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REAR_BRAKE

                                                October 20, 2013

Back in the early 'naughts, there was an occasion
where I was out riding my old hybrid around town on a
very wet day. I was zipping down Haight street toward
the intersection with Divisidero, and I was taking
this fairly fast, as usual, and got ready to do one of
my special moves, which I described here:

           BICYCLES


           Note: there's a trick
           to stopping short on
           a diamond frame bike:
           get your butt off of the
           the seat, and crouch down
           behind it, with your sternum
           almost touching the seat.

           Then you can get away
           with really slamming the
           brakes, even if you're
           going down hill.


But: the roads were wet, hence my rims were wet,
hence my caliper brakes were not going to be working    These days I mostly
all that well-- a fact I remembered a little late.      ride bikes with disk
                                                        brakes.  This is a
                                                        good reason why.
There was one car up ahead of me, already stopped
at the red light at Divisidero.  I'd thought I
was going to be screeching to a halt just behind
it, but that wasn't going to work:

I squeezed the brakes as hard as I could.
My wheels locked up, and I started slipping
sideways, but I couldn't ease up without
rear ending that car.  I went down, skidding
sideways-- which I gather is called "laying         PED_DOWN
it down" in some circles-- and I slid to a halt
on my hip, dramatically scattering parts of my
bike lights in all directions. I stopped right
behind the waiting car, without touching it.


     A number of bystanders gathered immediately--
     there's a corner store at Divisidero and Haight,
     and those are good for generating bystanders,
     even on rainy days.

     They launched into this routine of lines like
     "Are you okay?!", and "You were really lucky!"         ARE_YOU_OKAY
     and so on.
                                                     Many people really have
     I picked up the parts of my lights,             it wedged in their brain
     and stepped over to the sidewalk to             that cycling is Dangerous,
     snap them back together.                        and they're always ready
                                                     to see evidence of that.
     I was thinking things like "Lucky?
     Stupid, maybe."  (I do know that
     caliper brakes have problems in the
     rain, I just let my dry-day habits
     take over at the wrong moment.)

     And "Lucky?  But I stopped exactly where
     I was planning on stopping, I just did
     it on my butt." I hadn't torn my nylon
     pants, or even gotten a bruise.

     If I'd been really lucky, there would've been
     no car stopped ahead of me, and I could've
     done an emergency turn to the right... even         Though you can't
     if there had been cross traffic, bikes can          ride flat against
     usually flatten out against the side of the         the right side
     road to stay out of the way of it.                  as a general rule
                                                         without risking
                                                         being doored or
                                                         side-swiped.




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