Source: When Dick Dougherty began riding with Dick Warren a few years ago, a hill on Weld County Road 31 as it crosses Colo. 392 betrayed Warren's inexperience in the saddle. Past the flat, easy riding of the cornfields and the sky stretching overhead was the hill, a steep climb that even the local studs would use to prepare for Rist Canyon or Ride the Rockies or the Triple Bypass. And Warren struggled with it many times at first, sometimes to the point of leaving it for another day. But Warren started to earn his place along some of Greeley's most dedicated riders because he never gave up on it, and soon after he crested it, he began riding with the passion few could match, even those guys half his age, five years after a quadruple bypass. He was a founding member of El Grupo, a social riding group filled with older guys as ornery and determined as him. Last year he joined Dougherty for 2,000 miles of riding, and some of them covered hills much steeper and longer than the one on Weld 31. He was on one of those rides Wednesday by himself, a gut-buster up Two Rivers Parkway, when a car hit him head-on. The crash left him “pretty much crushed from head to toe,” said his youngest daughter, Juel Rae, 38, of Loveland. He suffered many broken bones, but the worst of it is a brain injury that leaves Warren in a coma, on life support and fighting for his life under minute-by-minute care at Denver Health Medical Center, where he was flown after the first few hours at North Colorado Medical Center. He died on May 27, 2012. Mark Christensen, 67, of Greeley, was driving north on Two Rivers near Weld 396 when he crossed over and slammed into Warren, who was riding south on the shoulder, according to a report from the Colorado State Patrol. Warren was wearing a helmet, but there's only so much a bicyclist can do against a car. Many said they aren't angry at Christensen and even said of all the drivers in Greeley and the area, many, even the increased truckers from the oil fields, were gracious. But they also said the crash is another example of drivers who need to pay more attention to cyclists who simply want to share the road, not take it over. Christensen was cited for careless driving causing death.