If you want to know if I have ever been hit, the answer would be yes.

Being a messenger has it's perks, like people you don't really know asking you the most amazing questions ever while trapped on the elevator with them. One of the perpetual inquiries for the past I dunno 9 years or so is to whether or not have I been hit. I got asked that one just the other day and I quickly remembered the car viper driver Xiomara, a Spanish Mexican American who spoke very little English. I have really been hit only once but is was scary. It was July 22, 2004 on my westbound homeward commute at Reddman and Central Ave. I was riding down the hill of the Centrolian split at around 22mph towards Reddman on my little pink Viner(pronounced-weener) when just before the bank entrance I was passed by a maroon Mazda mini van on my immediate left. As soon as she cleared my wheel she started coming across to the right for the quick dive into the bank without warning style kill the guy on the bike. I was not slowing fast enough as the dark paint came up along side of the sliding door and my left body while I was with her going to the front of her crossing all the way right in to the bank. She obliviously committed sending me to the right hard and accelerating in fear of my life to clear her front which did not happen. Instead her right front tire sucked in my rear wheel causing the bicycle to instantly drop down vertically 18inches and then bottom out on the frame. This caused the same action in my torso and my chest slammed on to the top of my upward turned bullhorn handle bars. As the car viper continued her accelerated turn still oblivious into the parking lot, the bike was then twisted by the turning of the car which raked the bars across my chest until the bar end came to a stop on my sternum and then my left hip slammed into the fender. At that point I was finally thrown free of the bicycle forward and somehow I managed a forward roll that landed me on my back 10-12 feet in front of the van still oncoming. I rolled over, stood up and screamed something that I cannot remember. When she finally stopped the car, I sat back down on the tar and realized I had been cut and was bleeding a little from a deep Nike looking swoosh just above my sternum. My scan reflexes worked again and I also knew I was not injured past the flesh wound so I called off the MEDIC response through the first police officer that arrived less than a few minutes later. A crazy man stopped before the cops got there and was yelling from the drivers seat of his S-10 pickup, " I saw everything, that woman ran him over!". Thanks a lot pal, please tell the cops will ya? Well he did and the black female bullet proof vest wearing officer notated on the report that,"The driver of vehicle 1 had ran over the pedestrian on the bike." Due to that in print Xiomara's insurance company came off with a check for 2,750$ to cover my pain and suffering and the loss off a total bike. Woo-Hoo, it was like trading pain and scary fast fear for a trip to a far away place.
An interesting side note is that my bike ripped a hole in her tire as seen at the 10o'clock position in the above side view of her flattened tire. Another point of interest is that I still have the Nike swoosh in scar like form, it will be around for awhile because it was sort of a deep wound. Maybe I will have it as a reminder with these pictures for life.