Quote Originally Posted by spokewench View Post

Next time, if you are going down hill and need to stop and it doesn't seem to be working well enough, check behind you make sure you can pull into traffic, and move out of the way of the obstacle. Steering out of a problem can help immensely. I've done it many times. Do not fixate on what you think you are going to hit. Look away from it and you probably won't hit it. Same principle as riding a mountain bike, do not look at the rock that you want to miss. If you look at it, you will hit it.

Take your bike in and ask the bike shop to look at it, fix it if need be, and tell you what kinds of things can affect the stopping power of your brakes, i.e. grease on the rims, etc. Hope that helps.

spoke
Thanks. It was more a question of which of several obstacles at the bottom of the hill, including trees and people clustered together, could I hit with least injury to everybody? There was hardly any room to maneuver!