Last night on my way home, it finally happened.  If you ride your bike almost everyday and use it to get around all the time, it’s bound to happen, you fall/crash/get hit whatever the situation.

First off, I’m fine.  Cut my knee, ripped my pants, big bruise on my hip and elbow but structurally everything is good.  Now onto the story….

I wish I could blame the weather but I can’t.  I could blame a terrible driver but I won’t.  The fact is, I blame myself.  I wasn’t 100% on my game and “caught a hanger”.  In layman’s terms, my arm/handlebar clipped a rearview mirror and sent me flying.  Without going into too much detail, I had been keeping my eye on one car as we went down Main St because this driver enjoyed driving with only a few inches between him and the parked cars.  This is always bad for bikes, so I had my eye on him so that I wouldn’t get pinched.  Eventually he was way ahead of me but I caught up while he was at a red light.  I was a about 200 yards back of the intersection as the light turned green so I didn’t need to slow down.  At this point about 25 yards ahead, I saw this particular car as he inched into the right lane to make a right turn up at the light.  It’s one of those intersections that has room for a right lane so cars can skip to the front and go right on red.  But the lane is only open for as far there are no cars parked on the street.  This guy was caught in that middle ground of wanted to get into the lane but there being a car parked there so it was a tight fit.

As a was buzzing down the incline, I saw this developing and realized it might be tight but knew he wanted to get into that lane to turn right so I could easily maneuver as long as he didn’t stop or take an extreme angle getting into the lane.  Guess what, he did both!

I was too close to just stop and I wasn’t cut off, he just made the opening very tight.  I knew I could squeeze through so I made sure I paid extra attention this guy as another sudden move by him would cause more issues.  Well, I guess I was paying too much attention to him and not the parked car because as I buzzed past, BANG!  Either my

handlebar or arm hit the rear view mirror, I was over the top/side of my bike sliding down the road.  I managed to pop up enough to stop myself against said vehicle as it drove away then quickly head to the sidewalk.

I  knew it must have looked really bad when multiple people stopped to ask if I was ok.  The good news is, I’m fine.  The bad news is that there was a guy sitting in the parked car and I scared the absolute SH*T out of him.  So much so that I went over to make sure he was ok.  I chose to ignore his rear view mirror (which had seen better days) and went on my way.

Damage Report:  My rubber pants look to be done, my new foot booties got torn up a bit,  my new LED headlight works but will never be the same, the cuts didn’t bleed and the bruises will heal.  Overall, a successful first crash!