When you ride downtown – especially at the bitchin’ hour of 6PM – in traffic – and you are just a so so rider with not so great judgement – stay away from other cyclists, please.

I’m unsure how upset I should’ve been when another cyclist came up to my right side while I was coming to a stop at Columbus on Monroe. There was probably less than a foot wide of room next to me and a car turnning right – and another cyclist thought they could squeeze in. I hadn’t seen them until they hit me which caused me to unclip as I was coming to a psuedo track stand stop which then made my foot fly forward and jam into my front wheel which was already perpindicular to my cranks. My foot kicked my wheel and thankfully I was able to catch myself quickly – the other cyclist then tipped over from the impact into me and hit the car to his right. The driver was pretty pissed, as was I for a few seconds and I started with the ‘Doood! What are you thinking??!!’ and I hadn’t noticed what happened to my wheel quite yet. The driver started yelling at the guy on a pretty snazzy commuter bike that he hit his car and the yelling ensued. I quickly threw my quick – “You should stop by Sprockets to pay for my wheel if its damaged sir….” but the schmo was getting chewed out and had plenty on his hands at this point.

Now – I quickly sized up the situation, and I figured that oh well, I can’t do anything about it now right when the light is going to change and I need to get off the road to assess the spoke damage from my foot getting inserted in the wheel, and the ensuing argument didn’t seem to relent so I let them be as I rolled off to the corner. Upon inspection, yep, I bent two spokes and my wheel had a pretty killer wobble going on. I released the front brake (damn Justin that was some tight cable!!! my index finger is killing me today!) and I cruised up north to the shop slowly with the wobble wheel. Every time I hit a bump or a bad patch – I stared at my wheel thinking it was going to just explode on me….thankfully it held up great.

I pulled into Sprockets and Mr. Cormick gave me the look of ‘WTF did you do to my wheel?’ – he built them so he babies them when he services them – he did a quick check and thankfully all it was was severely out of true due to bent spokes – nothing that he couldn’t fix quickly. Its true blue now, great wheel to take a lickin’ from my foot.

Today, I felt a bit guilty leaving the other cyclist behind – but – why would anyone misjudge squeezing inbetween cars to get to the front? That’s not a smart move, especially had traffic been moving, it could’ve been bad for him or me. Whateva – I guess I feel more concerned that the bloke didn’t get into too much war with the driver……there were plenty of people and traffic and hopefully all he got was tough yelling, nothing I could say would’ve dissuaded either attitude at that point in time and with the hobbled wheel after a long day of work – I just wanted to get home.

It was one of ‘those’ days.

Nice wheels Mr. Cormick – I’ll put my foot down and not out into the wheel next time.