down, but not out

okay, I'm what some people might call 'accident prone'. I consider myself a person that pushes the limits of my own abilities to improve my skills (like my bow-staff skills). I usually find those limits by crossing them and... well alright I'm accident prone. For the record, it has been over 1 year since i have needed to go to the emergency room/prime care for any of these accidents, usually i just end up with bruises and cuts. So yesterday Duane and I headed off on a long group ride with the local bike shop. The group quickly broke apart as some serious rain rolled in. After most of the group headed back to the shop and out of the rain, we ended up riding through the city with a dude name 'wade the blade'. We finished the loop, left wade, and seeing that we still had a little time before we had to be back continued on our epic wet ride. We were soaked with the rain coming down and the water coming off the tires and spaying us. The feeling of being covered in road juice was nothing short of nasty, I don't recommend it. Anyway Duane is an admittedly stronger rider than I am. He's lean and mean and has a lot more years in the saddle. I can manage to hang with him for the most part (except on long climbs, he's like a mountain goat) as long as i spend most of the time drafting off him. The real secret to cycling is resting as much as possible behind other riders so that when it comes time to lay the hammer down you have enough juiciline in the ol' quads to sprint (at least that's my theory). So, Duane is out in front and I'm hanging on for dear life. His rear tire is spitting up a sweet rooster tail of nastification road grease and dead possum from the wet street. I found that the best way to avoid the rooster tail was to ride to the side a bit, not too much to get hit by cars and to still keep his draft, and to put my front wheel just a little past the line of his rear wheel. Looking back at it, it is not a good idea to be on top of a guy like that regardless of the weather and especially not in the wet. We were on our 36th mile and he came to the left a bit and I didn't get out of the way in time and my front tire got caught under his rear wheel and... "DOWN GOES GIFFORD". The impact wasn't too severe and the feeling of sliding along the road was very... uh... different. My senses were heightened and i could see and feel the road sliding underneath me, quickly at first and then slowing to a stop. I stayed clipped into the bike and if you were able to look at me from above i would have looked like i was still pedaling away, just laying down doing it. Of course, to add the insult, there had to be a bunch of cars that materialized just in time to see me go down and they all had to stop to make sure i was still alive. After I got up, I just waved and told them i was alright, humiliated, but breathing. All said and done, the left shifter has some scratches and i have some rash on the arm and calf, but very minor. Good times. Tomorrow night there's another group ride, wish me luck, i'll let you know how the sprint goes.