Guess what day today is?

Yep, today’s the day my corpse has been dead long enough to drink again. No party this year, Mrs. the Poet is still in the rehab center trying to get strong enough to get out of bed and use the toilet by herself. I have some sparking white grape juice leftover from New Year’s that I can pour out a toast from, but basically I’m by myself this evening. Not what I wanted by a long shot, but you pretty much have to take what’s there in my income bracket.

Appropriate song lyrics are appropriate:
When I was young
I never needed anyone
And making love was just for fun
Those days are gone
Living alone
I think of all the friends I’ve known
But when I dial the telephone
Nobody’s home
All by myself
Don’t wanna be
All by myself
Anymore
Hard to be sure
Sometimes I feel so insecure
And loves so distant and obscure
Remains the cure
All by myself
Don’t wanna be
All by myself
Anymore
All by myself
Don’t wanna live
All by myself
Anymore
When I was young
I never needed anyone
And making love was just for fun
Those days are gone
All by myself
Don’t wanna be
All by myself
Anymore
All by myself
Don’t wanna live
Don’t wanna live
By myself, by myself
Anymore
By myself
Anymore
All by myself
Don’t wanna live
I never, never, never
Needed anyone
Source: Musixmatch

The post with the lyrics credited Celine Dion but the search credits Eric Carman (no not the fat kid in South Park). Which brings up the question was Cartman the character named for Carman the songwriter or is that just a coincidence? Just Googled it and Cartman was named for and patterned after a friend of the creators.

Oh, well. I guess I’ll go order something for dinner and have a whole half-gallon of ice cream for a pity dessert. I miss having Mrs. the Poet around. She’s not perfect, but at least she was someone to share moments with.

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This is hard to write

This post is hard to write every year, but this year I’m starting early, like Friday early before the Tuesday anniversary of my death. Yeah this is why I’ve been radio silent over the weekend and more.

I have previously posted a page about what I could dredge from my damaged brain, so I really don’t have much to add to that story. Over the years I have also recounted the emotions of the event, not just the facts and timeline. But even after 20 years it’s still like an open wound emotionally. I mean there has been some healing going on, there has to be otherwise I couldn’t function in society. If I had remained like I was the first month after the wreck, I would be dead. That’s no joke. I was almost catatonic that first couple of months, partly from the emotional damage, and partly because I was dealing with a broken body. Not just a little broken, barely-together broken and missed some broken bones fixed. Not that I blame anyone, a lot of my brokenness was harder than F to find. Like they knew about the fibula, but the tibia had reduced the fracture while I was flipping and flopping like a rag doll so hard that swelling around the optic nerves made me temp blind, as in who turned out the lights blind. And to give an idea of how messed up emotionally I was I just thought the lights were out so I could sleep, not that I was blind. But anyway the forces on my leg from tumbling on all three axis lined it up good enough that I only have a small-but-still-painful bone scar on my tibia.

I still have a problem with bending and turning, not this bad, but close. I have to make written plans for getting off the floor when I look under the bed for lost character sheets because I’m old and things don’t work like they used to. Part of that is from the wreck.

Another thing I have is flinching when a car comes from behind while I’m walking. Since it has been 20 years after the wreck I’m assuming that is pretty much a permanent thing now, and going to happen every time now. The really bad thing about that is sometimes I flinch so hard I hurt myself from the sudden jerk. The old muscles just aren’t what they used to be.

On days like this I spend a lot of time dwelling on mortality, mine and the people around me. Deep down I know I will reach my “sell by date” and expire. But my experiences tell me I’m going to suffer a lot before I get there. And that’s what really scares me, suffering for no good reason.

Beer was drunk, brownies and ice cream were eaten, and my survival was celebrated

And Death was invited to take a hike. The headline should read (A) beer was drunk, as in I had a 12 oz. bottle of Shiner and then switched to generic Mt. Dew (Mountain Breeze citrus flavored soda with other natural flavors is the name on the label).

