Before you freak out too much don't worry. I'm fine, aside from a little scraped knee I am completely uninjured. Long but I have to get it off my chest.
This latest incident was of an altogether different vein. Something much more horrible in my eyes than hurting myself against a motor vehicle yet again. That I seem to be able to handle quite well psychologically. Once healed I hop back on the bike and am ready to rock it all over again. Perhaps it's a slight defect in my personality but it has also been a contributing factor in why I have always refused to drive a car. I don't want to hurt someone.
The simple fact is that I am a stimulus seeking individual which has led to a 10 year stint of cycling in various dangerous ways. I am by far not the craziest but I am definitely up there and my recent fascination has been pushing the limits in the gnarliest traffic I can find on a bike that is designed in such a way to make it much more challenging and dangerous.
Less injury prone but easily more deadly.
I have always rationalized this behavior with the mindset that I am only a danger to myself. It was the only way this game was fair in my mind. I was the only player, I was the one at risk
That illusion I had constructed came crashing down around me yesterday when I struck a pedestrian. A new low, the ultimate shame. To my credit she was running across a street when her light was red and my light had been green for a while. I was riding in a lull in traffic so from a distance the street would have seemed empty to someone living in a society where a cyclist pushing 40 km/h on the road is about as common as seeing Gooch turn down a fuoi gras kobe beef sandwitch. It seemed as if this would be no problem because I saw her making this move when I was still quite far away and chose a line that would make me pass behind her. Things were going fine until she suddenly did a 180 turn and headed back from where she was coming from when I was less than two metres away pushing 30 km/h. The line I chose depended on her continuing to run or at the very least stopping to avoid a collision so I hit her, hard. That was my fatal error that might haunt me for the rest of my time I spend on a bike.
She went down and hit her head. If there is one great blessing to come out if this is that she is not too badly hurt. She received a concussion and has to miss two days of work by order of the doctor. I have compensated her for her lost wages and hospital bills already plus a bit extra. In China they tend to settle things like this on the spot. I waited in the police station for four hours to hear about the results of her hospital visit and once they were in the policeman asked to look at one of her recent pay stubs and he calculated a number. I paid it and we signed a hunch of papers and he stamped them and declared the case settled. Things could have been so much worse and for that I consider both of us to be blessed.
I know it's only been one day but I just can't imagine riding the way I used to. I don't even want to get a regular racing bike with brakes and gears. It wasn't the bike that was the problem it was the whole mindset. Faster, crazier, balls to the wall with no compromise and I can't imagine riding like that not being able to lie to myself anymore about the existence of another, uglier possible consequence to my actions. This kind of shit could happen on a road bike too in this country and I would consider myself no better than a shithead street racer racing cars outside a closed course. I also can't imagine riding in any other way. It's my thing and it's what I do and it will leave a huge void needing to be filled.
If you've made it this far thank you for taking the time to read this. Feel free to comment but if you want to throw in anything in an I-told-you-so type of tone it really is unnecessary. I couldn't possibly be feeling more shame right now.
Peace and be safe out there or you might get run down by some idiot on a bicycle…
