“Oh, sh*t!” There was a loud scream from my right. A blink later, that same screamer was talking to me, concerned probably more for himself getting into trouble than my health, “Sir, are you alright?” I found myself half sitting on the ground, hands supporting the upper body. I could feel the gravel under my butts. As I struggled to get up, I got upset.
“Guy! This is not OK. Why were you riding on the sidewalk?” I yelled at him. He apologized profusely and I waved him away. My brain re-generated the memory as I walked toward the restaurant for my dinner date.
The bus stopped at its usual place and I got off as I have done everyday for years. There is a tree on the curb about three feet from the bus door right in front of me. Everyone crowded at the front door to get on the bus. There was no one at this back exit door. This bike rider must have been trailing the bus. When it stopped, he made a strategic decision to pass from the right. The left side has a risk of a blind spot right in front of the bus and had more car traffic, given this is the peak hour. He must had seen that gap between the bus and tree as considered it a short-cut lane and went for it. He did not know that the back door was just opening and a passenger, me, was about to get off. Most importantly, he did not consider that he would have been on that passenger’s blind side.
What happened next was governed by the laws of cosmos probability: collections of atoms came to the same location and the same time. Some of those atoms in me got re-arranged. That was not a pleasant process. I figured it will take several days for the swollen bump to go away and probably a couple of weeks for the bruises to disappear.
I could have said the incident changed my perspective of life, as if it was a trauma. It did not and was not. Kid told me that this kind of things, a pedestrian colliding with a bicycle, happen a lot. I get that accidents happen and, most of the time, there is nothing anyone could have done. But this is not one of them. This was an error in judgment: the biker should not have passed from the right sidewalk. He should not have chosen a lane with no room to maneuver. And he should have slowed down. Yes, I should have glanced my blindside before I got off.
I took two days off from my work-out routine. There was just a bit sore here and there two days later. In three weeks, the left wrist was tender and the bump on the right calf won’t go away. I massaged the calf while I watch TV. I was lucky, comparatively speaking. So no complaints and life goes on.