of the SUV would at least come forward to say he was sorry.
Steve Mashburn seems to be living with a similar delusion, thinking that somehow others will find it difficult to live with the idea they seriously injured another.
"I couldn't live with my conscience if I were them," he said.
Not everyone seems so encumbered. Take it from a cyclist who has had drivers intentionally try to run him into a ditch while screaming that bikes don't belong on Alaska's roads even if -- in this case -- the cyclist was on a clearly marked bike path along said road. Drivers like this would neither know nor care that cyclists actually have a legal right to ride on the right-hand side of the road in Alaska, or that the law gives pedestrians and cyclists the right-of-way when crossing driveways.
If you're driving a big ole Dodge truck, you really don't have the God-given right to run over a cyclist because he (or she) happens to get in the way, but there are some who would disagree.
CLOSE CALLS A CONSTANT
That's the reason why cyclists in this city need to be on watch every second they are in the saddle. Mashburn, ironically, thought he was doing his best.
"I had on a yellow helmet, red sweater, day-glo bike bag," he said. "I glow in the dark riding home because I've felt unsafe for a long time."
Feeling unsafe is understandable for anyone trying to commute by bike on what might be one of the worst quote-unquote "bike trails" in the city. Among its many design flaws, the Lake Otis bike trail exists only on the east side of the street, forcing southbound cyclists to approach intersections where northbound drivers rarely -- if ever --look to their right. Instead, they look steadily to their left studying the traffic with which they want to merge. Sometimes, you have to tap on their passenger-side window before getting their attention so you can feel safe to cross the intersection.
I know; I used to do that sometimes. But after several close calls, and the constant irritation of being forced to a near stop before crossing each of the many intersections along Lake Otis, I finally abandoned the route, just as Mashburn probably will do when he is healed enough to ride again.
He isn't sure when that will be, but he has bought an indoor trainer for when he starts pedaling again, and he's trying to do what he can to repair the Bianchi. Parts got broken, but the frame didn't get bent.
He seems almost thankful -- in that goofy jock sort of way -- that he took most of the force of the impact on his leg.
Normal people probably won't understand that sort of thinking, but many cyclists will.
Find Craig Medred online at adn.com/contact/cmedred or call 257-4588.
CRAIG MEDRED
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