ten ₱esos

I had my first vehicular accident this afternoon on the way back from Penang Hill. I’d thought that I’d wreck sooner or later amidst the zaniness on the roads here. I thought maybe at night, on a wet, oily road, that I’d have to dodge someone and would lay-down the bike.

This afternoon I was in danger of being banged by a Mercedes-Benz E-class car whose driver didn’t see me ( I suppose), so I swerved my motorbike to avoid being hit, and my handgrip caught a vertical support for the long, yellow sidewalk rails that protect pedestrians, and thus the bike jerked toward the curb and a rail and broke my front fender. I rammed a knee into the edge of the splash guard/spat hard enough to displace it an inch and bruise my knee and scrape skin off it.

I was stunned by being rudely ‘forced’ to the curb, the sudden stop (wham!), and the pain in my knee. Wow! My goodness.

The woman driving the Benz went merrily on her way, and I gathered up my wits and pride, shifted into first gear and eased into traffic, wondering if when I returned to speed I would discover that the bike’s front wheel was unbalanced or out-of-round or my inner tube was deflating. I was glad that the bike and I  hadn’t been hit from the rear while I was stopped diagonally at the curb. Malaysians are adept at swerving.

The bike was functionally okay, as far as I could discern, with no wobbling or instability at speed. I went to a motorcycle dealer/service shop, rocked the bike back onto its service stand, spun the front wheel, and it looked straight. I asked for a new fender, and one was bolted on for me in ten minutes for twenty ringgit — a good deal ($5.41). I pushed the splash guard back into place, and it looked as-new. So all’s well that ends well.

my bike before the accident