pasadena to car door

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2901723

this ride was gonna be bad ass. it was almost a month to the day since i got hit and run by the old lady in the cadillac. i’d gotten my $350 dollars from the insurance people and written her a letter to tell her i didn’t hate her but an apology would be nice. i never got one.

this ride was gonna be great! i had it all planned out. i was gonna ride up to colorado blvd and follow it into pasadena and then take los robles etc down to long beach and have lunch and then come back up the beach to finish it out.

the awesome part of the ride is that after you hit mile 17 right at colorado and los robles it’s essentially down hill until you hit the beach. which is like??? i don’t know. i never made it.

i rode over the old pasadena bridge and it was amazing. views for days of all sorts of different areas of la la land. then i stopped and got a coffee right on the corner of los robles. 

i know they say not to ride with headphones in but i do. i always do. unless i’m riding with someone else which almost never happens. the long and dull here is that i was coffeed up and listening to nada surf (sort of ironically the same song i was listening to when i got hit a month earlier but i didn’t think of that until afterwards.) and basically having the best time i could remember having in a while. i actually remember thinking “man, this is just about the best day i’ve had in a while.”

that was mile 20. that was right about the time i felt the hard thump on the back of my left arm that forced me to swerve hard to the right. i righted myself and looked up just in time to see the old pickup truck turn around the corner.

the next thing i knew i was staring at the sky and it was not all that much fun to breathe. i went ahead and tried anyway. it hurt less after the first few sucking wheezes and i picked myself up.

the first thing i noticed was that my water bottle was in the middle of the street about two feet away from where i was standing. i picked it up and took a drink.

then i saw my head light. so i picked that up as well.

then i saw my computer. then a question formed in my head without me actually thinking it and it went something like “why is my computer in the street and not on my bike?”

then i heard yelling and i looked over to the small asian man (sorry, i don’t know if he was chinese, japanese, korean etc) on the side of the road with his car door open. he was screaming at the top of his lungs and pointing at me and then pointing to his car.

my left arm started to hurt and i remembered the pickup truck. i checked the back of my arm and there were two bloody marks about 3 inches apart. a car horn honked and i looked up. i was still standing in the middle of the road.

the asian man was still yelling and as i got to the side of the road where he was parked i saw my bike on the ground. my first thought was that sara (my fiance) was gonna kill me since she just bought me the bike to replace the last one that got smashed.

i wasn’t sure what was going on but for some reason i started apologizing to the yelling asian man. did i mention he was not yelling in english? it made everything more confusing. i told him i was sorry about 30 times and he finally stopped yelling. he got out his phone and i thought “crap, he’s calling an ambulance and i don’t have insurance. sara is really gonna kill me.”

while he yelled into the phone i checked over my bike and oddly, everything seemed in order except there being a slight bend in the left side of the handlebars and the chain was off. i put the chain on and as i did the man grabbed me and pulled me around the side of his car where the door was still standing open. he pointed to a big dent right on the edge of the door. it was where the outside of the door becomes the inside of the door and makes that perfect little line with the rear door when it is closed.

“you did that!” he said. he hung up the phone and i said “i don’t need an ambulance.” as the words fell from my lips two things happened. a door opened to a restaurant that had a “closed” sign in the window right next to where we were standing and about 20 more asian people (men and women, young and old) came out. as this took place i started to feel like i needed an ambulance, mostly in the right foot part of my body.

at this point everyone started yelling and one young man came over to me and started repeating “you okay. you go now.” over and over. at first i thought he was asking and my response was “i don’t know. i’m sorry i don’t know.” and then he started shaking his head. ” you go now. you okay.”

i was standing in the middle of 20 screaming asians. i don’t know why but i absentmindedly took my helmet off and looked at it to see if it had any marks on it. it didn’t. it made me feel better. my foot was throbbing. the man whose door i apparently hit looked over at me and gave me a thumbs up so i gave one back. this prompted the young asian man to pat me on the back and say “okay go.” so i did.

18 miles and i was home. east cesar chavez was interesting. it looked like chicago with rolling hills only dirtier and with no white people. the rest of the ride was pretty uninteresting. the pain in my foot kept me from enjoying it much.

i got home and sara was there…i will say this, wrecking your bike 2 times in one month even when neither is your fault is not a good way to convince your significant other that bicycle riding is something you are going to continue doing.

shoe off - three broken toes (my own personal guess as i never saw a doctor). my pinky toe was shoved under the toe next to it. 

shirt off - giant bruise in about the kidney area. my back pack was on and i think i landed on my allen wrench set.

scrapes on both elbows.

scrapes on right hip.

almost puncture wounds on the back of my elbow (from the sideview mirror?)

lesson learned? if you get hit by the sideview mirror of a passing vehicle and it doesn’t knock you over, look out for people opening car doors.

something to keep in mind when/if this happens to you - in california, a person opening a car door is always responsible for checking to see if there is oncoming traffic. always. if their door gets taken off by a truck because they didn’t check it’s their fault. if they break the toes of a passing cyclist (even if that cyclist is maybe closer than they should be due to unforeseen circumstances) it is their fault. always. if they knock over an old lady who is walking by it is their fault. always.

chirp,

hillary