I've just heard of the death of one of the members of my Spanish trail riding club. A chap named Javi (Javier) whom I me briefly last year at our annual midsummer maniac bash during the fiesta of San Juan (Saint John), when the Spanish really let their hair down!
It seems Javi was out riding with friends near Madrid when he ran out of road on a bend and crashed into some ArmCo - well you can guess the rest.
For information - and a warning I suppose to anyone planning to ride here: in Spain the wretched stuff seems to be growing like weeds along a railway line, polluting the best road sections. Heaven knows where the money is coming from to pay for all this c**p but it just keeps growing.
There have been some famous court cases, including a guy in Catalonia who won a huge indemnity from the regional government after being left paraplegic. As a result so-called 'bike friendly' ArmCo is being retro-fitted and better design is going into new installations. But that's only in Catalonia and only on the roads that the regional government is responsible for, i.e. not the nacional 'N' road or motorways. As far as I know much the rest of Spain is still using the basic suff, leaving the posts exposed ready for us to crash into.
The other hazard is that on minor roads drivers, especially truck drivers, hug the crown of the roads on blind corners more, so as to avoid scraping their precious bodywork - if that sounds angry it's because I don't drive like this and don't really see why anyone else should!
Rant over! But before i go just a few words about Javi, in his honour I suppose, and so that he's not just another statistic - we get too many of these in the news every day and tend to forget that every one is a human tragedy - OK another rant over!
Javi was a young bloke, late twenties, newly married to Elena and with everything to look forward too. He was a Madrileño, like the majority of the club although we live in all the corners of Spain, so at least plenty of support for Elena at the chapel of rest in Madrid.
Although I only knew them briefly it has come as a surprisingly sharp blow - perhaps another reminder of encroaching old age, it's a horrible sadness to recall how many people you've lost down the years, and I'm only 55!
Perhaps it's as well to remember the happy bits:
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Regs
Simon
