Thursday, August 30, 2012

My First Right Hook.

The intersection where it happened.

Today while riding to donate plasma I experienced my first right hook.

I was traveling in a bike lane eastbound on Burnside St. towards 99th Ave. at about 18 miles per hour. Right before I entered the intersection a Dodge Ram cut across my path without signaling.

I slammed on my brakes so quickly that I experienced rear wheel lift. I knew I was gonna hit the truck and right before I did I rotated my body (while still only on the front wheel) and hit the truck with the left side of my body. I hit the trucks passenger side rear view mirror and broke it. As soon as I hit the truck the driver momentarily stopped, looked at me, then sped away.

I resumed my way across the intersection with car drivers all staring at me like it was my fault. I stopped and checked out my bike and body for damage and thankfully there was none anywhere. I consider myself very lucky that both myself and my Trek 640 were unharmed.

Needless to say, I was breaking all kinds of records on the remainder of the way to the plasma center in an effort to burn off all that excess adrenaline I had in my system.

I can't help but review the situation over and over in my head trying to figure out if there was anything I could have done differently to avoid the situation. My only hope is that the driver of that Dodge Ram truck is spending as much time trying to figure out what he could have done differently in the hopes that future such events don't occur.

1 comment:

  1. damn Jon. Welcome to Portland! that guys super sucks for bailing. I'm really glad you're ok. but these kinds of events always worry me -- you may wake up stiff as a plank tomorrow and in your adrenaline-fueled funk, may not have noticed small/critical issues on your bike (thinking about small kinks on the bottom of the DT where it joins the HT) or a screwy hub/axle/rim/spoke. I'm not trying to be a debbie downer here, but I really hope it all comes out ok. Nice job taking out his mirror.

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