I also took a long walk to pay my phone bill and deposit a check in the bank and get a slight heat injury because the index spiked to 114° while I was out. I have things that have to be done at home for the next two days, then on Thursday I’m planning on getting a haircut and buying stamps. I can’t track the package, but the order with the steering box has been shipped and the money removed from my account. I have about $180 left now for various things like getting a drink or a meal while I’m out away from the house, or buying stuff online again. Edit to add, as I was composing the post package tracking became available and my package is in Omaha as of last update.

I have a solution to the steering shaft conundrum I was fighting, both the problem of snaking the shaft around the radiator and the problem of snaking the shaft around/over the alternator on the engine. Basically I’m going to use the steering box as one of the supports for the steering shaft by using a solid steering coupler and welding a stub shaft long enough to get past the radiator before switching to the cheaper less expensive DD style U-Joints. Now obviously I don’t want to “cheap out” on something like steering components that might cause me to die if they fail at the wrong time, but I also don’t have a very large budget for this. Also a major problem with the welded joints is when you’re done you basically have a non-repairable assembly, and any intermediate bearings have to be left on the shafts. Now for a strictly street car that gets limited use this could work, until the car hits a curb or something and damages the steering linkages.

Also the changes I have had to make to the driver’s side of the frame are adding weight in a place I don’t want to add weight, driver’s side front of the car. I had to add 3 tubes to the frame and front bulkhead just to have some way to physically mount the box to the car, but one of those tubes will also serve as a mount for the J-Bar that locates the front axle laterally, so partial win, maybe? Anyway the weight is right in front of and under the front axle on the left side which means something else will have to go passenger side rear axle to balance, and the total moment of the car will increase which is bad, high total moments make the car change direction less quick and the whole raison d’être for the car requires rapid changes in direction. And yes I had to copy-paste the French translation because my keyboard doesn’t support diacriticals or reverse accents.

Anywho, the design criteria requires the lowest possible total moment, also called the polar moment of inertia. This allows the car to respond to inputs for rapid changes in direction, like in slaloms. That’s why I have been doing things like putting heavy things in the middle of the wheelbase as much as possible, and also putting things close to the rear axle which is the pivot point for vehicles that steer from the front wheels until traction is broken. In cars that steer with the front wheels the front wheels push the front end sideways around the rear axle so the less weight up front the better for changing direction. This is another reason why rear mid-engine cars are preferred in classes where engine placement is free. In the class I’m building for the back of the engine has to be in the same general vicinity as the make and model the car is based on. In this case the “based on” is a 1923 model T Ford, so ahead of the firewall behind the front axle and the body can be moved back until it hits the rear axle and stay within class rules for Goodguys, SCCA doesn’t care as long as legs and lower torso don’t hang out of the body and I sit someplace behind the front axle and in front of the rear axle. And the design changes are two tubes added to the front bulkhead on the left side to support a tube running from the front bulkhead to the left side front bottom frame rail, to provide a place to mount the radiator and the steering box and secondarily provide a place to hang the frame end of the front J-Bar.

And that looks like a decent place to stop the rambling that has developed for some reason.

Tonight I will celebrate with brownies, ice cream, and Shiner

After a meal of chicken patty sandwiches, sweet potatoes, and some other vegetable we will celebrate [Monty Python] I’m not dead yet [/Monty Python] for nineteen years. I still have three bottles of Shiner Bock left from the last 12 pack we got in July I think(?) so I will have plenty for the party. Actually one will probably be enough, I’m not big on drinking. That will leave two more for celebrating my grandson’s and my birthdays this month, his is tomorrow, mine is the 22nd.

That reminds me I still haven’t made my birthday list of things I want. Well it isn’t a very long list, and some of the things won’t be ready in time for my birthday, but will be done in time for Solstice/Yule/Christmas.

1. World peace and an end to the pandemic.
1a. Trump’s political ass on a platter. The platter can be non-physical, you don’t actually have to put anything on a physical platter.

