.... but only my trusty eighteen-speeder. :-( On the way to the 'Institut Charles V' this morning, as I'm still waiting for my ADSL to be connected and I can use their Resource Centre, I'm toddling along the banks of the Seine, when a woman ahead of me, walks around the back of her car, and opens her driver's door directly in my path. I brake, realise that the only way I'm going to be able to avoid the door is to use _all_ the braking I can muster, but don't want to do so, as one it's raining, and two, the Otley Road incident left its mark in more ways than one. At this point, there's a set of traffic lights around 200m ahead, and the lights are at red, so I'm 'filtering' down the inside of a line of cars. Aim for the gap between her door and the blue Nissan that's sitting on my left. Right side of handlebar catches her driver's door, pulling the steering violently to the right. The bike tips over, I throw my weight to the left, meaning that the left side of my torso hits the passenger-side mirror on the blue Nissan. I sort of 'roll' forward, letting the bike drop under the dumb bitch's door, and find myself sort of 'sprawled' over the bonnet of the Nissan. Driver of blue Nissan waits for me to pick myself off his car, moves forward, parks, hazards on. Meanwhile, dozy cow is apologising profusely, but justifying her action by saying that the lights are red. 'Yes,' I say. 'They're red, but they're 200m away.' Walk over to Nissan driver, apologise, and ask if there's any damage. He says not to worry, he saw what happened, it wasn't my fault, and points to a black 'smear' on his passenger door. Fortunately, it was only my shoe that had left the mark, and a licked index finger took it off in seconds. He drives off, and I go to pick bike up. Bint is still whingeing that the red light 200m away means I should have stopped. After imploring her, as politely as I can manage, to _please_ look next time, I cycle off. So ... the question is: which UKRM poster set that one up ? [1] [1] ;-)
