I'm having a rough week after a full summer of not even the remote hint of danger.
I had the school bus thing on Wedensday I described a page or 2 back.
Then today I had THREE near death experiences on my commute. 1 of them was TOTALLY my fault.
The ride started out with me misjudging the distance to traffic when I made a left hand turn onto a road I use. I approached the road from a cross street with a stop sign. I looked right and saw the traffic stopped 100 yards to my right at a stop light. No problem. Gives me time to get onto that major road and get up to speed.
Except the cars weren't stopped. I just didn't look at them long enough to realize they were moving at 45 mph. At a glance they looked stopped. At a second glance, they looked 10 feet away. I wasn't even across the road to the right side of the lane when I realized I was about to get smooshed. Rather than continue the left turn into the lane I just kept going across and hopped onto the sidewalk and went into the grass on the other side. MAJOR "I'm an idiot" moment.
The moral...look both ways before you cross...but look for more than a 1/4 of a second. Take the time to process what you see.
But I wasn't the only moron out there today.
A half mile later I hear a car pulling up behind me to pass on my left as I approach a stop sign. He doesn't stop at the sign, but instead makes a hard right turn in front of me. Moron goes around me to the left to cut in front of me going right. My front tire is about 3 inches from his passenger door as he does this. I scream obscenities at him but he rolls up the window and I'm still rattled from nearly killing myself cross the last road so I let it go and ride away.
A quarter mile later I'm approaching a large store. I go behind it because it's a long run with no traffic and nothing is ever going on back there. Again, I'm approaching a stop sign where I make my left turn to go behind the store. An 18 wheeler delivery truck is coming from my right to the same intersection. He's slowing down and stopping so I start making the left. Then the 18 wheeler doesn't stop but instead guns it and barrels into the intersection that I'm already in at this point, presumably so the driver doesn't have to be 'stuck behind a bike' for the next 100 feet until I cut behind the store.
I wasn't in the mood to let anything go at this point. This driver and I had words. I'm still trying to figure out how in the hell he felt like he had any right to argue about how he wasn't wrong for nearly running me over with a truck.
A half mile later I lost traction going around a turn and nearly went down but I saved it. It wasn't even a fast turn. I just got into that gravely stuff that piles up on the side of the road and the rear tire slipped. At that point I was about a 1/4 mile from my office so I decided to quit pissing off the bicycle gods and I just walked the rest of the way.
In that last 1/4 mile I got passed by another biker.....who had him helmet hanging from his rear rack. So I spent a 5 minute walk pushing a bike wondering why he bothered to pay for the helmet and carry it...but not use it.
I may leave the bike at work and walk home. It's a nice day.