Doh! (kicks self)

Fuggin’ binned it in the wet this morning on the way to work. Classic London incident. Overtaking a cabbie who changed his mind at the last minute and did the old turn–then–signal thing when I was about two metres behind him on the other side of the road about to go past. I obviously slammed on the anchors and swerved left to avoid going into the side of his cab as he turned. Kept it up for a bit then dropped it on its left hand side. He kindly drove off sharpish leaving me lying in the road.

The good news for me is, I’m fine apart from scrapes and bruises (foot looks a pretty shade of blue right now). Thought the bike was OK bar a scrape, but once I started it up, it started pissing oil out of the left hand engine cover. Which is disappointing.

That’s the second stupid London crash I’ve had this year (the first was a fair bit nastier, involving a mini–cab driver illegally running a red light and taking me out, resulting in my previous bike being written–off). My Mum would love to hear me say this, but I am really starting to wonder whether it’s worth it or whether I should give up risking my life by riding in this place when there are so many idiot drivers, cyclists and pedestrians and just save it for the track.

<personal responsibility rubric>I am not trying to absolve myself from responsibility for this crash. I was going too fast, in the wet, to be able to stop in the available distance should the unexpected happen. You should not overtake across a junction with a side–road (although in London, that would often mean not overtaking at all). As they say, you live and learn and fortunately, I have lived and will learn.</personal responsibility rubric>