Incidents on the rain bike

The rain bike is a pretty special piece of metal. Ed's dad found it in a pile of trash, and soaked the chain in some magical mystery oil for a while and now it works. Except for the shifting, the cable is slipping somewhere and I've been too lazy to fix that, so you can't use your low gears. Or maybe I should say low gear. Supposedly there are ten speeds, but being unable to put it into the big ring means there are only five speeds. And its special shifting means there are more like 2-3 gears. But it does the trick when its raining and I don't want to deal with cleaning a bike. Except the brakes. Those work, but not in a panic-stop sort of way. More of a gentle slowing motion, except not that gentle because something is definitely shimmying when you squeeze the front brake. Probably the wheel isn't on tight enough. There was this one time, when my rear wheel fell off in the middle of a busy intersection in downtown Boston during rush hour in a rainstorm... that was fun. I've learned to carry tools with me when I ride that bike. And duct tape.

Anyway. I was riding home, and it was early, around 3:30pm, because I had to go to a doctor's appointment, and so the sun was directly in my eyes. I could see lights, but not much else, so I wasn't going very fast, because with a bike like the rain bike, you don't go very fast, especially if you can't see too well. Although once that thing gets going, its got MOMENTUM. I was crossing an intersection on Comm ave, and I saw the silhouette of a woman starting to cross the crosswalk. I figured, no big deal, she's way over there, I'm over here, I'll just keep going and I'll be ten feet past the crosswalk by the time she gets to where I am. And then this little kid on a scooter zooms past her along the sidewalk, straight into me. I go down, he goes down, and the screaming starts. He has some blood on his cheek, luckily the mom is pretty cool and not screaming at me once she realizes he's ok. He was wearing a helmet. So was I. I'm hyperventilating pretty bad, my hand hurts like none other and my leg doesn't want to move. Some dude who saw it happen gets my bike out of the middle of the road and I kind of roll myself to a parked car, hoping other cars won't hit me. Soon I catch my breath enough to get out of the road and ask the mom if her kid is ok. He's maybe 4, 5 years old. I feel horrible, I should have stopped when I saw her enter the crosswalk, but how was I to know she had a kid zooming around on a scooter? It was a green light in my direction, but still, I just ran my bike into a five year-old kid. What sort of monster AM I?

So once we agree that nobody is hurt, and I've thought through the adrenaline to realize that my hand probably isn't broken and I can move my left leg, we part ways. A woman offers to drive me to a hospital but I figure I'm going to one anyway and they'll have ice packs there. But boy was that a guilt trip for the rest of that ride. Plus being unable to use my front brake made for a slow, painful, crawl to the hospital, close to tears any time I have to move my thumb. Its better now, I can hit the space bar. Hopefully I won't go crashing into little kids again any time soon...