I was wrong in becoming complacent. This has been a terrible cycling day.

My friend and I went for a lunchtime ride from downtown over to West Seattle. There is a waterfront shared path over there, and just after we started riding on it, this City Light worker in his truck careened onto the path from the street to flip a U or something. There was really chunky gravel off the right edge of the path, and the guy looked like he was barely maintaining control even though he didn't even realize we were there. He had never looked.

My friend and I both jammed on our brakes, but he was in front and was too close to stop. Since there was gravel on the right, he had to make an evasive past the left side of the truck. But the truck was still moving, and he couldn't just dart out into the street without looking. We both yelled loud; he finally noticed us. Moron.

On the way back, there wasn't a dangerous situation, but one that was annoying and added to the lameness of the day that I thought I should mention. We were stopped waiting for a light at a nasty five or six way (haven't really counted) industrial intersection before we could get on the path to cross the bridge back to downtown. As the light turns green, this racer dude comes up on our tails, including a girl on a hardtail in front of us, really quickly. Due to the danger of the intersection (bikes have to cross an uncontrolled 'ramp' lane), we were taking it cautiously, but this guy was unpredictably zig-zagging between the three of us. Then while climbing the bridge incline, the guy is out of the saddle apparently trying to pound up the hill, but all three of us behind him are just cruising along at the same speed. Then, at the top of the hill, he gets in the middle of the path, slows down to far under 20mph, and takes both hands off his handlebars and starts fiddling with something. On a downhill! Selfish jerk.

My ride home was thankfully uneventful. Mostly because it is uphill all the way and my speed is lower than usual.

I headed to the coffee shop to study a little later, which is a mile downhill from my apartment. Right out of my front door while trying to enter the street, a cab comes quickly rolling through a right turn onto the same street without looking. I smartly yielded. He the proceeded to troll at about 5mph looking for a fare, and wouldn't even go when the light turned green. Arg, you can't pass a cab.

After he finally got out of the way and at the next significant intersection down the hill, a was shooting the hole between the stopped traffic and the parked cars. Since cars tend to keep their parking spots on this street, it is a little safer to do that than it is normally. While in the gap, my whole body catches a generous splattering of liquid from a not-traceable source. I stopped, got on the sidewalk and looked around trying to figure out where it came from. Could have been from a car window, or from the building above me; who knows? It's probably a good thing for everyone involved that I didn't know. The liquid was water as far as I could tell. It didn't smell, and it wasn't sticky.

Another block down and a car tries to pull out of the parking lane into me. I was even with them at this time, so I could escape. Another block and a car pulls right out in front of me from a sidestreet. Traffic usually goes down this hill at a minimum of 30mph, and I was gaining momentum towards that mark, so I laid on the brakes. He turned off at the next sidestreet.

I made it the rest of the way without incident.

It is now nighttime on my way home. Yes, I have lights. I make it to the top of the hill, via a different route, and am quite ready to get home. I pass a car, while staying to the right of the yellow line, that was stopped in the middle of the lane and get immediately back over to the right. However, I was almost hit head-on by a pig going about 90mph without his lights on doing a similar weave around a car stopped in his lane. I yelled (loudly!) some not-quite-nice things at him. I hope he heard me.

I turned off onto the street where my building is. Right as I'm about to pull off onto the sidewalk (my building is on a corner), a mercedes hangs a right turn right into the wrong side of the street that I am on. He was going fast enough, and the collision was about as close a call as the one with the cop. I yelled at him too, which was embarrassing because I was in front of my building and there were people outside.

Although there were many possibilities for collisions and injuries today, I feel very fortunate to have escaped them all. Still, the sheer quantity of them has left me angry and frustrated tonight. I have been finally having a generally positive feeling towards drivers lately, but it's probably a good thing that I have been scared back into vigilance. I hope tomorrow is better.