I like riding my bike. Sometimes I'll take off and ride through a city, just to see what I can see. With only a few free days left before prepping for the upcoming school year, I took a cruise through LA--parked in West Hollywood, took Sunset to the coast, then followed the water down to Santa Monica, through Venice, then back through Santa Monica to Santa Monica Blvd, and Santa Monica Blvd. back to West Hollywood. I was almost back, getting ready to turn left onto Sunset from La Brea. Traffic was thick, and there was no green arrow, so I was feeling pretty nifty for weaving my way up to the front of the left hand turn lane. I planted myself in the middle of the crosswalk so as to leave no doubt of my presence for the guy behind me (in my opinion, Southern CA motorists in general are not very friendly to folks on bikes). Light turns green. I start to ease into the intersection and wait for the onslaught of oncoming traffic to break so I can turn.
Suddenly I was flying through the air, simultaneously deafened by screeching brakes, crunching metal, and screaming pedestrians. Ok, actually the driver behind me just drifted forward as if I were invisible and gave me a little love tap. It smashed my ankle against the inside of my bike, and I sort of fell over. He must have been playing on his iphone or something, because I had been waiting for the light for at least 20 seconds, and the entire time I was literally four feet in front of his right headlight. Unfortunately, a few unmentionables may have slipped out of my mouth. Forgive me, I've never been hit, (ok touched) by a car before. Shook me up a little bit. I turned to face the driver, and he looked like he'd just run me over. His eyes were huge (not naturally, I mean from surprise). That sort of calmed me down, and then I thought about making a payday out of it, but I couldn't very well zoom my way out of the buzzing intersection and then start acting injured once I was safely on the shoulder. I just wanted to get the heck out of there.
The driver pulled up alongside me once we were through, and began apologizing profusely, but we were moving at about 15 mph, and given my intimate knowledge of this guys driving skills, I figured he'd be better off focusing on the road. I waved him off so he could attend to the task at hand.
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