God loves the greenies

Punky got hit by a car while cycling home on Friday evening.

Punky rides a racing bike. It weighs 10 kilos at the most, with spiderweb-thin wheels that let him whizz along at breakneck speeds. Slinky, the fraidycat, would scream her head off if she went at those speeds on that fragile contraption; a bicycle is just two wheels connected with a straight line, after all. And that almost-breaking-an-arm incident has not been forgotten. (The almost-broken arm I can deal with, the pain of some psycho technician trying to break your unbroken arm for a better X-Ray, I can't.)

Punky was doing at about 35km/h when the car hit him, and he bounced off the bonnet, and watched as the car rolled past him, over the back wheel of his bicycle.

Witnesses stopped their cars to help, to send him home to us. It was a little old lady driving, and when she came out of her car, Punky saw that she had a cannula in the back of her hand. We later found out that she lived in a nursing home, and she had just passed a fitness-to-drive test which her insurance company had given her.

By some miracle, Punky landed on his feet, and even though he suffered cuts and bruises, he was all right. God watches out for cyclists and greenies, it seems. Punky still can't figure out how he got off so lightly, given the speeds at which both of them were going and the circumstances of the crash. It would have been too easy for him to go under the wheels of the car. And there would be no Punky sitting opposite me, busily typing away on his Mac and telling me about the email he just got ("100 signs that you were a child of the 80's").

He told the old lady that she should reconsider driving, but she was stubborn and refused to listen. Perhaps it is the notion of losing her independence, what precious little hasn't been taken away from living in a nursing home, which makes her refuse to listen to reason, despite the fact that she nearly killed someone because she simply didn't see him.

We've been trying to spoil Punky rotten since then. Punky: "It's like it's my birthday! I should get hit by cars more often."