Look where you're going!

Countless times I've ridden along, mesmerised by the yellow line or the crumbling edge of the tarmac. You know the situation, head down into a headwind, keeping up that just uncomfortable, but steady rhythm.

The situation was like this. I was running a touch late to get to my wife's show, so I needed to give it stick. I'd got onto the relatively uninterrupted expanse of Chelsea Embankment and was in the zone. I was happily watching the Red Route double red whizzing by as I blasted into the cold north easterly when suddenly the double red became a single red line, and then the grey bumper of a Jaguar XJ.

It is quite odd that you have enough time to think "This is going to hurt. Idiot! Nice Jag though. Good thing it isn't a van or an estate", but not enough to actually touch the brakes.

Wham! Chin hits the rear window - I tumble over the roof and land on the pavement. I must have landed on my feet because I didn't have a single scrape or bump, apart from my chin. I'd like to put it down to a childhood spent wiping out on my BMX, but more likely a lot to do with luck.

Damage check, OK but dazed. The Pig, my utility/hack bike, is looking very much the worse for wear. The Jag looks perfect, just a small smudge of the bar tape I had wrapped onto the bar ends. It would easily polish out, if not just wash off. Not a dent or a scratch!

Back to The Pig, the lights are still attached and working. The front mudguard is detached, the fork is bent so that the front wheel is tucked underneath. The saddle is bent, probably from the landing on the pavement. The wheels are still perfectly round and seem to have shrugged off the impact. But it is unrideable.

I wheel it over to the tube station, lock it up and get myself to the Islington theatre late but amazingly in just in time to see my Darling on stage.

Somehow I managed to ride into a car at full tilt and emerge pretty much unscathed; a) I am extremely lucky, and b) I am very thankful that I got to learn this lesson with only minor loss to both me and negligible damage to the car I hit.

Fortunately a few months back I picked up a nice early 90s Tange Prestige tubed GT frame with horizontal dropouts which has been begging for a new lease on life - I feel a renovation project coming on!