The stupidest bitch in the world

I do love road trips and I have one coming up that should be fun. A group of elderly writers, at least I think they are elderly, have asked me to do some sort of presentation and I agreed after I asked if they would pay me to come talk. We negotiated and some side deals were worked out. See, in this economy, you have to go to where the money is and right now, the geezers have all the cash.
I also just found out that I have to run back up to New York City, which means I get to mention the Fiat 500 again, and as anyone who reads this blog knows, that means I just made another 25 cents. Then I will be off to the West Coast for two full months of bike riding.
Then it’s back to the blistering heat of Pittsburgh to watch the Pirates attempt a World Series run. I wrote that last part just to see if anyone else is drinking.
I bring all this travel up because I was once again reminded of the fragility of the human body recently when I was riding my bike on a busy road near a local church. I watch for car doors opening by force of habit solely because of the Stupidest Bitch in the World.
Before I met the Stupidest Bitch in the World I had never used the term bitch to describe a woman. In fact, I was so politically correct that if a friend has used the word bitch and I was telling another friend about this friends use of the word, I would say, “so Glen called Lydia a B-word,” unable to actually use the word bitch myself, that is how politically correct I had become.
That was until I met the Stupidest Bitch in the World.
There was a time many years ago, when I was in very good cycling shape and I was very close to fearless, even in city traffic. In retrospect I may have been just a shade close to insane, because I would ride through the streets of Seattle at a very high rate of speed, almost hyper aware of everything that was happening around me. Nothing would be missed, the woman leaving the store on my right, 100 yards ahead of me, not paying attention, she was heading toward the road, so I would note that she would probably step off the sidewalk completely unaware of me and the speed of my cycle in the middle of a warm Spring day. Or the father and his children, skipping happily, he wanting to show them how much he had moved on from the divorce, so happily skipping, never bothering to notice me, shooting past at 23 miles per hour, but I noticed him, and the kids, who came within about 3 feet of my back tire.
Those days, I noticed everything, except the Stupidest Bitch in the World. I was flying down First Avenue, trying my best to make the 1:10 ferry leaving Seattle for Bainbridge Island, my home at the time. I had a young daughter who would be getting off the bus right as I crested the top of the mountain and I would glide down that mountain and meet that bus just like clock work, if I could catch that ferry, so my head was down and my feet were peddling and I was moving down a road cluttered with traffic and shoppers and all the rest of a busy society. It was not a society I was unfamiliar with and I had raced right through it numerous times before. This time, however, the Stupidest Bitch in the World just happened to be parking her fairly new Volkswagon Beetle in a “no parking zone” and with no warning what so ever, she shot her drivers door open, right into the sliver of room that I had carved out between me and the traffic on First Avenue. I missed the door actually opening, as I was taking in the proximity of the bus next to me, thats’ closeness was keeping me right next to that line of parked cars. When her door was opened it gave me no real option, I could lay my bike down immediately and probably be dragged under the buses back tires, or I could just crash my bike, almost at full speed right into her opened door, or god forbid, the Stupidest Bitch in the World could close her door and I would get the edge of the door probably right in my face, oh no, I must have thought in the milliseconds, “not my pretty face.”
Instead, the Stupidest Bitch in the World has flung the door open and then turned to become preoccupied with something in the passengers seat, just leaving her door hanging open for me to slam into. Which I did, at about 20 miles per hour. Now, if her car had been a truck, or a better built American type car, but lucky for me, I slammed into some German piece of shit and the door kind of shimmied and the Stupidest Bitch in the World shit her pants and my body sort of melted into the shape of a drivers side Volkswagon Beetle and my whole world stopped there for a second. Then, just like that the Stupidest Bitch in the World was towering over me, yelling because I had the audacity to have slammed into her illegally parked car and her equally illegal opened door.
“Oh hell no!” my brain said and I jumped to my feet, grabbed my non-broken bike and remembered that if I hightailed it away from the Stupidest Bitch in the World and made it to the ferry, I could still manage to meet my youngest daughter who would be giggling as she jumped off her bus and expecting her daddy to come flying down the hill on his super fast cycle. I did too.
Sometime later that night I think I had bruises all over my body. That broken down and beaten up cycle is still with me, leaning against a wall about 5 feet away from me right now. My giggling young daughter is out in the world, somewhere on the streets of Paris, probably happily having fun and the Stupidest Bitch in the World, I have no idea, I never ran into her again.