Collision!

I first started riding to and from work (about 20 km/day) about 12 years ago. In the early days I had a few accidents. There were no bike lanes on my route in those days... I just had to ride at the side of the rode and, as inevitably happens when you put bicycles and motor vehicles together, there were occasional collisions. I never had any big injuries but it was scary nonetheless. For the past few years it has been accident free for me since the city started installing edge of road bike lanes and exclusive bike paths along my route to and from work.

The other night I was coming home from work at around 10:30pm. Minding my own business when I saw something stealthily coming toward me out from the corner of my eye. It was another cyclist whipping out of a side road, failing see whether anything was coming before he whipped between two parked vehicles into the bike lane. No lights, bell or yelling warned me of his approach. His pedal caught my back wheel and, like two jets colliding over an airfield, our debris paths followed our independent trajectories. As I went down I was less concerned for my bike than the hard drive in my backpack (mind you, it had been backed up just 15 minutes before) I had a few cuts and scrapes but I think he was worse off, in spite of the alcohol of which he reeked. He was one of the immortals... he wore no helmet. I figure those people either know they are going to live forever or assume there is nothing of value inside the skull that a helmet would protect. Anyway, because of the alcohol and his twisted knee, it kinda deflated my anger at his having caused the incident. His bike would need some fixing but mine seemed to be okay. We parted to go lick our wounds at our respective homes. First thing I did when I got home was to plug in my hard drive: it purred like a kitten.