Where do I start with this story? Tim lives in Hawaii, near the University, he works at a Marine Bio' lab that sits right along the coast. I think it's about three miles from his place to his work - and he almost always rides his bicycle.

Apparently, if you time all the lights right - you can coast the entire way down with having to brake for traffic. Unless that is - the traffic doesn't brake for you. Which is what happened a few days ago.

Tim is flying down the hill - hitting all the lights just right - probably doing a good 25 miles an hour, when without any warning, there is a large car turning three feet in-front of him. He doesn't even have time to think about hitting the brakes.

Now an interesting thing is - when Tim first built his bike, four years ago, for our cross country bicycle trip, he decided to spend the extra money on rims that are made for jumps. He had, until now, never really noticed a difference. His bike punched the front of the car, the rims didn't even budge, the bike frame however, snapped in several places. Tim's leg was cut down his inner thigh from the angel-bars, he hit shoulder & head first into the windshield - shattering the passenger half. He flipped up and over the side of the car before coming down on the cement.

The guy driving the car ran out asking if Tim was ok. Tim, running on adrenaline and in shock, casually asked the driver if he was ok. The driver said, "I'm not the one who just got hit".


The craziest thing about this story is - this is second time, since I've known Tim, that he has busted a windshield with his head. When we were just out of high school - we were playing a prank on some people, and long story short, we were driving through a field in our friend, Chris's tiny car, when Chris saw a small ditch - he for some reason - punched the gas and not the brakes. I happened to be hanging out the back window with a super-soaker full of pickle juice, but I got myself back in just in time. We hit the ditch hard and came to a dead stop.

Several minutes later, Chris noticed his windshield was splintered on the passenger side. We asked Tim if he hit the window and he said something like, "maybe... my head kinda' hurts a little". We thought he was going to have a concussion, but he was fine.


I think I'll wait till after we finish our mock-bike-trip this June to tell Matt, the producer, any 'getting-hit-by-a-car-on-a-bicycle' stories. I'm sure he's worried enough as it is.