Your bike spills

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I had my first spill, since starting bike riding regularly, yesterday. Riding down the segregated cycle lane on tavistock place. Street sweeper in the lane stuck out his broom so I had to swerve to avoid him and the I had to swerve again to avoid the pedestrian stepping out from behind the street sweeper. It turned out the valiant thing to do was go over my handlebars rather than hit the pedestrian. I anded aquardly on my right hand, but I escaped with nasty deep bruising, which after 4 hours on ice and some deep heat merely throbs (it tightens up when I type so Is houldn't be doing this really).

Cycle lanes are more dangerous than roads, I tell you; pedestrians never look before crossing the cycle lane and even when they do don't realise that they can be two way, and sweeping them during rush hour, with your back to the flow of traffic is just plain moronic. For my part I need a bell or to just shout more.

― Ed (dali), Friday, 9 September 2005 06:32 (twenty years ago)

When I was at university I was cycling across town (not London, somewhere up north) one evening to my girlfriend's house. I had lights on my bike, but due to student poverty the batteries were almost gone. As I went along the main road a car pulled out of a side road right in front of me. I hit the side of the car and somersaulted over the bonnet with the bike still attached to me (I was wearing toe clips) before landing on my head (I wasn't wearing a helmet) in the middle of the road. A car coming the other way just managed to break in time. Some passers-by stopped and helped get me and the bike out of the way, but instead of thanking them I was just rolling around going 'fuck! fuck! fuck!'. But, and this is true, the woman who had driven into me came over to help me. The side road was the exit to the accident and emergency department of the hospital, and the woman had just finished her shift working there as a nurse, so she took me straight back in there. So that was about the best way to have that accident. A stranger offered to look after my mangled bike while I went to hospital, and it took me quite a lot of time and effort to get it back again, but that's another story.

― Teh HoBB (the pirate king), Friday, 9 September 2005 07:00 (twenty years ago)

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