The Christmas Tree Incident

12/11/01

Fresh off my excitement at having met the guy who was seen in the end credits of "Welcome Back, Kotter," I was happily pedaling from the Brooklyn Bridge towards my home in Park Slope. I was on a quiet and fairly narrow street, and it was dark. I was riding beside the parked cars on the left side of the street.

All of a sudden, this couple (him holding a XMas tree) walks in front of me from behind a parked van. They were crossing the street and hadn't bothered to look in the direction of traffic, plus the guy's view was blocked by the tree. I screamed something and then the woman shrieked and somehow the guy sped up (this happened in under half a second) and amazingly, no one was hurt. On impulse, I jumped off my speeding Coker and prepared to land awkwardly, but I landed standing (not sure how that happened, since I was going about 14mph) and the Coker fell to the side in front of me. Luckily there were no cars on the road.

I uttered a series of epithets directed at said couple and then, when the guy acted a tad indignant, I asked him what I'd done wrong, pointing out that they were crossing in the middle of the block against the light (which was 100yds ahead) and hadn't bothered to look. They had nothing to say. I then proceded to chew them out some more (the surgeons who reattached their rear ends called the operation a complete success) before checking that Roger (the Coker) was fine. To my surprise, it was, so after a few more sarky words, I continued home.

I write this to remind readers that it's always good to plan ahead for potential disasters. I have often said how, if a person were to put me in a dangerous position by not paying attention while crossing a bike path or while walking an unleashed dog, I would never swerve to avoid the person IF that swerve could cause me to injure myself or an innocent bystander. (I do swerve if I know it's safe). In this case, I had no way of stopping fast enough to avoid the woman and didn't want to swerve into the parked cars or further into the middle of the street, so I sort of jumped off the Coker with my arms extended and with both feet off the pedals. I was prepared to use one of the offenders to cushion my fall, and tho that would have had ugly consequences for the pillow, I feel it would have been the right thing to do. I think that if I hadn't thought about this sort of situation ahead of time, I might have done something dangerous like veering into the parked cars.

When someone stupidly causes an accident that's going to hurt one of you, the only sensible thing seems to be to look after yourself first.

Until pedestrians come with air bags, this is probably the best course of action. Any ideas?