When Mopeds Attack

When I bought my bicycle back in September I spent a good 20 minutes searching the shelves of Carrefour for helmet. The task was futile. There were helmets for small children and helmets for motorcycles but there were no bicycle helmets to be found.

At first, bicycling without a helmet was ridiculously scary. I'd bike at a snail's pace and wouldn't travel anywhere without a defined bike lane. After I got used to the flow of traffic, I wove in and out of traffic, I used my bell with a vengence and I even began taking left hand turns in the middle of traffic. All was coming up Sara during my daily commute.

Until today.

Today, I was in a rush to get home and had already been stuck behind a grandpa who planned to use the whole of the bike lane as his own person 'weave back and forth' lane. When I finally passed him, I had a clear lane and was off. I crossed Lancun Road and was then stuck (again) behind Lancun Metro station in the bike lane which doubles as a pedestrian traffic thorough-fair.

Like most Chinese pedestrians, the two men infront of me had no care in the world for any other commuters on the street. They sauntered along as a moped driver headed for them. Just as I started to ding my bell for them to get out of the way so I could overtake them, I saw the moped coming down the street towards us. Thinking there would be enough room, I went to overtake the men and simultaneously pass the moped. The moped driver figured that there would either be enough room or didn't care if there was and continued driving.

All of the sudden there was the crunching noise of my hand-breaks being hit and wrung around my handle bars and my forearm colliding with his I-don't-know-what. I screamed and we both stopped and looked at the other. Realizing there was nothing that could really be done we both continued on our way. Me with a bent handle bar and him probably thinking that laowai's shouldn't ride bicycles.

I plan to take the bus to school tomorrow.

P.S. China's being awesome again and I can't read blogspots anymore. I'll keep you posted (har har) if there are any changes.