It was another regular day of filming e-bike videos for Aaron Enevoldsen. However, as he zipped down the street on his dirtsurfer, the fateful Feb. 24 afternoon suddenly took an unfortunate turn.
"I hit a succession of potholes. It wasn't the first one that sent me off, it was the second one after that," he tells V.I.A. "By then I was already off balance which sent me careening over and instead of getting my foot out of the footstrap of the dirtsurfer I was paying attention to not letting the camera hit the ground."
The dirtsurfer had stopped before he did, and his tumble resulted in a "nice clean break" called a spiral fracture.
It took Enevoldsen nearly 10 weeks to recover from the incident and he documented his journey in a humorous video.
"The succession of potholes on that street is just so brutal," he adds. The rough stretch is wedged between McLean and Woodland drives along Kitchener Street.
Although there are a few obvious potholes, the ones that thwarted his February cruise are so barely visible that "you wouldn't really see them coming."
Enevoldsen even went back to the same street, once his injury healed, to bike over them and see how they feel. "They're very aggressive," he observes.
Although the City of Vancouver has so far repaired approximately 20,300 potholes in 2023, it was not aware of those along Kitchener Street.
City crews were sent over to inspect the block of road Friday (May 13) afternoon, shares Amy Sidwell, Manager of Street Operations.
