The universe seems intent on driving me from my dank lair and into the sunlight. After a light day’s work for VeloNews.com I slouched anonymously into Bristol Brewing to fetch home a jug of Red Rocket Pale Ale and bumped into Josh Osterhoudt and Bill Sommer, who wished to discuss the drinking of beer, the riding of bikes and life its ownself.

Once home, sipping a pint and cleaning up after a meal of tacos and rice, my old teammate Big Bill McBeef called to discuss the drinking of wine, the riding of bikes and life its ownself. Being fit from a winter and spring of hiking and biking, he is particularly interested in kicking my ass in a genial, two-wheeled sense, never having forgotten the hour he spent chasing me around Monument Valley Park during an epically retarded March cyclo-cross the Mad Dogs promoted back in the early Nineties.

I may have struck a verbal agreement with him to ride the road on Friday. But there are no signed, witnessed and notarized documents to that effect, and my attorney advises me that I can crouch in the basement with my hairy legs and my cats and that jug and refuse to answer e-mail, the phone or the door, should I so choose.

But I suppose I’d better check the garage to see whether I still own a road bike, just in case. A guy has to go out sometime, if only to fetch more beer.

Mavic has responded to VeloNews editor in chief Ben Delaney’s account of an R-Sys wheel failure that left him with a broken shoulder, and I can’t say it exactly gives me confidence in the folks running the show over there. It’s PR at its worst, as in “Pretty Ridiculous.”

The Mavic folks may be taking their cue from aviation safety agencies, which seem to favor “pilot error” when it comes to plane crashes, the pilot being quite safely dead and unable to recount how the port wing suddenly fell off when the fat guy in 10A farted. That’s not the case here — Ben lived to tell the tale, and so far it does not have a happy ending.

Or perhaps Mavic is riffing off the USA Cycling Event Release Form, which is chock-full of variations on Dante’s “All hope abandon, ye who enter here!” Phrases like, “I acknowledge that by signing this document I am assuming risks and agreeing to indemnify, not to sue and release from liability (pretty much everyone who ever walked the earth, save your own dumb ass).”

My personal fave, “cycling is an inherently dangerous sport,” makes an appearance, as do “equipment failure,” “the possibility of serious physical and/or mental trauma and injury, or death,” and the crème de la crème, a curtain call by the promise to waive, release, discharge, hold harmless, indemnify and not to sue even for “claims arising from the releasees’ own negligence.”

All this is the long way around to saying, “Shit happens,” which is cold comfort indeed when you’re slumped in the ER with a busted shoulder and a ruined bike. Shit does happen — if it didn’t, lawyers, PR flacks and other non-essential personnel would be hunting honest work.

But you can minimize your exposure to risk, just like USA Cycling’s releasees, by refusing to buy — much less race on — stupid-light equipment like Mavic’s once-recalled R-Sys wheels, a pair of which weigh just 310 grams more than a single Excel Sports Nimbus rear wheel with a 32-hole Open Pro rim, 14/15g stainless-steel spokes laced in a 3x pattern, and an Ultegra hub.

You feel the urge to shed a little weight, take a good dump the morning of race day. That way your shit-happens moment is already behind you.

• Late update: Good Lord, reading skills have deteriorated; attention deficit disorder is a pandemic and the sound of lips moving positively deafening for those of us who make our meager livings via the written word. Some participants in the VeloNews.com forum are castigating Delaney for failing to contact Mavic before writing about his experience with their high-zoot wheelset. His original story clearly states: “In the days and weeks following my accident, I had numerous phone and email conversations with Mavic staff. Five Mavic representatives traveled to Boulder to investigate further.” Um, I think Mavic was aware of Delaney’s concerns, y’all. Fail. See you again next semester.

Jesus. I have to stop reading the Ethernets. A possibly hammered bimbo who pleaded guilty in 2007 to driving while impaired is in the Tulsa lockup after croaking two cyclists and injuring a third with her SUV, according to the Tulsa World:

After striking the bicyclists, the SUV swerved off the roadway and into a ditch, knocking over a stop sign before eventually coming back onto the highway, (Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper Brian) Warren said. A passing motorist managed to get the woman to stop, but she tried to drive away again and was stopped a second time by another driver, he said.

Look at the size of that shoulder these folks were cycling on — we have roads smaller than that here in Bibleburg, f’chrissakes. You couldn’t be any safer riding a stationary trainer in your living room. Or so you might think. Clearly, you’d be wrong as long as scumbags like Tausha Borland enjoy happy hour behind the wheel.

Happily, in this instance she has been charged with more than littering: Borland faces two complaints of first-degree manslaughter, good for four years to life in the graybar hotel.

OK, seeing as we have a man in the hospital following one of the nastiest crashes I’ve ever heard about, let’s poll the readership here: What was your worst crash involving a bicycle and a motor vehicle?

I’ve had a ton of close calls, but the only real O’Grady-auto impact of my illustrious cycling career occurred nearly 20 years ago as I was doing a sprint workout on the narrow bit of Bishop’s Lodge Road through Tesuque, north of Santa Fe.

A woman driving a Chevy Blazer passed me, then pulled onto the right-hand shoulder and executed a lazy U-turn right in front of me — just as I was winding out a slightly downhill sprint, doing about 35 mph. The damn SUV was practically curb to curb on the skinny road, and so I threw the bike into a two-wheel drift, slammed into the left-front quarter panel and shot over the hood and onto the asphalt, breaking a brand-new carbon fiber Specialized Epic right at the head-tube lugs.

Oddly, though the bike was a total loss, I came away with just one minor injury — a long scrape on my right shin that looked like someone had been after me with a potato peeler. I made her drive me to the ER for X-rays anyway. And since I had the good fortune to tangle with what was apparently the only motorist in New Mexico driving with insurance, I got a new frame and headset out of her husband.

As war stories go, it’s not exactly a thriller. So leave yours in comments.