Hey guys, I just wanted to share a crazy experience I had this week. So on Wednesday, I start my normal commute to school which takes me into downtown Portland. Once I get into downtown there's a point in my commute where I have to take a left so I usually get into the left lane a couple blocks before that. Because of the way the lights are timed, I almost always get stopped at the light one block before where I make my turn. At this point my strategy is to take the whole lane because it's easy to keep up with the pace of downtown traffic for that one block. This particular day, however, a car pulls up behind me while I'm waiting at that red light and once the light turns green, he guns it, spinning tires as he passes me, coming within inches of me only to get stopped at the red light one block up. At this point the adrenaline is really flowing so I catch up with him and tap on his driver side window to give him a little piece of my mind. As soon as I do, I instantly regret it. The driver has at least 40 lbs on me and jumps out of his car screaming about how i touched his car. He immediately sucker punches me, shoves me to the ground, and drives off. I was clipped in and generally too dumbfounded by what was happening to really react. I did manage to get his plates and call the police. The police arrived but were not particularly helpful. They said that since his plates were registered outside the city of Portland, there wasn't much of anything they could do. Fortunately I made it out with only a few bruises and a scuffed saddle.

For the past couple of days I've been replaying the incident in my mind trying to make sense of what was a terrifying experience. It's frustrating to think that someone could just attack another human being and get away with it. I suppose that sort of thing happens all the time but I never thought of it happening to me. Especially in broad daylight in uber bike-friendly Portland. Part of me wishes that I had done more to stand up for myself. I'm not a big guy and certainly not a fighter but I did have my ulock in my pocket that perhaps I could have done some damage with. Or at the very least, pitched it at that car that he loves so much as he was driving away. But after having had time to process all of it, I think that anything I would have done to defend myself would likely have gotten me more hurt and in the future I need to be more conscious of what my fellow humans are capable of. I think that it can sometimes be tough to find the line between riding assertively (especially in an urban environment) and being aggressive in a way that can lead to confrontations such as the one described above. So moral of the story: Be safe you guys! There's a lot of crazies out there.