Thursday

Every now and then, going down the road, I notice people standing in traffic brushing dirt off themselves. They've just wrecked into one another. They chat while pushing bikes off the road. Once or twice I've seen traffic moving slowly past a fallen rider, heard the crunch, or seen rubberneckers crowding around something obscured. The most dramatic accident I've seen: a scooter wedged so firmly underneath the engine of a taxi that the car's tires were off the road. And yeah, I can't believe I've never mentioned this: right after returning home last May, going to a birthday party at Big Man Beer, our own cab knocked over a skinny young biker in a dashing yellow jacket. "Don't worry," the cabbie called out to us or maybe the woman on the asphalt. I'm not sure which. She picked herself and her bike off the road. "See, everything okay," he told us or her. She dismissed us all with a gesture and scooted away. Honestly, it's all far less traffic violence than I predicted when I first saw the chaos here. At the time, I'd never have believed it would take till today to get run down myself. Well, I was crossing a one-way street, paying attention to some bikes passing a slow moving auto. Because they pass on the right here, these scooters were aimed right at me as I stepped off the sidewalk. I couldn't dodge past them and the car they were passing, so I backed up--onto the sidewalk again--where I was hit by a scooter heading the other way. Splat. I wasn't killed: her footrest tagged me in the left calf. I just have a large bruise, whereas she wobbled from the impact and sped on around the corner looking none too cool. [Cavin]