2. An LS or LT engine and matching automatic transmission and all the supporting electronics, and any programmer needed for tuning to run in a sub-ton mass car. Now I have been contemplating building a super-long runner intake manifold to get a super-wide powerband for an LS engine, but don’t let that color your decision if you have a screaming deal on an LT engine.
2a. If you stumble on a great deal on a Pentastar V6 and a manual transmission, the combined lower mass and shorter engine length would allow enough footroom for three pedals so I could use it in the Sprint-T. Basically the engine is short enough that if I install it with the front of the engine in the same place as the front of an SBC or LS engine most of the bellhousing would be in front of the firewall of the T-Bucket body and there would be plenty of room between the transmission and the inside of the body before offsetting the engine for balance to stuff in 3 pedals.

3. A rear axle with disk brakes in either a 5X4 1/2 or 5X4 3/4 bolt circle. There are several Ford axles in junkyards that would fit and also be strong enough to hold up to racing with any of the stock LS or LT engines. Now what I really want is a Winters V8 magnesium center and aluminum axle tubes with the 5X4 3/4 bolt pattern aluminum GN hubs in 60″ hub to hub and 3½” right offset so I could use the brake floaters and the brake calipers to decouple braking forces from the axle.

4. Buc-Ee’s Dark chocolate covered Beaver Nuggets Or you can save a bunch of money by stopping at a local to you Buc-Ee’s and spend like a third of the amount, plus shipping. The only reason I’m even putting these on the list is they are just outside of where I can get to by transit and it’s so annoying to almost be within smelling range, but out of reach.

And really that’s all I want that I can’t get for myself, excluding the Beaver Nuggets, I can get them I just can’t see spending that much money on something that is less than $5 in the store. Now go celebrate that you’re “not dead yet”. “I feel happy!”

Doing more thinking

Still thinking about the LS powered A/Mod car, so you can get back out from under whatever it was you got under when you read I was thinking again. I was also thinking about making the Sprint-T less expensive by retaining the stock water pump while just using an alternator, instead of installing an electric water pump and just sticking the alternator on the right side of the engine.

The difficulty lies in that the stock water pump is designed to be driven opposite engine rotation with the back side of the serpentine belt. Now for the Sprint-T the problem is that puts the alternator to the left side of the engine where other things want to be. For the A/Mod car this puts the alternator where the driver’s legs want to be. For the Sprint-T this can be overcome by not putting the stuff where the alternator needs to go to drive the waterpump in the correct direction. I’m not sure how to fix the problem for the A/Mod car because the interfering components can’t be relocated away from each other, there are limited options for the alternator and for the driver’s legs. The front of the engine will be about just below the knee which if this engine didn’t have the exhaust going over the driver’s legs the solution would be to have the driver in a knees up position. That puts the driver’s knees in the middle of the exhaust header, which is another unworkable design. Moving the engine forward or the driver back have other problems, like bad balance if the engine is moved forward and hitting the rear axle for moving the driver back.

OK I just got finished watching the NASCAR Gander Truck series and the Indycar series from Gateway, and while I was watching the Indycar race the solution to the alternator problem on the A/Mod car just jumped out at me: if the driver is obstructed on the left side of the engine swap the driver and engine sides and put the driver to the right. It’s so simple, which was probably why I didn’t see it at first. There are no rules about driver position left to right, just that the driver’s feet have to be behind the centerline of the front axle and ahead of the centerline of the rear axle. I can hang the driver outside the wheels in an armored pod like on a Indycar design by Smokey Yunick if I can get it to balance. But this time all I need is to put the driver on the right like I was making a UK road car. The driver’s feet can be in front of the engine without having any issues with the alternator. Now if I had an unlimited budget I would put the electric water pump on it and stick the alternator on the right and the driver on the left like my original vision for the car, but driver right and saving $$ will work, too. I also took some measurements and the left side alternator will clear all the parts I was concerned about clearing for the Sprint-T.

