Lucy, I'm Home

Two more firsts in my relationship with the Stella: today I went on Lake Shore Drive and yesterday I crashed into some guy.
Here's what led up to the latter event: I had gone to bed around 1:30 in the morning and had to wake up at 6:30 in order to have enough time to shower and eat a cup of yogurt before work at 7:15. Unusually, I was three minutes early to work! I was on all day, as far as a barista can be "on." For sustenance, I drank a large bottle of the Naked Green Machine juice, ate two Clif bars, and drank lots of coffee.
My shift ended at 4, at which time I filled my bowl of ramen with hot water and walking into the scorching heat (it was hot enough for a safety advisory to be issued until 9 o'clock that evening). I enjoyed my hot soup outside with Tony (the guy who drives a 750 CC Honda) and talked biking. I showed him how a manual scooter works and he was impressed. He told me I could take his bike around the block once I get my M-Class license.
After 30 or 40 minutes, I headed down to Bryn Mawr to walk the Honda Elite to ScooterWorks. Well, that's not exactly what happened: first I called my mom and told her it was impossibly hot and that walking 3+miles (half of which while maneuvering a dead scooter) was out of the question. She understood and suggested I come back at night. I wasn't thrilled with her idea, plus I decided that I give myself too many breaks. Then I went to Bryn Mawr and Broadway.
The walk to ScooterWorks mildly sucked but it wasn't so bad-- I had a bottle of Arnold Palmer, which always makes life easier.
I was tired when I got back to the Stella. I had to head to my mom's for dinner and Hank wanted to play catch beforehand. The route I had in my head was simple: Broadway to Clark to Wrightwood. This went as planned until the Broadway/Halsted fork at Grace. I was about eight cars back when the light turned green, which gave me sufficient time to make it through the intersection. I was going maybe 30 MPH when it happened; I think I was in 3rd gear: a biker came out of Grace, ignoring his red light. I meant to stay on Broadway, which would have forgiven the biker's breaking of the rules-- I didn't, though. This mistake that I made had no legal or fault-assuming repercussions on the incident as it is just as well that I go straight as opposed to taking the slight left. So I'm going straight and this dude comes out of nowhere. I wave at him, the kind of wave that says, "Get the hell outta here!" He doesn't, and, if I remember correctly, he was grinning the whole way (he may have been drunk). I grab the break (and the clutch, too, accidentally) and try to avoid him. His course, versus mine, made him nearly impossible to avoid. His front tire collides with the back of the Stella and we both go down. Here's where it seems to get interesting: when the Stella hits the ground, I accidentally rev the throttle (in the chaos, the gear has gone into 4th).
My brain ran a quick systems diagnostic of my body, decided everything was okay (but that my shins are lightly scraped) and I checked for the other guy. I had looked back as the throttle had accidentally revved and seen the guy's face just inches from the back tire. As I'm standing up, I see a dark puddle of red on the pavement. Immediately, the vision of seeing red while swimming in the ocean moments before noticing a shark gnawing on my legs passes through my mind. That vision never occurred but the thought troubled me for a time while I was a freshman in high school. Anyhow, My heart leaps at the thought that I had just killed some red-light-running biker asshole. That worry was quickly dispelled when I saw that it was oil that had spilled out of my engine and that the guy seemed to be okay. We both jumped up, I shook his hand in recognition of understanding that it was an accident, and he took off.
I spent the next 20 minutes decompressing and looking for the cap to my oil intake. A wise old Latino man who was missing his two front teeth (but had given up searching) helped me out as we recapitulated what had happened from our differing perspectives. He said I had the light and that I was lucky for having a helmet (the other guy wasn't wearing one). We couldn't find the cap, even after enlisting the help of a hobo.
When I decided that I was ready, I strapped on my helmet, hopped on, and rode away-- about 10 feet. The wheel had been bent and was no longer true to the handlebars. I called Will and got instructions on how to bend it back. I had no luck, though, so I decided I'd walk it to my mom's. A block or two down, I decided I had had enough of walking scooters places, so I tried bending it again. Turns out I had been bracing the wrong part of the wheel. I tried a new way and it worked. So I rode home.
And that was that. Everyone appreciated the pool-of-blood part of my story.
Time to close up shop.