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cycling in Tokyo

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Tokyo is by the safest city I've ever cycled in. And yet, I was in a cycling collision this week.

It happened on Wednesday when I was on my way to my business partner's place (for a teleconference, amusingly). Approaching one of the busy Yamanote train stations, I passed a fellow who was dawdling along on the shoulder of the street. At the last possible second, he decided to swing wildly across the street. We collided.

I'd hit my brakes but it was just too sudden. My front fork ploughed into his derailleur and I slid forward jamming my crotch on the pillar where it connects with the handle bars. I uttered a few choice words at logarithmically-increasing volume while my new friend gupped at me and blithered. I should look up how to say "Just what I f'n needed!" in Japanese.

Tonight as I was executing a slow circle on the sidewalk, on of my front spokes snapped. I've never seen that happen before, and suppose I have to attribute it to the collision. Going to be some time before I can get that fixed. Ah, well.

Every year in this city I seem to have a collision. The first two were with delivery vehicles, this one a bike. Last year's was by far the worst, causing me quite a bit of pain and making me miss a day's work. This was comparatively trivial. In fact, I've heard horror stories about what happens when you collide with a pedestrian in this town: instantly lose hours to interviews with the police etc.

If you must collide with someone while cycling, let it be another cyclist.