The Slate has something interesting to say about a recent survey of blogland. I shall now confess to being one of the 12 million anonymous Americans who writes for personal expression of experiences, with no aspirations toward publication or anything lofty like that. I'm not male, and I'm not a teen-ager.There.
In other news, I am on a freak-out train. I think many of my fellow triathletes and cyclists have been on this train.
An experienced cyclist was recently hit by a car here. I did not know her, but the story does resonate with me. Here's what I know.
She was an experienced time-trialist, well known in the cycling community. She'd been racing since 1983. She was on a route she knew well, it was mid-day, clear and dry. The story I heard is that she anticipated a light change and got hit by a car running a red light as she got into the intersection. I suspect she was wearing a helmet. She was young. She was married.
I get a vague sense of relief when I hear that a dead cyclist did a dumb thing, or they fell victim to a set of unknown factors. She did none of the things I secretly hope for when I hear about bicyclist vs car: she was not a stupid kid. She was not wearing black at night with no lights and no reflectors. She was not drunk. She was not hit by a drunk. She was not racing a train.
A stupid drunk kid, or a beloved wife -- each of us is equally entitled to our lives. We all come packaged in the same fragile bag of mostly water, and we all have friends, lovers, mothers, fathers.
Given the same set of circumstances, I might have done the same thing. Have you ever taken a risk that you thought would be OK? Living is a risk. To some people the kind of training that triathletes undertake is decidedly risky.
This brings me to the short version of today's message:
Life is short. Life is risk. I love you all.
6 comments:
Yesterday, someone told me that I'm very brave to bicycle commute daily up and down Market Street here in SF. I thought that was an interesting thing to say as I don't consider it brave at all. Maybe a bit reckless, considering the way I actually ride my bike on Market, but brave? Stories about dead cyclists remind me why some people consider riding your bike down the middle of the busiest street in a major city to be a foolhardy act. Oh well, there go I but for the grace of God, no? I mean, we can all shut ourselves in our homes and avoid interacting with the universe out of fear of encountering some mortal harm, only, statistically, more deadly accidents happen at home, so...
Now where did I put my point?
I admit to being a bit of a road hog but sometimes I feel that a cyclist deserves a few inches of road not covered in liter or rocks.
to bad about the cyclist. knowing how newspapers are, if it wasn't an SUV that hit her, it was the cyclists fault somehow. Shame.
Eeek! Not good and very bad to boot. People run red lights like psychopaths here in Utah so I expect to see that kind of thing all the time, but NM drivers are not so habitually insane. Maybe that's why it happened.
Sorry to hear this.
Believe it or not I've been hit by a car and by a bus, obviously survived both.
I don't want to die like that but I'm way more afraid of not living the life I'm given.
The guy that did the blog report forget to ask about narcissism. I confess to a healthy amount of that as one of the reasons I do it.
that said, I was informed of the cyclist's death that you reported on. It is intensely distressing that just one moment, one decision can end a life. So sad.
Life is short indeed. We care about you too.
Stay tuned...
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