I say "nudged" only because I was able to stay upright and ride out of what could've been a pretty bad crash. I was on my lunch time ride and was heading back to work going northbound on Main St. in Hackensack, NJ. I was keeping my distance from the parked cars to avoid being doored, leaving plenty of space for cars to pass me on my left should they feel the need. This one car comes up on me and slowly passes. When her rear passenger side wheel gets to about my front wheel, she starts to veer right. I think she's just trying to show me who's queen of the road. At least she sees me right? Ok, I just move a bit more to the right as I've got plenty of room. But she keeps going and it's then that I realize she's going to parallel park head first into an empty space up ahead.

As she veers more right, she nudges me and hits my bars so now I am riding along leaning on her rear door, trying to avoid getting driven into the parked cars on my right. I'm still wondering why I didn't hit any of the parked cars. (I didnt think to bang on her window, probably because I was trying to stay upright, but the thought came up later.) The empty spot comes up just at the right moment and I'm able to quickly turn into the spot, avoid her front wheel and bumer and quickly cut left in front of her and back into traffic to avoid the parked car ahead of me. I turn back and she's got this look of disgust on her face. Probably disgust that I had the nerve to be riding on the street and place my arm and side on her car! B!tch! And to top it off, I'm at another intersection waiting to turn left alongside this SUV when the light turns yellow. The SUV and I are just about to go when an oncoming SUV, at leat 15-20 feet fro the intersection, decides to gun it at the last minute to beat the red. She realizes she can't do it and stops at the last minute, almost hitting me and letting the SUV go by. I yelled some profanities at her and continued on.

It might not be a big deal for some of you but it was a pretty scary experience. Forgive me for ranting here but no one at work seemed to give a crap. Just asked why the hell I was riding my bike as summer is over. Idiots!