Growing up around Boston my life would flash before my eyes my than I can remember, I’ve also had more broken bones than any pro cyclist but I’ve been doing this for 35 years.the one that I’ll never shake was five years ago.
while riding through a bizarrely set up intersection at a good clip and being more concerned with moving traffic somehow I failed to see the teenage girl stepping into the crosswalk. I failed to notice this because I was wondering why the police cruiser on the opposite side of the road was stopped in the street (stopped for the girl in the crosswalk) sure enough I slammed into her she also never me all I remember is seeing her , locking up the breaks ( to no avail) and her legs flying over me ( kinda three stooges like). Buy the time I could stop to figure out what had just happened and see if she was ok she ran off down a side street with the police chasing after her . Not knowing what to do now and shaking to bad to continue riding I preceded to walk, two blocks later the officer pulled up alongside me to gather my information. As it turned out she was busy texting when she walked out in front of me and that’s why she ran, refused to give him any info and didn’t want her parents to find out . The officer took my info Incase her parents wanted to file charges stating that he was a witness and that I had done nothing wrong and it was all on camera. As far as I could tell I had been totally in the wrong. I guess that’s a little more than a close call but that was the only time I got out of the saddle and walked the rest of my trip because I was so shaken up. Many lessons learned from that 30 seconds of my life.