I sort of remember times when I used to bike the fifty minutes home from downtown at one in the morning, when I lived in the west end.
It seems absurd now. I would bike along the pitch black bike path which followed the parkway, and the only light would come from cars approaching me, which would both illuminate the path and blind me terribly at the same time. Honestly, if anyone happened to have been biking in my lane going the wrong way on those paths, a horrific collision would have ensued and we would all have cried ourselves to sleep on an ignoble bed of Nepean sod.
How did I manage to not be afraid of my absurd reckless blind-riding? The thought hardly occurred to me that someone might be walking along those paths at that hour, especially likely since they go along the edge of many of the shallow-west-end neighborhoods.
My friend and I were biking along similarly styled paths this past summer, and though I had both lights and helmet, she had neither. At the last second a man was illuminated coming 'round the bend at high speed in her (his) lane. We were foolishly riding side-by-side on this two-lane bike path.
I barely had time to shout aloud when they were swerving in vain, and crashing into each other, and then on the ground in a writhing mass of barely-visible limbs and bike parts and moans of surprise and pain.
How dreadful, and how easily avoidable! Surely this will be a warning to all of you devil-may-care young bucks and buckaroos who roll around on your flat-tired junkers with no helmet and no lights, telling yourselves "I can see any coming cars, what's the problem?"
On that spot there is now a giant statue marking the spot where my friend's innocence died. On its bronze plaque is room for your name.
What'll it be?