near miss

So, this morning on the way to work I had this great post planned out about how people freak out when they hear that you ride a scooter/motorcycle, and all the illogical safety concerns they have. I still have that planned. But.. coincidentally, I came as close as I ever have to biting it big this morning on the way to work.

I’m heading up Lincoln, and I have two open lanes ahead of me, and I am in front of all the traffic. I’m hitting about 45, nothing too quick but I won’t be stopping on a dime if I hit the brakes. Suddenly, out of the left turn lane, a car decides they don’t want to wait anymore and pulls out right in front of me.

I can sort of remember it in slow motion – I saw the car start to peek out and I put my fingers on the brakes, thinking they would wait for me to pass. I started to relax my fingers off the brakes when the car jolted out. I laid on the horn as I leaned really hard into the next lane to go around them. If there was a car in the other lane I’m almost certain I would have crashed, I wouldn’t have had any room to maneuver.

Slow motion stops, I get my bike under control, and immediately turn around and flip off the driver AS HARD AS I CAN. At the next redlight, the car pulls up behind me. I turn around and give a “what were you thinking, you stupid cow!” signal (face grimaced, hand up turned up, accusatory gesturing)  and it was this Japanese girl who looked really intimidated and sort of gave a “whoopsy” hand gesture to me. I just turned back around and counted to ten. IN GREEK.

So that’s my story, and the motosafety post will have to wait. I just finished my bagel. Tell me, do you like bagels that are soft all around, or bagels that have a harder shell and are chewy on the inside.. sort of like a bread M&M? I like it somewhere in between.