There’s nothing like a nice bike ride through downtown Denver. Skyscrapers surround you as if you were riding through a dense patch of forest, the sun shining on your face, a breeze going in the same direction, and animals everywhere. Well, maybe there aren’t animals everywhere, but there is definitely construction. I have a fixed gear bike with brakes, yes brakes. I know that it is really cool and hip not to have brakes, but I don’t trust myself to stop fast enough, and I would probably die without brakes. I like to go extremely fast on my bike too, but the only thing about fixed gear bikes is that you can only go as fast as your legs can go because you have to continuously pedal. I kind of feel like the Flinstones whenever I am at top speed. Man did they have some foot speed…Anyways. I was biking home from work and I was going as fast as traffic and following close behind a black car. The distance between the bumper and my front tire was about ten feet. I had tunes going in my ears and it was great. We all passed over the train tracks and then something happened. The car two cars ahead stopped extremely fast making the car that I was following slam on her brakes. I did the only thing that I could do, slam on my brakes, but it wasn’t enough. The next thing I see is my tire hitting the car and my body rising off of my bike onto the back of the car. The impact wasn’t too bad because I went “rag doll” style and rolled right off of the car. The lady in the car rolled down her window and made sure that I was all right. There wasn’t a scratch on my body. I picked up my bike and told the lady that I was good and sped towards home.
Crashing into a car isn’t very enjoyable, yet my experience was actually not to shabby. I was able to hit a car and go away unscathed. A few lessons that I learned from this blunder is 1. Don’t ride so close to cars on my bike. 2. I should probably wear a helmet (uhhh maybe) 3. Put a spear at the end of my bike so that will hit first. 4. Enjoy life, because you don’t know what is going to happen.
