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Glare

by Rob Dinsmoor

I felt as if I were getting away with something and that I might ultimately have to pay for it. 

It was, after all, January in Massachusetts and it should have been downright frigid out, but it wasn’t.  It was in the high 60s, and so I decided to ride my bike to and from the gym to take advantage of the sun and balmy air.  And yet, something was amiss.  Very amiss.

As the North Shore grew increasingly populated and congested with traffic, I learned to trust my instincts while on the road.  I would watch drivers to see whether they made eye contact, or whether they were on the cell phones, dealing with kids in the back seat, borderline comatose, or otherwise distracted.  I even learned to forecast pretty accurately when they were about to turn—whether their blinkers were on due to absent-mindedness or whether they were really planning to turn.  My mind and body were on hyper-vigilance mode.

It was only 3:30 in the afternoon but the sun wasn’t where it was supposed to be.  Not on a beautiful summer day as this one seemed to be.  It was low on the horizon.  In fact, in another hour or so, it would be dusk.  As for right now, it was shining directly from the West, making my eyes squint to look at it.

I never liked to ride my bike when there was this much glare, because it obscured drivers’ vision and made bicycling especially dangerous.  I always made it a point to get home before the sun started to get low.  Fortunately, I figured that, since I was going East, I would be okay.  The sun was behind me, and behind the cars that were on my side of the road, so they would be less likely to get blinded and skim me off into a ditch.

But what about--?

Before I could really finish that thought, it materialized.  Without warning, an oncoming car made a left turn right in front of me.  I hit the brakes hard, almost hard enough to go over the handlebars, but the car and I came very, very close to each other-- so close I could see the woman in the passenger’s seat gape at me and scream.

The car continued its left turn into the driveway of an assisted living facility to my right.  I could see activity inside the car as it stopped and started fitfully on its way down the driveway.  For a moment, I just stood there on my bike, dumbstruck, but then I realized I was in the middle of my lane, and pulled over to the side of the road.  The car, a big white SUV, was stopped dead in the driveway.

I was shaking but took deep breaths to calm myself down.  Yes, I had come very close to getting hit, to getting permanently maimed or killed.  The danger was now past.  I looked over at the car again to see whether anyone was getting out.  No one was, but the man who was driving appeared to be arguing with the woman in the passenger’s seat.  Did I need to talk with the man?  If so, what did I hope to accomplish?  The man already knew he had made an error by not looking carefully enough before making the left turn.  If he were likely to forget, the woman would undoubtedly remind him.

With a neutral face, I raised my hand as a kind of acknowledgment that I was okay, and rode on.

Robert Dinsmoor has published hundreds of articles on health and medicine as well as pieces for Games, Paper, National Lampoon, and Nickelodeon Magazine and scripts for Nickelodeon and MTV.  He has written fictive memoirs titled Tales of the Troupe, The Yoga Divas and Other Stories, and You Can Leave Anytime and co-authored a children’s picture book called Does Dixie Like Me?  His short story “Kundalini Yoga at the YMCA” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.