Man down!

Well, it finally happened. I got hit.

Fortunately, it was a side swipe and not a head on, and I saw it coming, so I was able to mitigate the damage. What happened is that I was riding fast up one of Cambridge's central thoroughfares (one of the ones I wrote about avoiding the other day) in the bike lane, when a woman in a Volvo passed me on the left. She then put on her right turn signal and cut straight across my lane, trying to get into the grocery store parking lot.

I yelled. Loud. She pulled her head out of her ass just in time to keep from cleaning me out completely, but I skidded into her front quarter panel, trying not to go over the hood. In the process I seem to have acquired a little road rash on the back of my right hand and a slight sprain of my left wrist.

When I got up off the pavement, I said something like, "Did you not fucking see me? Did you not fucking look? Let me answer for you. No. You didn't fucking look."

She mouthed the words, "Are you ok?" through the windshield (she didn't get out), and I said, "I'm ok." and rode off, cause I was pissed. Apparently I was also completely jacked on adrenaline. I flew the rest of the way home, oblivious to the pain in my wrist.

When I got home finally, I was talking a mile a minute and sweating like a fiend. It took a little while to settle down.

I can see that I was enormously lucky not to be hurt worse. Not to be killed. I mean, Volvos are heavy. They don't have to hit you that hard to do serious, even fatal, damage. The whole experience reinforces that old idea that it doesn't matter how careful you are. You can never tell what other people are going to do.

This woman should have seen me. She passed me. I was right there in front of her, and then next to her, and then bouncing off her front end. I was doing everything correctly. I was in my lane. And then bang!

Fortunately I have a day off the bike today (home with the baby), and a leftover left-handed wrist brace, from a previous injury. So, I'm braced up, and hoping to be healed enough by tomorrow morning to get back on that horse and ride.