Bike + Open Sandals + Road = Pain

I had an interesting encounter with the road today on my way to work. First of all, it was an encounter with a funeral procession where the cars had a police escort, stopping traffic at the traffic lights. Not familiar with this, I proceeded to cross the road when the lights were in my favour. It was when I was about half-way across the road that I noticed the cars were still going. I panicked and slammed on the brakes. The car that was about to hit me then stopped and let me through. It was only at this point that I saw the wee "funeral" sign attached to the hood/bonnet of the car. It seems that in Canada funeral processions (or corteges as we would say) can carry on through red lights if they have a police escort. Good to know if you're a cyclist.

So, I survived that near miss with only a minor telling off from the cop. He said something over the speaker like "Watch or you'll get taken out!" Fine, well anyway, I carried on and then came to the real problem. I was on the bridge over Highway 27, looking for a break in traffic so I could nip off the sidewalk (pavement) onto the road. I usually fly down the hill and then turn onto Attwell with a bit of "gravitational assistance" or "momentum" - both work. Due to the delay caused by the funeral procession (which had since merged onto Highway 27 North) there were a lot of cars on the brige. More, in fact than usual.

I saw a gap in the traffic and decided that I would go for it. I was aware, though, that I would need to get up to speed quite quickly because there was another car coming. I bumped off the curb and started peddaling for Scotland. Sadly, my right foot slipped off the back of the pedal, my posterior slipped off the seat so I was sitting on the frame and my foot ended up dragging along the road hairy side down.

I quickly got off the road and assessed myself. First off, I noticed that the seat had twisted round to one side by as much as 60 degress, resulting in the rear mudguard protruding from the other side at an equally outrageous angle. More importantly, though, I had lost part of the toe nail on the big toe of my right foot. There was also a small scrape on the knuckle of the 2nd toe. My sandal, too, had suffered with a bit of a shaving off the edge.

Suffice to say I'm fine. However, I am a bit "gun shy" and might not be quite as eager on the road again. It a hard one to call because you're not meant to be on the sidewalk but drivers don't exactly embrace you on the road. Come to think of it, I don't think I'd want to be embraced by someone in a car while I'm on a bike. The best I can do is to hog the whole lane so that cars don't try to squeeze past me while the other lane's occupied.