I was just now very nearly pulverized by a semi truck.
Once every two weeks I bike down to the nearest mall on my lunch break to deposit my paychecks and indulge in a Target shopping spree. It's a long but straightforward ride along a stretch of road famously thick with large trucks. There are no sidewalks for most of the way, but instead large shoulders along the side of the road, so it only looks perilous. Two years of riding a bike to work and back have taught me to be extremely vigilant when I'm out and about. Even moreso than in a car, making a mistake while on a bike can get you killed. Heck, someone else making a mistake can get you killed. So to say I'm a careful bicyclist is understating it.
Competing with motorists who make expedient left-hand turns often provides the greatest challenge. Now, we've all done this: you need to make a left-hand turn onto a sidestreet or into a parking lot. You don't have a traffic light. You see an opening and you gun it. That's what this guy in the giant white semi truck did. The difference between this truck driver and you, I should hope, is that you check for pedestrians before shooting out across three lanes of traffic.
I saw the guy there with his signal on. I saw he didn't have enough room to make a turn. I saw that I had plenty of time to cross the sidestreet in front of him. These are the split-second judgments one makes all the time while operating a vehicle. On this occasion though, I misjudged. With a roar the truck came barreling towards me.
Usually in this situation I can just maintain my speed and zoom through the road, but the semi was just too big and was traveling too fast. I would have never made it. So I cut hard right instead, forcing a breakneck U-turn and sending me tumbling through some bushes and skidding across a parking lot. Then for a few moments the only things I was aware of were the earpieces of my mp3 player, which had miraculously not fallen out during the crash.
I pushed my bike off of my face and picked myself up. My right arm and wrist were shredded by the gravelly asphalt of the parking lot. The truck was nowhere to be seen. Either the driver literally didn't see me at all, or he didn't care enough to stop and see if I was hurt. An old woman in a red Buick made a right-hand turn behind the truck. She stopped to make sure I wasn't dead, which was damned decent of her. I wasn't seriously hurt, and my bike seemed to still work.
The woman looked quite shaken. She asked if I got the license plate of the truck. When I said no, she offered to drive me down the road to find the bastard and get the number. Really, all I wanted was to get back to work and get washed up. Besides, lots of large white trucks turn down this road, and they all look the same to me.
As I brushed myself off the old lady walked back to the road where I was almost struck and retrieved my Target bag. It had been ripped off of my handlebars when I turned so harshly -- that's how close I came to being obliterated. The Nintendo DS game I just purchased was smashed, presumably by one of the truck's back tires. As she handed the bag to me, she looked white as a ghost. I thanked her for her help, assured her nothing was broken, and wished her a Happy Holidays. She did the same and then got back in her car.
And so I slinked back to the pee clinic, scraped and bruised and more than a bit shaken. Fortunately only the box of my DS game is crushed; the game itself looks fine. My injuries looked much worse on the side of the road than they do now that I've washed them out and they've stopped bleeding. This isn't the first incident I've had on my bike; it's not even the worst. But it is the first time actual human interaction was involved.
Tis the season, I suppose. And a Happy Holidays to you all from the Peemeister who, for now, is still alive.
The song on my mp3 player at the time of the incident was "Your Horoscope For Today" by Weird Al Yankovic. I don't know if that's meaningful in the great cosmic scheme of things.
Once every two weeks I bike down to the nearest mall on my lunch break to deposit my paychecks and indulge in a Target shopping spree. It's a long but straightforward ride along a stretch of road famously thick with large trucks. There are no sidewalks for most of the way, but instead large shoulders along the side of the road, so it only looks perilous. Two years of riding a bike to work and back have taught me to be extremely vigilant when I'm out and about. Even moreso than in a car, making a mistake while on a bike can get you killed. Heck, someone else making a mistake can get you killed. So to say I'm a careful bicyclist is understating it.
Competing with motorists who make expedient left-hand turns often provides the greatest challenge. Now, we've all done this: you need to make a left-hand turn onto a sidestreet or into a parking lot. You don't have a traffic light. You see an opening and you gun it. That's what this guy in the giant white semi truck did. The difference between this truck driver and you, I should hope, is that you check for pedestrians before shooting out across three lanes of traffic.
I saw the guy there with his signal on. I saw he didn't have enough room to make a turn. I saw that I had plenty of time to cross the sidestreet in front of him. These are the split-second judgments one makes all the time while operating a vehicle. On this occasion though, I misjudged. With a roar the truck came barreling towards me.
Usually in this situation I can just maintain my speed and zoom through the road, but the semi was just too big and was traveling too fast. I would have never made it. So I cut hard right instead, forcing a breakneck U-turn and sending me tumbling through some bushes and skidding across a parking lot. Then for a few moments the only things I was aware of were the earpieces of my mp3 player, which had miraculously not fallen out during the crash.
I pushed my bike off of my face and picked myself up. My right arm and wrist were shredded by the gravelly asphalt of the parking lot. The truck was nowhere to be seen. Either the driver literally didn't see me at all, or he didn't care enough to stop and see if I was hurt. An old woman in a red Buick made a right-hand turn behind the truck. She stopped to make sure I wasn't dead, which was damned decent of her. I wasn't seriously hurt, and my bike seemed to still work.
The woman looked quite shaken. She asked if I got the license plate of the truck. When I said no, she offered to drive me down the road to find the bastard and get the number. Really, all I wanted was to get back to work and get washed up. Besides, lots of large white trucks turn down this road, and they all look the same to me.
As I brushed myself off the old lady walked back to the road where I was almost struck and retrieved my Target bag. It had been ripped off of my handlebars when I turned so harshly -- that's how close I came to being obliterated. The Nintendo DS game I just purchased was smashed, presumably by one of the truck's back tires. As she handed the bag to me, she looked white as a ghost. I thanked her for her help, assured her nothing was broken, and wished her a Happy Holidays. She did the same and then got back in her car.
And so I slinked back to the pee clinic, scraped and bruised and more than a bit shaken. Fortunately only the box of my DS game is crushed; the game itself looks fine. My injuries looked much worse on the side of the road than they do now that I've washed them out and they've stopped bleeding. This isn't the first incident I've had on my bike; it's not even the worst. But it is the first time actual human interaction was involved.
Tis the season, I suppose. And a Happy Holidays to you all from the Peemeister who, for now, is still alive.
The song on my mp3 player at the time of the incident was "Your Horoscope For Today" by Weird Al Yankovic. I don't know if that's meaningful in the great cosmic scheme of things.
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