The first time I got hit by a taxi was in Chicago in 2004. Then, everything seemed to move in slow motion as I rolled up and over the car and was thrown into the intersection. A stretch of bullet time before finding myself lying on the pavement adjacent to my bike with people yelling and calling 911 on their cell phones.
This time the impact was more like a three thousand pound exclamation point—a physical interjection that came screaming out of the intersection to my left as the taxi ran the red after missing his left turn signal. I had looked, verified it was clear to go, and accelerated hard because it felt good to do so. I got about one hundred feet and then boom. Seemingly in one instantaneous move I was struck and left awkwardly rolling around on the pavement trying to recover my breath, followed in turn by the labored move to a standing position. The taxi driver and a few other individuals stood there and looked at me, expressionless. They did nothing, said nothing. I looked at the shattered windshield (impressed), inspected my crushed helmet (relieved), and picked some flecks of safety glass out of my left forearm and right knee. My bike was thirty feet away and looked the way a dead starling looks on the sidewalk after flying full speed into the side of an office building.
The problem with having an accident on a Friday night and being taken to a public hospital in Korea is that there are no doctors there during the weekend. In practical terms, what that means is that you can’t leave until Monday, at least not if you want to be able to get your insurance claim. For about 72 hours I was in hospital limbo. Lots of reading, lots of Nintendo DS, lots of staring at the ceiling, and lots of wishing I were with my girlfriend instead of waiting for Monday to arrive at record slow speed. It gave me plenty of time to think about riding, to think about what came next, and to consider the reality of not being able to ride for an undetermined period of time.
The last time I saw my bike it was in the road while I was being loaded into the ambulance. I suppose the police still have it in Korea, but I was never able to get it back. I got a settlement for the accident, but that went to the new camera I needed for working and a new bike was put on hold. It remains on hold.
For about eight years now, riding has been such an immense part of my life that my friends have practically come to view a bicycle as a part of my anatomy. It’s an activity that’s as much a part of any given day for me as eating meals, feeling groggy when I wake up in the morning, or sneezing twice after breakfast. The first time my bike got totaled six years ago, I had my mountain bike as backup. I threw some slicks on it and went gonzo around Chicago, jumping off things and trying to wheelie (still can’t do it) until I built up a new fixed gear. This time, however, I had no backup. Until cash flow is sufficient to float a new build, I am without a bike.
I am a cyclist without a cycle, whose feet miss the pedals, whose scars miss the speed that led to impact and abrasion, whose brain stem misses the helmet that saved it. I am a cyclist that doesn’t ride. Every day I have the urge to get on two wheels and just go somewhere. Every day I have to remind myself that my bike no longer exists.
I miss having a bike, but I also miss that particular bike. It started as a keirin frame that a friend in Japan found and shipped to me. I initially built it up with the parts that I had on hand, and over the course of four years ended up changing just about everything except the frame itself. It was precisely as I wanted it. For the last year that I had it, it was basically perfect in the sense that the upgrade lust, the striving for tweaking had evaporated entirely. I didn’t want to change it, I only wanted to ride it as hard as I could, to use it as a vehicle to go places and to push myself into unexplored territories of physical exertion. It was a tool of personal empowerment, a device for explorations in space and time.
I presently explore space and time on foot. I’ve worn out two sets of sneakers already.
When the presence of riding suddenly becomes an absence, it throws one off. It was bewildering at first. I began taking the bus across town, and it felt like I was cheating. Not cheating in the sense of trying to gain special advantage in a dishonest manner, but cheating as in I felt I was cheating on the pursuit of cycling. It was a matter of infidelity. It felt like I was betraying it by way of an illicit affair with public transit. That feeling has since passed and patience has set in. I will return to riding, I know, but for now I just need to wait. That’s the tricky part.
When all you want to do is ride, waiting sucks.
Check out www.aleatorist.net