Well it was a rough weekend. Friday morning I woke up with a sinus headache and the general onset of a headcold. Throughout the day I managed to load up on echinacea, zinc and some cold/vitamin drinks and managed to eliminate the general grogginess.
Saturday morning, up bright and early with a little drainage but feeling good. Off to the station to go to work. (It’s about a 10 minute bike ride from my apartment to the station I transfer at.) I usually take a thoroughfare that isn’t a side road, but is by no means a busy road. Today was no different. At 0830 in the morning on saturday, there are not so many people up in the part of tokyo I live… with that in mind, traffic is almost non-existent. I realized that I am now not the only person to know this.
Coming down a small hill, I had a yellow light, on the verge of green. I normally slow down a tad bit in these cases just to make sure that there are no cyclers or people wanting to do the ole St. Louis stop or rush the red. Today, however, I decided it was early and no need to do it.
Once it hit green, I kicked the bike up a gear (to around 12 or 13 on the 21speed) and started pushing, I enjoyed the cool breeze against my freshly shaved face and the cawing of the ravens that were demanding blood… my blood.
As I approached the intersection, with a good 10 second green, a taxi appeared out of nowhere with no intention of stopping. As the roads are narrow, his farm truck turn, and ignorance of both the red light he was running and the approaching cycler were a indication of either his lack of coffee or over-abundance of stupidity.
Either way, I was almost out in the intersection. I had to decide where I would look better, splayed on the hood of his car, quickly followed by leaving bits of myself on the road, or dive and hope years of ukemi would provide useful.
As luck(?) would have it, I managed to get my bike (and myself) out of the way of the taxi and jump/dive off of it. I had a lot of momentum and since it’s a mountain/road bike hybrid, that momentum was unfortunately, distributed forward, out of my center of gravity.. I have no idea how I managed it, but I pulled of a full forward breakfall, sprung up immediately afterwords and looked at my bike. My bike had just hit the ground as I came up and as I looked to get the taxi’s license, he was already gone around a curve. At that point I noticed a warm feeling coming down my face and cheek. It seems I managed to cut myself, and not just simple road rash.. After doing some quick field dressing, I managed to get to my girlfriends house near the station to check my wounds in a more thorough manner. While I managed to get the bleeding stopped, the cut was pretty deep and about 4 inches in length.
So off to the hospital.. 9 stitches and 30$ later I was out of the hospital, with medicine. (Have to love the health care here..)
Going back to the area where it happened, I for the life of me cannot figure out what I cut myself on. I have a quarter size bruise near my wrist where I made initial contact with the ground. Other then that, I recall feeling no pain from a cut, and I definately didn’t bounce my head off the ground as I had no headache or pain..The only things I can think of is that I must have scraped my head on the curb or a rock (the cut is not linear, so I am thinking this is a high possibility along with some residual dirt that was in the cut.)
So, ukemi saves! perhaps….
nice. i once launched off my beemer into a forward roll as it was tipping over. i bounced back up to watch my motorcycle fall over, crushing my mirror and my turn signals. i was stopped on an inclined dirt road when my foot slipped and the bike started to tip downhill.