(no subject)
It's a bad weekend when someone tries to kill you. I'm just glad whoever it was failed.
On Saturday, which was a great weather day, I headed up to Ballard on my motorcycle to have lunch with Carl. Maybe I'll just have to stop making fun of his Traffic Safety Mamori now.
I headed home around 4 pm or so. I was following traffic and was noticing there was one car that was hanging near my blind spot to the right and behind me on the 99 Southbound for a few miles. I just kept that in the back of my mind to be careful. After a few minutes the driver pulls to the right of me and passes me, or so I thought at the time anyway. Just as his rear wheel passes my front wheel for no reason I was able to ascertain this driver decided to put his rear bumper where my front wheel was. At first I thought the car was drifting lanes, no turn signal was on, but I soon realized I was going to be pushed into the wall right in front of the Battery Street tunnel. I full on braked to keep my front wheel from being hit.
Next few scenes that I still remember anyway are watching this blue car heading into the tunnel in my lane. I then realized my bike is not quite perpendicular to the ground, and my front brakes were locked. Soon after I was watching some stones on the ground from really up way too close and thinking "damn, I wish Seattle had better roads", and finally I'm looking 180 degrees backwards at an SUV that was thankfully slowing to a stop and not going to hit me.
The driver of the SUV called 911 and made sure I was ok. A couple other motorcycle riders also came back to check me out and see if I needed anything. Slowly I got my wits back together to see if my body was still working properly. The recommended activity is to sit down and wait for medics to check you out but for some reason after an accident and sitting on a highway that part is pretty hard to remember. I pulled my helmet off. I didn't hit my head which was good. I was thrown fairly cleanly off the front of the bike when I lost it and came down on shoulders and knees. My jacket saved my top but the lack of riding pants was pretty dumb. Knees hurt. I tried to get up and succeeded for a bit but then a wave of dizzyness hit me. This happens to me fairly commonly when I excercise too hard or am in a really hot closed environment, so I'm not unused to it and sat back down. The others there said I looked pretty pale. The medics then got there and checked me out. The only thing of some concern to them was low blood pressure and heart rate, but that's fairly normal for me which I told them.
I single handedly (or double handedly if you count the car that tried to kill me) closed the Battery Street Tunnel for a bit. The police and paramedics got my bike out of the way to a hotel that was nearby and then helped me over there. The SUV driver talked to the police and told him what he saw and that I was not at fault. The police officer told me there isn't much that can be done which wasn't a surprise. I normally don't stare at license plates and this one would have only been in front of me for a brief moment anyway. All in all I just knew how lucky I was. I refused medic transport to a hospital and the traffic was cleared up.
From the hotel parking lot, I first tried to call my friend Cesar whose bike I was riding. We had actually switched bikes a while ago since I like his FZ6 and he likes my R6. Unfortunately he was too far to do anything that day. I called another friend from work who also rides motorcycles still hoping to get a ride home and take care of the bike at the same time. That failed too when I didn't get an answer right away. I then called Dan and got a ride home with him. I told the hotel I might be leaving the bike there for a bit and left my contact info. Luckily they were fine with it. Dan dropped me off and got me some bandages, so I could clean up my very scraped up knees. I don't keep much first aid stuff at home which is bad. Afterwards, Dan, Beth, and I got some dinner at BJs and watched Villanova lose.
Sunday morning, I drove Cesar to the hotel to pick up the bike. The damage was fairly minimal to the bike itself. My guess is that I was going 50 mph on the 99 and managed to brake to about 20-30 before being thrown off of it. It landed on the right side, bending the turn signal and rear brake lever as well as some plastics, but it was mechanically in good shape. He rode it back to my place and stored it. I took it easy for a few hours playing some Valkyria Chronicles and watching F1. I then decided to call the medical center I have a doctor at to see if I could come in at 8am Monday to get my knees taken a look at. The nurse on the phone was very surprised and panicked that I hadn't been to an emergency room to get checked out after the accident. I decided to go up to Renton Medical Center emergency room then because it was probably the right thing to get checked out again, and I could get my knees which I was much more worried about properly cleaned and bandaged. I was very pleasantly surprised at how quick and efficient the hospital was. I really expected to be sitting around for hours but total wait time besides filling out forms was probably ten minutes total. I got checked out, clean bill of health, and got my scrapes taken care of and advice on what to do to get them to heal best. Then I went to D-Jung for dinner because I couldn't stand sitting around my house any longer not doing anything.
Today, I just went to work like every day. I can't quite walk normally since my knees were bandaged and moving my knees around hurt a bit. It wasn't a big deal though, and I got some stuff done. I have just spent a long time thinking on what happened and what I could learn from it. It always just keeps coming back to not being able to predict someone passing me and cutting off my wheel at the same time. I was probably in this person's blind spot at the time but if I'm being passed what else could I have done differently. It was just very strange. I'm just glad that most people are decent, the guy behind me helped me out (I got his business card and need to thank him), and that I'm fairly lucky. If I had been wearing my riding pants, I would be even better off now and should know better. You never know what kind of crazy drivers are out there.
