CiclaValley collides with Deer on Mulholland

Moments before the deer and I collide.

 

Do you ever think a difference of a second can significantly alter your future?

I do a lot.

Maybe by tying my shoes an extra time or having another look in the mirror changed the time space continuum enough to avoid me getting hit by a car running a red light.

I’ll never know.

Monday morning, I thought about this going back an extra time saying goodbye to my daughter at school or taking a more circuitous route to work to avoid a log jam of cars.

All was going well until fate finally caught up with me.

Riding on Mulholland about a mile east of Laurel Canyon, a deer emerged from the driveway to the left (behind the trash cans)..

 

DeerView

Scene of the crime

 

I was already going into my turn and the driveway was submerged, so this turned into a real bad game of frogger pretty quickly…

Now I don’t know how to read a deer and it clearly doesn’t understand me just as much.

Everything happened so fast, I cannot remember what my thought process was.

Should go hard on the brakes? Is it still thinking about going in front of me? Why is it coming at me? Can I dart around it?

It happened so fast, but I ran into its hind region.

I fell primarily on my left shoulder and further down that side, but my head got in a slight bounce in the end.

The driver behind me stopped concerned about my well-being and amazed at what he just saw.

 

 

 

I’ve gone down enough to give myself a pause before quickly trying to clear things out.

I didn’t feel concussed, although never rule that out this early.

It took me a little while longer to start to accept that something was up with my right shoulder.

My first thought was that it had to be a broken clavicle because that’s what cyclists do, but as the nerves began to calm, I remember seeing those suffering that malady being in much more pain than me.

After taking a breath, I collected my stuff to the other side of the road realizing that my camera stopped operating and was now mounted directly up on my handlebars.

 

Deer0001

 

Unfortunately, the camera was dead and efforts to recover the movie file.

At least give me that!

I went to urgent care and the doc said it was just a sprain that should take a week or two to heal which is a best case scenario.

Off the top off my head, I don’t know anyone that’s been nailed by wildlife like this before, but this did almost happen to me trail running in Will Rogers Park years ago.

Couple that with my innerds attack earlier this year, it’s surprising that non-drivers have been more of a threat to me.

 

 

Let’s just call this taking one for the team as I hope no one else has to experience.

As for taking the extra time to say goodbye to CV Jr.: I have no regrets and I’ll do this time after time.