Hi Everyone,

On Monday night at around 7:00pm, I got hit by a truck. The truck and I had both stopped at an intersection facing each other. He had no turn signal on, so I starting riding straight through the intersection, believing that he had looked right at me. Unfortunately, he had the sun in his eyes and couldn't see me. He decided to make a left turn and ran right into me. I tried to turn right to get out of his way and pounded my fist on his hood yelling "HEY!" but he kept going. My bike got sucked under the truck (Ford F-250) and I went down. He didn't even realize that he hit me and wouldn't have stopped except that a college student walking on the sidewalk ran out into the street in front of him and screamed "stop"! When he stopped, my 2.5 month old Specialized Ruby Pro (with Campy Record, BTW) was under his rear wheel and the front wheel was about an inch from running over my head.

Surprisingly, I have a lot of bruises, but absolutely no road rash. My helmet saved my head and I had only a few small cuts on my legs and one on my nose. My right knee was hyperextended and I'm on crutches for a couple of days until the swelling goes down. I am sore pretty much everywhere, but all in all, I'm in pretty good shape. My bike, however, is a different story. My LBS freaked out when the bike was taken into the shop yesterday. All the mechanics and staff were standing around it in a circle staring. I finally broke the ice by saying "I think I need new handlebar tape". They told me that there is not one part that can be salvaged and that I'm really lucky not to be hurt any worse. I posted pictures at http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/susieb.../ph//my_photos

The guy's insurance is already offering me a settlement and I'll be paid full replacement value on the bike. Unfortunately, Specialized appears to be out of Ruby Pros in my size.

Susie

p.s. Immediately after as I was laying on the ground with people asking me if I was OK, I turned my head and saw my bike. What did I do? Ignore their questions, crawl towards the back of the truck and scream "MY BIKE" over and over. Everyone's still giving me a hard time about that.