One Cheek Landing

Went on my usual 3-mile rollerblad­ing loop this evening. The mid­dle mile is around the one mile walk­ing track sur­rounds the city’s recre­ation cen­ter. I enter on one side and at about the 3/4 mark the trail it passes between the park­ing lot and the main road. Cars come in on one lane and they exit in two more, one for right turns and one for lefts. Cars are sup­posed to yield to walk­ers and skaters and almost always do. Today one of them didn’t for me.

As I skated towards the entrance I looked behind me so as not to be ambushed by a car swoop­ing in from the road. I then looked for­ward and could see a big sedan com­ing out in the left lane and I slowed a bit to make sure he was stop­ping. When I saw that he was, I con­tin­ued for­ward. Trou­ble was there was a smaller car com­ing in the right lane, I noticed late, and the dri­ver didn’t even see me at all. I braked hard and it really wasn’t going to be enough, so I turned hard right into the space between the two cars. My right skate came out from under me, dump­ing me on my right butt cheek.

I got back to my feet and thanked the guy in the car that stopped and looked over at the one that didn’t, who was sit­ting at the stop sign before enter­ing the main drag, and gave him the evil eye in his rear view mir­ror. I think he felt bad and was wait­ing to see if I was alright before going, but I just skated back on my way with wounded pride and a pain in the butt.

I’m still sore 5 hours later and I’m bet­ting that sucker is going to be pur­ple by tomorrow.