Hit and Run....Sorry dude.

Well, it finally happened.  It was bound to sooner or later.  I mean, if you ride a bike long enough in San Francisco you will inevitably be doored, hit by a car, spit on, yelled at, walked in front of/hit a pedestrian, laughed at, swerved at/pushed off the road and threatened in all kinds of creative and colorful ways.  I have already been doored, run off the road, spit on, yelled at, laughed at, and slightly hit by a car so this particular incident has been long coming and was really, no big surprise.  I hit my first pedestrian.  I say first because if you've ever ridden, or even driven a car in San Francisco then you know as well as I do, that pedestrians are basically idiots living in an oblivion of cell phones and coffee and cigarettes and...well, they're basically a notch up from a herd of cattle.

You can blame this phenomenon on a couple of things.  One being tourists.  People from all over the country/world come to our little foggy city to bask in all its charm and beauty.  The problem with tourist is that they don't know how to walk (LRS, you know exactly what I'm talking about).  They don't know that spilling out of a cafe in a large group and just standing there blocking the whole sidewalk is rude.  They don't know that walking four abreast when people are trying to pass is rude.  They don't know that looking both ways is a good idea before stepping into the street.  And apparently they don't know what a bicyclist looks like because they walk in front of speeding ones all day every day.

You can blame it on the crack heads who are basically bat shit crazy.  These are the ones you will most likely get shouted at/spit on/shoved by.  They have nothing to lose so they walk where they like, when they like and they usually carry a four story shopping cart stuffed with ribbons, aluminum siding and deflated basketballs.

You can blame the financial crowd.  People who have too much money and too little time.  Who believe that the seas, read traffic, will stop and part before them when they step off the curb.  

But yesterday, I hit none of these.  The man I hit did not fit into any one particular category, or rather, he fit into several.  You see, the man I hit yesterday had the look of a thug, though it was kind of sad because he was around 50 years old.  The combination mentality of a crack head and a financial type, bursting through crowds and into traffic like he either had nothing to lose or was just that much more important than everyone else.  He was also just a really ugly person.

Anyway,  I'm riding my bike up Market Street from downtown.  I get about half way through the intersection when this man, this absolute moron, walks out about four steps into the cross walk.  Not only did he just stroll out but he did so with a ghetto blaster on his shoulder and looking the wrong way (he was looking with traffic, not at on coming traffic).  When he did finally look in my direction his face dropped.  He lowered the boom box and did a shuffle dance trying to decide which direction to go.  Little did he know that that decision wasn't up to him.  I had already decided that if this idiot wanted to get out in traffic like he was the big man then that's where I was going to put him.  I mean, I wasn't about to swerve into traffic and compete with vehicles thousands of pounds heavier than me.  So I swerved behind him, between him and the curb.  He decided to try to jump back on the curb in front of me so I stood up and pedaled harder to gain some momentum to make it through him.  As I got closer I leaned into it and rammed him hard with my left shoulder.  I bounced off, my pedal hitting the curb, and rode away fine.  I didn't look back to see what happened to him, but whatever.  

So that was that, my first hit and run....if that counts.