Well, since everyone else is talking about their weekend, I thought I’d note that the Harris-Roubaix bike race went off in Pitt Meadows, and it was big, messy, rainy madness. That’s a good thing.

The weather was wet and drizzly all Sunday morning. Normally, that would just mean that your ordinary nutty bike racers (who don’t know enough to not ride in the rain) would get a little wet. But at Harris-Roubaix, about a third of the course runs along a gravel path atop a river dyke. In the dry, the gravel ranges from almost concrete-smooth to loose and harrowing: it varies in different sections of the roughly 3km stretch. In the wet, it changed from slick with mud to loose and harrowing and muddy in different sections.

The commisaire’s motorcycles that were used to follow the race had to abandon, because the conditions on the dyke were no longer safe for them. But bike racers on 23mm tires? A-OK!

Don’t misunderstand: it is this kind of wild conditions that justifiably earn this race a fearsome, entertaining reputation. There were parts where I was flat out on the gravel, barely keeping my bike upright, following inches behind the rider ahead, and alternating between being scared of crashing into someone and scared of falling behind the pack.

I loved it.

Well, I loved 3/5ths of it. On the start of the fourth (of five) laps for my group, I was hanging in, feeling good, and very optimistic about my chances for a great finish. Then some guy behind me managed to fall in such a way as to get his handlebar tangled in my rear wheel. The degree of difficulty for that maneuver is very high.

That’s not the amazing part. The amazing part is that I didn’t crash. This happened at about 30 km/h, and despite dragging a now-locked rear wheel, one crippled bicycle and one surprised rider behind me, I kept everything upright until we came to a stop. I unclipped from my pedals, turned around, and finally found out what was making my bike handle so bad.

The other rider was actually able to continue once he pulled his bars out of my wheel. Unfortunately, I now had a bunch of mangled spokes, and I got to walk back to the start.

I’m not sure this would have been much fun to watch: too wet, too early, too hard to track the real action. But I’m sure the stories riders tell will last for years.

And I’m sure it will take quite a bit of time for me to fix my wheel, too.