goodwoodenship

Speaking of stating the obvious, DC drivers are, I think, among the worst in the world. And this, mind you, is coming from someone who learnt how to drive in Dili where the two speeds are 10 mph and 120mph (depending on whether or not you are affiliated to the UN).

 

Today when cycling with Amy away from work (which always means faster than usual) I noticed a huge SUV run a red light and slip into an illegal parking spot ahead of me outside one of the trendier clubs on Connecticut. "Old chap must be desperate to hit the town" I thought blithely as I zipped past feeling proud of both my speed and the dashing cut of my twenties style bike. It was at this point I suddenly experienced that rather strange sensation of continuing to travel at the same speed as before only without my bike and at a tangent to my original direction. There was a brief moment, just before I hit the tarmac where I wondered what I had done wrong. Did I hit the brakes unwittingly? Had an anomaly occurred in the space time dimension taking my bike back 10 seconds thus leaving me in a different timeline? No, in fact it was quite simple. The same chronically mentally challenged SUV owner (are the adjectives and noun separable?) that had just parked 0.002 seconds before, had with the same sense of speed, intellect, and care for fellow man swung open his door without looking, catching my bike and knocking me an impressive 5 feet through the air.

   

I am currently lying in bed trying to find a portion of my body that isn’t bruised to lie on and am running over all the things I could have said to him other than "ow, fucking hell, ow…. I mean… fucking hell…. ow". The only two consolations are that Amy says my fall was simultaneously spectacular and graceful (I’m taking her at her word no matter how much she was trying to make me feel better) and that my bike left the mother of all scratches on his door. I am hoping, though I know it’s unlikely, that it costs him an arm and a leg to fix. More accurately a rather bruised right arm and slightly strained calf in the left leg.