Another thing: at 0119 Monday (tomorrow as I compose this) it will be exactly 19 years since Some Asshole driving a pickup truck tried to kill me for the “crime” of riding my bike on the same street he was driving on in the opposite direction I was riding. He had to drive down to someplace he could cross the median separating the two directions of travel so he could be on the same side of the street and hit me from behind, or he could have just ignored me like I ignored his outburst to “Get off the F***ing road!” and lived whatever kind of life he would have lived. Instead he hit me and then less than 2 years later he died in a single vehicle DUI wreck with either a tree or a telephone pole depending on who’s story you want to believe. I want to believe in Dharma (which is kinda like Karma, but it bites your ass in this life instead of the next), but I also want to believe in a criminal justice system that puts people like that in prison, but they probably were never even looking for him. His dying from a DUI is probably the most “justice” I could expect to get. So anywho, to celebrate the fact that I survived someone trying to kill me, tomorrow we are having brownies and ice cream, and next year to celebrate 20 years [Monty Python]”I’m not dead yet!”[/Monty Python] Mrs. the Poet wants to throw a proper party that we couldn’t this year because COVID and because next year will be two decades, a full 20 years “not dead”. As I explained to Mrs. the Poet, the celebration is not because I died, it’s because I didn’t stay dead. Here’s to another 20 years of “not dead”.

Mission accomplished, toenails are now short

Well the headline pretty much covers the actual news, but there were things I learned during the process that are also useful. First thing is that even though it doesn’t feel hot a heat index of 95°F is still dangerously warm. As in hydrate or die dangerous.

Second thing I learned is that I need to go for a walk, like at least every other day, so my back feels better. I walked about a mile and a quarter yesterday and once I got going nary a twinge out of my back. Getting going had lots of twinges and worse, but once I got the muscles moving and warm, I was pain-free. Like taking a hydrocodone pain free. I think finding time for a daily mile walk, maybe early in the morning before the heat gets as bad, is my best idea for keeping moving.

And speaking of keeping moving, we are fast approaching my Death Day, the anniversary of the thing that walked like a man trying to murder me for riding my bike on an empty 6 lane road on the other side of the median from him. Aside from his being a raging (literally) asshole I have no idea why he tried to kill me as I was riding home from work, he just did.

Now the bigger question is what can I do about it?

It was an “Interesting” weekend

This weekend I celebrated not getting killed, my grandson’s birthday, and a memorial for a dear friend all in the space of three days.

The plan for Friday was to get burgers from the local king of burgers with coupons we get in the newspaper, but first Mrs. the Poet decided it was too hot for her to stand out in the sun and I should get one of the specials that had two burgers and bring her back one, then I waited until 2 buses should have passed before it got too late to get back home and admitted defeat and returned to Casa de El Poeta minus burgers, so we had breakfast for dinner instead.

Saturday we celebrated the grandson’s 6th birthday with a bowling party, pizza, and of course cake and ice cream. The grandson asked for an “Ice Cream Flavored” cake, which his mother decided was chocolate marble. He got lots of presents. Because nobody told me what he’s into this year he got a card with money instead of a present.

Then we had the memorial service for my friend who died suddenly while in a nursing home, her condition went from “not bad” to “dead” in about 2 hours. There was an underlying condition that was the reason she was in the nursing home, but that wasn’t what killed her, she died from cellulitis, but was in care because of complications from an amputation. The service was very nice, with our religion’s sharing of bread and wine and a sharing of memories of her life.

And then this morning I woke up with fingers that didn’t quite work right. I managed to get breakfast and this blog post but it was uncomfortable to do it. I don’t get many bad days from my arthritis that I have had all my adult life, but today is one of the really bad ones. It’s really fun (not fun) trying to type as moving the fingers side to side just ain’t working.

Reflecting on my mortality on my Death Day

No wrecks today except for a first-person (with supplements from other witnesses) account of a hit-and-run. Long-time readers of this blog know which wreck I am referring to, but as we have a bunch of new readers since then I’ll just open with the tl;dr version: At 0119 on 31/08/2001 I was killed by a hit-and-run driver. I stayed dead about 2 minutes, less than 5 for sure, and woke up to a world of pain.

