Yesterday, I had issues with culture. Today, all of my energy has been transferred into a complete and total hatred for TAXIS!

That's right, those yellow cars that always seem to be in abundance when you don't need them, but never want to pick you up when you've got somewhere to be in 10 minutes because as usual you didn't heed your father's advice to always leave early, so that you never have to be in a hurry.

What has sparked my ire this time? Well I'm sure that you'd be mad too if you were happily speeding along on your bike, carefully watching traffic when the taxi next to you decided that he needed to defy physics by attempting to make 2 or more objects occupy the same space at the same time (i.e. merge into you and send you careening to the ground). Yep, that's right, I'm earning my stripes as a New York cyclist. Today for the first time, I introduced myself to the asphalt. It wasn't as nice to me as I was to it.

The beauty of it all, is that as I picked myself up and dusted myself off, after having left a 5 foot long stripe of isotopic's outer layers on the road, the cabbie immediately leaned out of his window as he quickly accellerated away, looked back at me and screamed "BE CAREFUL!"

Oh, sure. I'll try to do that!

Well, I am more or less in one piece. I finished my errands, thanked the universe for leaving my bike more or less unharmed, came home and sat safely on my roof in the glorious spring sun for a little while.

I took a few things with me out of this experience.

1. Yellow paint on my handlebar where I scraped and dented his rear quarter fender panel.
2. The vibrant feeling of being alive that only comes from high impact situations.
3. The realization that you really should have some band-aids around the house, just in case (another thing that I didn't listen to dear old dad about).