Near Miss

Came closer than I ever have before to being hit by a car this morning. Or rather, it would have been me hitting the car--t-boning it in this case, as it pulled out in front of me. I saw it coming, just past Johnny G's street, the one by the school, when the car rolled through the stop sign and I knew his sight of me was obscured by the cars parked along the ever so slight hill I was riding down at that point. No problem, or so I thought, as I began to swerve to the right in order to go behind him. But then he saw me, panicked, hit the brakes, and just sat there in front of me--like a big steel moose frozen by the headlights. All I could muster was a loud, drawn out "F-U-C-K!" But fortunately my instincts were more articulate than my feeble vocabulary, and I was able to brake hard enough and avoid going down on the slick pavement as I veered even further around his back end. To give the guy credit, he did roll down his passenger window and yell "Sorry!" as I passed by the other side. And to my credit, I gave him a little wave--admittedly an ambiguous, half-assed wave with a the kind of slight flick of the wrist that could easily have led to interpreting the whole thing as a curt dismissal--but nonetheless a wave with all five fingers and not the one I had cocked and ready to go. Shit, that was scary. My heart's still thumping a little harder and faster than normal. But I live to ride another day.

Hit the gym for the first time this week. Hope to get there 2 or 3 times a week for mostly leg-work. Don't know what the policy is for use of CMU's humble weight room, but if anyone wants to join me around 4pm Monday or Wednesday, that would be great.

In other firsts: I donned tights for the first time this morning. This cold, rainy weather really sucks. Hopefully it won't wipe out the Tinker ride this weekend.