The long version goes like this more or less. I was riding home from my second-shift job as a Windows help desk operator, and having to dodge thunderstorms along the route. My ride home was 15.2 miles from Farmer’s Branch to the northeast side of Garland, mostly along arterials because there was no connected grid of streets between the 4 cities I had to traverse to get home. In 3 of the cities I was mostly protected by LEO “not on quotas” following me to catch the crazy drivers that seemed to be attracted to me like moths to a flame, or as one LEO put it I was an idiot magnet and they could get a month’s worth of tickets just following me for a week. Except for Garland, my police shadow stopped when I crossed into my home city.

Any way, I had just crossed into Garland proper when some idiot driving a white pickup that might have been a late ’90s Chevy (I had rain on my glasses) stuck his head out the window to bellow, “Get off the fucking road!” As there was no place to get off the road and still continue to get home I ignored him and continued to ride. This infuriated the driver so much that the driver went to the next available cut-through in the median separating us to make a u-turn to get on my side of the road. Yes he was horribly upset that I was riding all alone on the opposite side of the street with 2 other unoccupied lanes of travel that he had to stop what he was doing to reverse direction and get on my side of the street. Did I mention he was presumed to be drunk at the time?

Location What it looks like now, there was a steakhouse where the mosque is now and no sidewalks

Anyway, after getting on my side of the street and about a quarter mile behind me at this point and driving on wet streets (rain) he basically floored the go pedal on the truck and got up to about 60 MPH (the guy that did the reconstruction put the speed as “between 45 and 65 MPH with highest confidence on 60 MPH”) I heard a noise behind me and started to turn to look over my left shoulder and heard “Get off the fucking road!” again just before everything went black. This is where what I remember about the wreck and what I was told about the wreck diverges sharply, because the people not in my body were watching a different channel than I was.

Location In the far right lane, notice how many lanes of travel there were

Watching from the outside people saw my body bounce off the windshield of the truck, crushing the roof, and then flipping and spinning violently on all 3 axis at the same time to land about 50 feet later on my face. My bike was crushed up to the seat post and went flying about a quarter-mile away to rest against a bus stop sign that is still there today.

My LZ Right in front of the camera car

And the bike’s LZ That sign! Still the same post, but the signs were different in 2001

Outside channel saw what appeared to be a broken corpse only oozing blood in the middle of the street as they called 911. The woman passenger in the car that was behind me and the weapon vehicle actually had enough time to grab her cell when she saw the driver make the u-turn in front of that vehicle and hit 9 and 1 between seeing me come over the top of the truck and landing on the street.

At this point the inside channel was being tuned to a new program. I didn’t get the “life flashing before your eyes” or the “light at the end of a tunnel” program, I got “welcome home, you get to become one with the Universe”. The only problem with that program is learning to use the zoom function, because from where they (whoever or whatever “they” was) left me all I saw was a bunch of dots that were galaxies on a dark background and no way to tell which one was the Milky Way from all the rest of the galaxies, much less find Earth and watch what was going on there (here). At this point I said something along the lines of “this is stupid and I still have things to do” and decided to be not-dead.

Inside channel and outside channels converge about this time as someone tried to move me and I told them I had “broken the upper end of my femur!” several times then I passed out again. Shortly after this I woke up in the back of the ambulance saying, “Did anyone get the number of that truck?” and wondering why it was so dark in there. I could see the cop asking if I saw the truck that hit me but only just barely, and I told him that it was a joke, that I said “truck” because it was already too late to be a bus. Yep, the second thing I said after coming back from the dead was a corny joke.

On that blindness, I should have been freaking out about not being able to see, but I was very calm about the situation and just decided they had the lights down low for my benefit. Obviously I was going blind from all the blood pooling in my head from the flipping compressing the optic nerve, similar to what happens to sprint car drivers after a violent flip. But I didn’t know that at the time. And I could see normally after about 3 days recovery. Well as normally as I could after losing my glasses in the wreck.

