i have experienced two accidents in the last week, both of which, involve bikes.
the first is more strange than anything. it occurred 1 week ago when i was running. for a little background information, i must say i ride my bike about 90% more than i run. i like to go for 20-30 mile rides a couple times a week. most of these rides are along the lincoln bike trails. when i ride, my two biggest fears are 1) getting hit by a car. (this can generally be avoided if im paying attention. and its not to worrisome) and 2) hitting a person on the bike trail. i have never hit a person while riding my bike, but i came very close last year. to avoid it i ended up crashing going about 20 mph and it was a bad deal. but thats a story for another day.
so i was running the other night on one of my rare running episodes. i was on about mile 2 and it was dusk. i was keeping to the right side of the paved trail and enjoying the brisk air. oh, and to give a little background, for those of you not up-to-date on the lincoln bike trail scene...there have been some nasty things happening on the trails. there have been kids putting lines across the trail so when one is riding, they hit these lines and go sailing. then....there was a stabbing. 5am. a male jogger stabbed in the back. not the most pleasant thing to think of when running at dusk. and thats what i was doing.
ok. back to the story. so im running and out of the darkness appears a bike rider. i see him about 100 yards away and i assumed he saw me about the same time i saw him. at the 100 yard mark, he was on the other side of the trail. as i watched him get closer, he slowly started to veer towards me. the whole thing, remind you happened in about 5 seconds. he was veering into my lane. and his veer, well, it was directly towards me. i dont know if anyone has ever experienced this feeling, but let me tell you, its very strange. at about 2 seconds before out paths crossed, the thought occurred to me that this guy was aiming for me. he wanted to attack. a suicide mission or something. him and his bike kept veering directly towards me. it was not a drunken veer. it was an intentional bee-line to hit me. i moved over. he kept coming. i moved over more, to the very edge of the trail. he kept coming over.
so at this point, the thought was already in my mind that this guy was trying to hit me. since im well-trained in...lets call it "kung-fu" for the sake of the story, i knew that i should not keep veering off to my right. a skilled bike rider, aiming to hit someone could simply veer with me and still hit me. so i kept my course, running at the very fringe of the paved trail. i running at him, he riding at me. i developed a plan in the 0.5 seconds i had at this point. my plan was to jump out of the way of him at the last minute to avoid his attack. and i thought that if perhaps if he was just bluffing, he would veer back away from me. the milliseconds counted down and he was not bluffing.
neither was i. so it happened that just as he was about to crash into me at great speeds, i jumped to the right and grabbed his chest and threw him to the ground. those of you that know me close, know that i have a temper and i was pissed. this guy was trying to attack me. the grab came kind of as an instinct. in the milliseconds that followed, that felt like eternity, i threw him to the ground, bike and all, and kept running, prepared for a foot chase. but just as he crashed, his surprise overtook him. "oh!" he yelled, tumbling in the grass. "im so sorry"
dang. i was wrong. I was sorry. this poor dude maybe really wasent trying to kill me. he kept apologizing and i felt terrible. i ran back to him and kept asking him if he was ok. "yeah, im fine" he kept saying and kept apologizing, but i was apologizing too. regret full force.
in the end i kept running. he, presumably rode off in the night.
so weird. has to be the weirdest thing thats ever happened to me involving a bike and a runner.
ok. incident two, and this one is a million times worse:
today, i was driving north on 27th st, past cornhusker and was in the right lane to turn into walmart. suddenly about 8 firetrucks and ambulances came screaming behind me. i pulled up on the grass and they went by and stopped at the intersection in front of me. they all took up the whole intersection and fireman and paramedics came running out of their vehicles. "holy crap" i thought. i was about a minute late of a bad accident. i drove my truck through the grass and parked in front of blockbuster and my roomate and i went up to see what happened. there were people all around.
then i saw one of the worse sights ive ever seen in my life. in the middle of the road were two little bmx bikes twisted like paper clips. my heart sank so low that i about broke into tears. one little boy was sitting on the curb with fireman all around him. he was about 9 and his body weighed probably 40 pounds. but behind him was a black ford explorer with 8 fireman all laying on their stomachs, heads and hands reaching for the other boy who was trapped under the suv.
i cannot begin to tell you the emotion and rage and sorrow and hope i had. seeing right there in front of me a small child stuck under a car. the boy and suv were about 20 feet from the bikes, and to think that he was drug...
i wanted to run over and help but there were already a ton of trained professionals already trying to free him. everyone around was speechless.
im about to cry just thinking about this. it took them about 5 minutes to get him out. when they did they carefully moved his body on to a stretcher and started bracing all sorts of things. i couldent really tell if he was moving or not, there were a lot of fireman all around him working like bees. i didnt know what else to do. i didnt have any words. so my roomate and i just walked away, full or sorrow. i have yet to read about it in the paper but my prayers are with that little man tonight.
life is so strange and fragile. meanwhile we all go 100mph. and little kids just ride their bikes.
i dont know what to think.
