Even with those "reasonable conditions", I still made a mistake that injured a Scout. We were 7.5 miles into our 15 mile bike ride, 3 adults, 5-6 scouts, riding a bike trail just south and west of the end of 29th street in Loveland. As the trail slopes downward slightly, it also has a parallel dirt trail beside it. Three of the scouts were ahead of me and decided to ride the dirt trail. With the slight downhill slope, I decided to increase speed on the tandem I was riding.
Unfortunately, the dirt trail intersects the concrete trail. At that intersection, one of the smaller of the scouts crossed the concrete in front of me. I was not able to stop the tandem and the scout, the tandem, me, and the scout on the back of the tandem all went to the ground.
The worst part of the whole accident seemed to be that the young scout who crossed in front of me received the brunt of the damage. His left ankle was scraped, his knee was scraped, and he was thoroughly frightened by having that big tandem and two riders going over the top of him.
Lessons I should have already known as a scout leader:
- Know the trail, know the hazards, predict and defend against the obvious hazards
- Don't overrun a safe stopping distance, especially when dealing with younger scouts
- Always carry a first aid kit, especially when any distance from standard first aid supplies
- Three adults gave us capacity to always have two adults with the scouts even when one of the adults went for help (in this case, went for his truck so we could transport the damaged bikes and the scraped scouts
- Ample water on the trail for hydration and scrubbing
- Use local routes and accessible trails on early training trips and rides
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