I have done the inventory before, but there have been many new readers since the last time so from the bottom: I had some abrasions to the top of my left foot from where my shoe came off in the initial impact, there are still a few scars left but you have to know where to look. The front of my lower leg blew apart from the impact to the back of my leg, exposing both the gastrocnemius and the soleus as well as the tibialis anterior and part of the extensor digitorum. All of those muscles had scarring and reduced mobility in some degree with the gastrocnemius taking the brunt of the scarring and reduced function. I can only raise the front of my foot slightly beyond level now. There was also much nerve damage that healed, for lack of a better description, “cross circuited”, I have numb areas and areas that touching one part will feel like another part of the leg or foot. I also broke the tibia and fibula, but the tib reset while I was flipping and the break wasn’t detected until after it had healed when they did the MRI of my knee. The swelling of the damaged muscles effectively splinted the leg until the bone knitted.

Moving up I lost some skin off the knee and tore both cruciate ligaments and the meniscus of the knee, both of which were not discovered initially because of other damage preventing the diagnosis. The internal damage I mean, the skin was quite easy to see. Above that I also broke my femur somewhere and broke the hip off the end of the femur, which was the only injury I felt at the scene. Since the treatment for the broken hip also took care of the other break nobody bothered to show me where that one was, but I got to see a lot of X-rays of my hip because that was the one they were afraid wouldn’t heal. I was also told that this one was a major pain in the tuckus because of how dense my bones were, requiring the use of power tool that had been only used for carpentry at that point…

I also lost skin off my hands where the gloves were not covering them, a large patch of my left forearm, and part of my face was detached when I landed face first on the street and had to be sewn back on. That one was the most annoying injury in hospital because it felt like ants were crawling on my face while it healed. And that segues (not Segways) into the other major life-altering injury, the TBI that didn’t get spotted because they didn’t know to look or how to look for it back then. I have what is now called Diffuse Axonal Injury, what was back then called severe concussion. I had 2 seizures, one in the ambulance and the other in the ER, that should have tipped someone off, but like I wrote they didn’t know what to look for or how to look for it back then. These days there are two ways to find the injury, one is with an MRI that can see the damage in the first hour or two after the injury, the second is to have a baseline CAT scan for comparison to spot the brain swelling that accompanies the DAI. These are required for F1 drivers and I think IndyCar, but AFAIK they are the only ones who do this. The NFL were considering this, but I don’t know what became of the consideration.

Anyway, the rest is history, my left leg got much shorter, my TBI caused me to lose some cognitive functions and a huge chunk of my vocabulary and foreign languages, and I went on long bike rides because I couldn’t get a job after the wreck because of very little overlap in what I could still do physically and mentally. Basically riding a bike and this blog plus basic life support are about all I can manage since the wreck. Other stuff could be done but not at a level of proficiency that would get me paid for it.

And that’s my 14th anniversary of the day I died. I will have a small party tonight, and then I get to do a massive blog post tomorrow with the links that have been accumulating since Saturday.

PSA, Opus the Unkillable Badass Poet.

Things are Not Good on the church front, and the Feed

I’m working at transferring a mailing list that I moderate for the church over to someone else, only I can’t because I’m not the owner. The last anyone heard from the owner was in 2012, and we are not even sure that he is still on this side of the veil. He would be in his late 60s or early 70s by this point, and his access to social media or email are “iffy” if he’s still alive. But right now I can’t do what needs to be done, and that frustrates me.

Up first, Google cars don’t understand track stands. How fixed-gear bikes can confuse Google’s self-driving cars The combination of moving back and forth and the rider in the same position as moving forward confuses the AI. But they are still working on it.

Our Daily Ted. Morning Links: San Diego police blame bike mob; unconfirmed report of bicycling fatality on PCH in Malibu Is there a stick or magic wand we can use to beat sense into cops?

And Daily Ted part 2. Bike rider killed crossing PCH in Malibu; bicycling deaths down over 40% in LA County compared to 2014

Infrastructure news from Portland. Neighborhood greenways breeze through council with unanimous support

Also from Portland, I think if we find that stick down in CA we need to send it north to see if it works on traffic engineers. State says there’s not enough proof that bike lanes boost safety, so 26th Ave lanes should go Apparently a decade of statistics from NYC aren’t good enough for ODOT.

Update on a MI hit-and-run, they found the driver. Sheriff: 16-year-old identified as driver in crash that injured cyclist And it looks like the “penis enhancer” theory about the weapon vehicle may be factual.

