Member of the month

Member of the month Archives - past M_o_t_M’s

Well, when the only Springbike member you know really well is yourself, we’ll start with me. I’m Dave Christiano and I’m the webmaster. By trade I’m an electrical engineer having retired just a year ago from City Utilities and a 33 year career in planning and operating utility systems. Though I grew up in New York I’ve been in Springfield 28 years now so I'm within ’spittin distance of applying for Ozark citizenship. My first real bike tour was back in 1967 at the tender age of 18 when I toured Luxembourg, Germany, Holland, and Belgium at the wheel of an 8-speed steel Gitane bike equipped with full touring saddlebags. Traveling through rolling country not unlike the Ozarks, I stayed in youth hostels and actually did do Europe on $5/day as was advertised.
My biking was limited in the NY metro area but I did manage to participate with the Kissena Cycling club on occasion. After moving to Missouri in 1978, I took up the couch potato role, being father to four. After tears of relative inactivity, my oldest daughter shamed me into trying the MS-150. I started riding again on my steel Peugeot UO-8, not realizing how heavy and outdated it really was. I upgraded to a Trek 2500 and was amazed to discover indexed shifting. I managed my first MS-150 in September of 2001. That year would prove to be a bad one, not only for 9/11, but me too. About two weeks later, while heading back into town on East Catalpa, I was struck head-on by a small sports car. My Trek was. smashed, twisting the front wheel into a pretzel and breaking the carbon fiber frame. The handlebars were ripped out of the frame as were my riding shoes from the Look pedals.

Member of the month

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Picture frame

(I can attest that they will come out without rotating your foot to the side.) I did a superman imitation, flying on to the hood, bouncing off the windshield and roof of the car, finally coming to rest later about 20 feet behind the car in the ditch on the north side of the road. Fortunately, I was wearing my cycling helmet that limited my head injuries to a concussion. My left forearm (the radius bone) was shattered probably when I hit the pavement, necessitating surgery to install an external fixator and six titanium pins. The fifth metacarpal bone on my left hand was also fractured, the medial collateral ligament (MCL) was torn in my left knee and I had a sprained ankle. There were several chunks of the broken carbon fiber frame that punctured my right leg, I had a wound in the chest (hood ornament?), broke four of my front teeth, and had road rash everywhere. Most amazingly, I have absolutely no recollection of the entire incident (and not much of the following two days). Fortunately, a doctor lives at the very intersection and called 9-1-1 immediately. He was on the scene within one minute. The next thing I remember is lying on my back in the dark. I could hear some noises but not anything I could understand. Although my brain was in shock, all I could think of was “Where am I?” “How did I get here?” “What happened?” I sensed that I was moving and began to see a light coming from over my legs. This was a entirely weird experience that, for an instant, filled my mind with the thought “Is this it? Am I dead?” After a few more minutes my senses slowly returned and I realized that I was not dead, but was in the hospital. It turned out that the light I saw was in fact the normal room lights coming into view as I was exiting the CAT Scan. This was, however, a profound lifetime experience. The moral of that story, always be fully able to stop at every intersection you come to.

I've since moved to riding a recumbent, mostly for the (bottom) comfort and the relief on my shoulders and wrists. I average about 2,000 miles/year and now that I'm retired I have the luxury of riding in the afternoons in the Winter (temperatures permitting) and in the mornings in the Summer. Retirement is great!

Well, enough about me. Who will be next?