The Orange Hat

Dear owner of a slightly dented big red truck,

I apologies for not introducing myself, and am sincerely sorry about your door, however I do appreciate you're attempts to lend me a ride. I do have a few suggestions about how you might go about this in the future though.

1. When when turning right, it's polite to use your turn signal, especially when crossing a bike lane. I know it isn't convenient for you, but it helps us know when you're interested in meeting some of the biking population.

2. If you'd like to open your door in the future, I can enter your car and we can talk. Otherwise I'll continue to run into your door and leave dents, which neither my helmet ( see following picture) , nor I appreciate.

3. After an incident when an ambulance takes away a semi-conscience biker who hit you, in-spite of their ability to offer you a shot of whiskey, it's probably a good idea to stay at the scene of the wreck even if they police aren't their initially. The police did know where I was an asked me all kinds of questions about our relationship, many of which I couldn't respond to.

Write to me sometime, I can tell you all about the facilities at Grady hospital, the wonderful EMT's who will cut your shirt off and stick you full of IV's, the trauma surgeons and nurses who ask you lots of questions and undress you while finding out your name and ability to deal with several conversations at once. They will also try to give you morphine, probe your butt, and have lots of other really interesting questions to ask you (while the police are there trying to get a statement), and it's really kinda while for a few minuets until they realize that you're not going to die in the next few minuets so they leave you alone for a remarkable long time.

Red Truck Driver you seemed like a nice guy, why else would I offer you a stiff one, but we really need to work on these run ins. I did learn allot though, and am healing well, only minor surface scratches and maybe a concussion, they're not sure but want me to be monitored, otherwise I just feel like I got beat up.

I will never use that specific bike lane again, and I will now think two or three times about using bike lanes in general. I did find the hospital very interesting though, and my Mommy bough me lunch, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten to see her!

I look forward to meeting you soon, and hope you have a great, bike wreck free, day.

-Sean