Two links about a WA wreck. Mill Creek cyclist critically injured in hit-and-run and Cyclist critically injured in hit-and-run; police search for suspect See, now why can’t trigger-happy LEO ever pull one of these idjits over and shoot them in the face? Seeing as how they are actually armed and dangerous and proven willing to use the weapon? And from the narrative there was nothing the cyclist did wrong or could have done to avoid the wreck.

More from CA. Cyclist Dies After PCH Collision Again, without seeing the wreckage I can’t verify the “crossing” portion of the narrative. Assuming the narrative is factually correct, what we have here is either a cyclist not paying attention (possible) or a stretch of road that can be clear when a cyclists starts to cross, but there may be cross traffic before getting to the other side. There needs to be testing to see if the second scenario is true, and either a refuge island provided to make a 2 stage crossing, or a reduction in the speed limit so that crossing the road isn’t like playing Russian Roulette. Give people at least half a chance at survival.

A KS cyclist is right-crossed while crossing with the light in the crosswalk. Bicyclist injured in accident I’m trying to wrap my head around the geometry of this wreck, it appears the cyclist may have been riding salmon but would have been coming at the weapon vehicle from the front rather than the side. So basically the driver blew the red (because the only way this could have happened as described would be for a simultaneous ped signal and turn arrow signal, which would have been a solid red to the driver) and didn’t look in front of the vehicle to make sure the crosswalk was clear, oorrr, the driver failed to notice the light had changed while making sure traffic had cleared and when they stopped he went without looking. So either way this went, the driver went without looking in the crosswalk to make sure there was nothing in his path.

Cyclists are injured in multiple wrecks in West Canuckistan on the same day. Cyclists injured in two separate Saanich crashes One was a two-for-one that was almost a three-for, as a driver either crossed or hooked three cyclists but one managed to avoid the vehicle. How do you turn into three cyclists, unless you meant to? The other cyclist was hit running a stop sign. [sigh]

This one was from the Great White North. Cyclist in coma following downtown Montreal crash Another Single Witness Crossing Cyclist wreck where they say the cyclist was running the red.

Still from the Great White North, blame ALL the cyclists. Many cyclists taking chances

In Jolly Olde stockholm syndrome is beginning to set in. Cyclists welcome report into safety of Frideswide Square After decades of neglect or outright hostility, any slight display that might get mistaken for compassion is fawned over.

Last link is from Enn Zed, and is something I can commiserate with. Cyclist badly injured in truck crash accuses Wellington hospital of neglect This sounds exactly like what happened to me, because CAT scans can only detect DAI (Diffuse Axonal Injury) when there is a baseline scan for comparison, like what is required for F1 and IndyCar drivers before the start of every season. Diffuse Axonal Injury is a sneaky kind of TBI, it can affect a large part of the brain, but unless it is a part the victim has to use while being treated it doesn’t get noticed until it’s too late to treat it. For me it was the loss of foreign languages and a large chunk of specialized vocabulary. For other people it is other things.

And I’m done, wiped out, beat, semi-functional. TIRED.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the Unkillable Badass Poet (3 more shopping days until my DeathDay)

I got caught in the rain coming home from my haircut, and the Feed

Trip to the bank, trip to the hardware store, and trip to the nearest haircut place when they said they knew how to do a flattop haircut. Unfortunately they had only a vague idea of what a “flattop” was and what I got was more of a high and tight than a flattop. What I was looking for was something close to this.

But what I got was this.

And I look a lot more unhappy in that picture than I intended to, wow. I guess that’s what getting caught in the rain and having to change all your clothes and put your shoes in the shoe dryer looks like. It wasn’t raining when I left the bus stop 0.4 miles away on the main road, but the water was running ankle-deep in the street by the time I got to the corner of my street less than 10 minutes later.

The Big Story today is a UK politician having a bike wreck because someone tampered with his brakes. Police open investigation after Labour councillor is injured after bicycle brakes cut and Cyclist seriously hurt after saboteurs cut brakes After years of anti-cyclist propaganda from the Murdoch media empire is anyone surprised about this? Seriously check your brakes after every stop where you leave your bike unsupervised, you never know what kind of sick sociopaths will take delight in your possible death or dismemberment.

