General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Progressive journalist Eric Boehlert dies in bike accident - great loss [View all]ffr
(22,689 posts)My experience riding was meant as a 'reasonable benchmark' one that most cyclists might identify with. As in, you'll find most cyclists riding during the day and especially during daylight hours on weekends. Not typically riding at night and certainly not riding at night in the rain around RR tracks. But you make some good points that would make him having a fall near a train even easier to accomplish an 'accident.' If he was mugged then left on the tracks, would accomplish my earlier point.
I suppose his wife's expectation of him riding at such hours on wet streets would lend credibility to the typical nature of such rides for him. Which then would make him perhaps more of an unusual cyclist, one who works out before bedtime? I don't know of any cyclists that do that, not even semi-pros, but especially not semi-pros, which is probably why most people don't work out just before bedtime. But that's not to say that he doesn't, but if he does wow, that's even more unusual!
And since she would know, before she is so willing to accept that her husband was playing daredevil with trains late on raining nights, was this something she knew of from speaking to him previously? Because, looking at him, he doesn't seem like the personality type who is a daredevil who practices his stoppie skills on rain soaked roads around railroad crossings or seeing how far he can one wheelie his way along a rain soaked rail -- at night. So what was he doing on his bicycle that led up to this train on bicycle collision?
Which is why I'd feel more at ease if there were some credible witness to come forward to fill in the gaps, so this isn't a case of a couple thugs who knocked him out and threw him and his bike on RR tracks.