On Saturday, which was a great weather day, I headed up to Ballard on my motorcycle to have lunch with Carl. Maybe I'll just have to stop making fun of his Traffic Safety Mamori now.
I headed home around 4 pm or so. I was following traffic and was noticing there was one car that was hanging near my blind spot to the right and behind me on the 99 Southbound for a few miles. I just kept that in the back of my mind to be careful. After a few minutes the driver pulls to the right of me and passes me, or so I thought at the time anyway. Just as his rear wheel passes my front wheel for no reason I was able to ascertain this driver decided to put his rear bumper where my front wheel was. At first I thought the car was drifting lanes, no turn signal was on, but I soon realized I was going to be pushed into the wall right in front of the Battery Street tunnel. I full on braked to keep my front wheel from being hit.
Next few scenes that I still remember anyway are watching this blue car heading into the tunnel in my lane. I then realized my bike is not quite perpendicular to the ground, and my front brakes were locked. Soon after I was watching some stones on the ground from really up way too close and thinking "damn, I wish Seattle had better roads", and finally I'm looking 180 degrees backwards at an SUV that was thankfully slowing to a stop and not going to hit me.
The driver of the SUV called 911 and made sure I was ok. A couple other motorcycle riders also came back to check me out and see if I needed anything. Slowly I got my wits back together to see if my body was still working properly. The recommended activity is to sit down and wait for medics to check you out but for some reason after an accident and sitting on a highway that part is pretty hard to remember. I pulled my helmet off. I didn't hit my head which was good. I was thrown fairly cleanly off the front of the bike when I lost it and came down on shoulders and knees. My jacket saved my top but the lack of riding pants was pretty dumb. Knees hurt. I tried to get up and succeeded for a bit but then a wave of dizzyness hit me. This happens to me fairly commonly when I excercise too hard or am in a really hot closed environment, so I'm not unused to it and sat back down. The others there said I looked pretty pale. The medics then got there and checked me out. The only thing of some concern to them was low blood pressure and heart rate, but that's fairly normal for me which I told them.
I single handedly (or double handedly if you count the car that tried to kill me) closed the Battery Street Tunnel for a bit. The police and paramedics got my bike out of the way to a hotel that was nearby and then helped me over there. The SUV driver talked to the police and told him what he saw and that I was not at fault. The police officer told me there isn't much that can be done which wasn't a surprise. I normally don't stare at license plates and this one would have only been in front of me for a brief moment anyway. All in all I just knew how lucky I was. I refused medic transport to a hospital and the traffic was cleared up.
From the hotel parking lot, I first tried to call my friend Cesar whose bike I was riding. We had actually switched bikes a while ago since I like his FZ6 and he likes my R6. Unfortunately he was too far to do anything that day. I called another friend from work who also rides motorcycles still hoping to get a ride home and take care of the bike at the same time. That failed too when I didn't get an answer right away. I then called Dan and got a ride home with him. I told the hotel I might be leaving the bike there for a bit and left my contact info. Luckily they were fine with it. Dan dropped me off and got me some bandages, so I could clean up my very scraped up knees. I don't keep much first aid stuff at home which is bad. Afterwards, Dan, Beth, and I got some dinner at BJs and watched Villanova lose.
Sunday morning, I drove Cesar to the hotel to pick up the bike. The damage was fairly minimal to the bike itself. My guess is that I was going 50 mph on the 99 and managed to brake to about 20-30 before being thrown off of it. It landed on the right side, bending the turn signal and rear brake lever as well as some plastics, but it was mechanically in good shape. He rode it back to my place and stored it. I took it easy for a few hours playing some Valkyria Chronicles and watching F1. I then decided to call the medical center I have a doctor at to see if I could come in at 8am Monday to get my knees taken a look at. The nurse on the phone was very surprised and panicked that I hadn't been to an emergency room to get checked out after the accident. I decided to go up to Renton Medical Center emergency room then because it was probably the right thing to get checked out again, and I could get my knees which I was much more worried about properly cleaned and bandaged. I was very pleasantly surprised at how quick and efficient the hospital was. I really expected to be sitting around for hours but total wait time besides filling out forms was probably ten minutes total. I got checked out, clean bill of health, and got my scrapes taken care of and advice on what to do to get them to heal best. Then I went to D-Jung for dinner because I couldn't stand sitting around my house any longer not doing anything.
Today, I just went to work like every day. I can't quite walk normally since my knees were bandaged and moving my knees around hurt a bit. It wasn't a big deal though, and I got some stuff done. I have just spent a long time thinking on what happened and what I could learn from it. It always just keeps coming back to not being able to predict someone passing me and cutting off my wheel at the same time. I was probably in this person's blind spot at the time but if I'm being passed what else could I have done differently. It was just very strange. I'm just glad that most people are decent, the guy behind me helped me out (I got his business card and need to thank him), and that I'm fairly lucky. If I had been wearing my riding pants, I would be even better off now and should know better. You never know what kind of crazy drivers are out there.