Next biggest story was a tie between this Oz story and the next paragraph. Qld road safety push after cyclist death and Bike group calls for urgent review of inner city truck use The “shocking” news that there is a 25 foot (7 meter) blind spot in front of a conventional cab truck isn’t really news, but the fact that there has been nothing done about this blind spot to the passenger side of the truck in all the years since it was discovered is disturbing.

Back in the US we have another cyclist killed in gun violence. Witnesses: Man riding bike shot, killed on near north side and Man riding bike shot and killed on north side It appears the cyclist was killed by pedestrians on the sidewalk, rather than a drive-by shooting. So you’re dead if you do (ride in the street) and dead if you don’t.

Our Daily Ted. Morning Links: Tragedy in Santa Clarita, LA announces Vision Zero, and too much racing news for one day

Wildfires in the PNW impact a treasured Portland bike event. County urges bikers to use TriMet as wildfire smoke fills Portland streets (updated) It came ][ this close to getting canceled, but the wind changed direction to push the smoke away from the city a bit.

Closer to home, another hit-and-run in Austin. Popular Austin cyclist falls victim to hit and run The good news is he’s alive and looks like he will recover without further disruption to his life after he heals.

I’m sure this MD cyclist wishes the driver had left the scene instead of what he did. SUV Driver Cited for Hitting Cyclist, Road Rage: Police He beat up on a man with a broken arm and rib and threw a wheel into the woods so the cyclist couldn’t follow him, and his bail was set at only $25K? TANJ!

A young cyclist in LA is killed when he fell over into a truck’s rear wheels. Young boy killed in bicycle accident in Opelousas Gee I wonder what would cause a bicycle to fall over into the rear wheels of a truck? A buzz job or punishment pass maybe? Or a horn blast just a few feet away from his head?

AZ cyclists are having problems with streetcar tracks. N4T Investigators: Another cyclist files lawsuit over streetcar tracks The problem is not the tracks alone, there is also a lot of traffic in the intersection and a cyclist has to have superhuman levels of multitasking to be able to watch for traffic as well as for road defects and streetcar tracks, and the costs for the cyclist could be extremely high, and I’m not just talking about the $300K lawsuit filed for medical expenses.

A NJ cyclist ran out of luck. Newark man, 23, killed in Granville crash Given that no information about the wreck is coming from LEO, and the driver is in jail, maybe a drunk hit the cyclist from behind semi-on-purpose?

How much does not having bike lanes cost your city? Bike-lane advocates cite new Albany County data on cost of injuries The direct, to-the-cyclist cost of a wreck can be higher than the median family income of the city. The average cost is almost the median income in the city, so it doesn’t take much worse than an average wreck to get way past the “average” cost for a wreck.

Back in AZ for encouragement to ride. Get out and ride, but be safe

Bad wreck in NYC. Chinese food delivery guy, 65, seriously injured after hit by truck in Brooklyn Remember the story from Oz about conventional cabs and their blind spots to the front passenger side? Same thing applies here.

Beautiful article from MO. Ghost bikes honor cyclists killed on road

Is “fell over in front of me” the new “I didn’t see him”? Cyclist killed in Rosemont La Petite-Patrie Québécois are more like Parisian French than your average Canadian, but still a lot better than the average N’Yawker. This just sounds so… suspicious.

And Rob Ford is casting a huge shadow on Toronto cyclists. Most cyclists are not considerate

This is what most of MY bike rides feel like. What Happens When A Tank Crashes A Bike Race

Last link, sometimes we can do great things. A Katrina hero: He hopped into a boat and became a one-man rescue squad He kept rescuing people for days, over a week. And he was One Of Us. Given that level of exertion he pretty much had to be, or some other kind of endurance athlete.

And I’m outta links again.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the Unkillable Badass Poet (only 6 more shopping days until my Deathday, be sure to hit your favorite liquor store so you can celebrate properly, at home)