Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Picture it, Memorial Day 2011. The sky is a perfect robin's egg blue, the temperature a balmy 78, I'm riding down a hill next to a lovely, wildflower strewn park. Picnickers are lounging on quilts and fluffy tailed squirrels are darting around trees looking for crispy little squirrel snacks. My husband and son are just a few feet behind me. We've had a perfect day, a trip to our favorite downtown theater, a walk around said downtown, followed by a relaxing ride home. My Schwinn Quick Release Wire Basket is on the front of my bike, secured (or so I thought) by the attached handlebar bracket thingamajig (don't know the name of it). My sweatshirt, a half empty water bottle and a nearly empty container of milkduds are in the basket when everything goes horribly, tragically wrong. I go over a bump. Not a big bump, just a small up jutting portion of concrete, the basket flies up, almost coming off the bracket thingamajig. My water bottle flies out and, as if time itself slows down, I have just enough time to reach forward, one handed of course, I'm riding a bike, and push the water bottle back down. This is when time speeds up, or else normalizes back to regular speed. The basket slips completely off of the bracket thingamajig, hitting my front tire. I'm heading down a hill, but slowly, I'm not a thrill seeker, so there was that at least, the one bright spot in what happened next and probably what kept me from incurring greater injuries. The basket hits the tire, hard enough to jar it a little to the side, I only had one hand on the handlbar, so I reflexively squeezed the brake, hard, to avoid hitting the basket and my bright blue water bottle as they tumbled towards the pavement and my approaching front tire. My bike flipped and I was airborne for what felt like an impossibly long moment. Then I was down, my face making contact with the pavement skidding along the hard gray surface, mass and friction (my body meeting the pavement) slowed and then stopped. My bike landed on top of me. Dimly, I heard my son scream and my husband shouting my name as they rushed up to me. In the end I had a split lip, shallow, bloody lacerations under my nose, a bloody bruised nose and a nasty chunk missing from my left nostril. My left eye was bruised where my sunglasses dug into the skin under my eye as I hit the ground and a bruise under my chin I where the strap from my bike helmet pinched me (thank goodness for helmets). I shredded my new pants over the right knee and worse had a hard bumpy protusion there that took months to heal, long after the bloody road rash faded. A bruised thigh, hip, arm and extreme neck and shoulder pain that kept me from doing things like washing my hair, folding laundry and tying my shoes for a week were the other reminders of my less than glorious dismount. In the end I had to see a doctor about the facial lacerations, the skin had turnd hot, red and puffy, classic signs of infection. So, back to the basket and my thoughts on it. Don't buy this basket for a bike. I use mine to hold reusable grocery bags. Buy a basket that is sturdier, one with a better bracket thingamajig, I'm thinking metal, perhaps with three points of contact to really make it secure; one on the handlebars and then one on both sides of the front tire. The cost will be higher, but in the end, the quality and safety are all that really matter.