I just got back from a very strange ride. Today was a UT football game, so I decided to take a cruise through campus and check out all the goings on. I always enjoy a ride through the city, especially on Saturdays, when it feels so alive.

I'm riding through campus, next to the stadium when some overweight frat boy yells "Yeah, you ride your bike, F4990t!" WTF? Who does this sort of thing? Honestly, what could compel another person to just yell something like that out? I love this state, but sometimes it's unbearable. I was speechless; I just gave him a perplexed/disappointed look that was meant to communicate something along the lines of "WTF is wrong w/ you?" Then he said, "Come over here, F....., so I can knock you off your bike." Okay! Great idea!

After that, I ran into an old friend of mine who is strung out on heroin. ugh.

Then came the absolute worst part of my ride. I'm almost home, riding on one of the busiest streets of Austin (Congress), when I see 2 cop cars, a fire truck, and an ambulance all packed into this one intersection that I go through 4 times a day, everytime I'm going to school. This is a horrible intersection, clearly not meant to handle the amount of traffic that passes through it, As I'm rubbernecking, I see something in the middle of all the chaos that resembles a bicycle wheel. My heart sinks "**** **** ****, this is one of my friends from school." I get off my bike and run across the intersection to see who it is. Once I get there, I realize that it's not one of my friends, but a middle-aged man on a MTB. He has a plastic cylinder around his neck. Blood is covering the pavement. His bike looks like a contortionist. I'm looking at this guy and he is surrounded on all sides by the huge, inconsiderate, dangerous, and impatient vehicles we call cars, and he's just lying there completely helpless, unable to move. For the second time tonight, I'm speechless. Except this time, my heart is filled with sadness instead of anger. They lift him into the back of the ambulance using one of those plastic boards, and the whole time he can't move. After they load him up, they wash his blood off the street using some liquid chemical.

I ask a guy what happened and he says that a car turned left and t-boned the bike. The bike had a green light, going straight through the intersection in the bicycle lane, and just got nailed from the side. He probably didn't even see it coming.

This is the first time I have encountered a bad bike/car accident. It was one of the worst things I've ever witnessed in my life. I hope this guy lives and is able to walk again.

Sry, I just had to vent.