On the way home from the rock gym tonight, I was riding north on Macomb and a car slowed down with his right blinker on. I thought he was waiting for me to pass, but wanted to make sure. I slowed down and was going to ask if I could go because his window was down. I took my eyes off the road and ran into a pipe that was laying in the bike lane. The pipe was angled into the road (does that make sense to my readers? It went from the curb out into the car lane as I rode up on it). I got thrown into the car lane and there was nothing I could do about it. Not being super used to my fixed gear, I didn't react great when the pedals kept turning. I was able to get my left foot out of the Power Grips on my pedals and kind of kicked the car away, but my left bullhorn caught the side view mirror of the car and smashed the mirror and broke off the plastic piece. My left hand got cut up a little bit and is a little swollen from where I hit the car. I managed to keep the bike upright.
The driver pulled over into an adjacent parking lot. I picked up a piece of his plastic piece from the side view along with the pipe that caused the accident. I apologized for running into this guy's car. If he had been an inconsiderate driver, then his car wouldn't have been there in the first place. I felt like it was my fault. The driver didn't do anything to deserve a crashing-into. He said that he is a fellow cyclist and not to worry about it. I offered him a couple dollars for damages and he again declined saying that he know's what it's like to ride.
The bike's handlebars were askew, a bar end plug popped out (I picked it out of the road too), and some of the grip tape on the left side of the handlebars is torn. I had my multitool with me so I fixed the handlebar angle and rode to Erin's. I was a little bit shaken up, but I think I needed to get right back on the bike.
Now I see that there were a few positive things about the accident:
1. It was a very nice motorist who didn't mind me breaking his car
2. It was me and not some inexperienced cyclist who might have gone down or got really hurt and maybe been discouraged from riding
3. I didn't get very hurt, nor did my bike
4. There wasn't traffic coming up too fast from behind...in which case I could have been rear-ended and that would have been b-a-d bad.
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