I had a small brush with death last week involving my speeding bicycle, a suddenly opened car door and a trailing SUV. It could have been bad. Real bad.

As you may have deduced, a commuter on the side of the street popped his door open while I was biking down the busy road. Scared shitless, I turned the handlebars to the left to avoid ramming the door face-first at 20 mph but, unbeknown to me, there was an SUV closely trailing behind my bike.

The next few moments seemed to go by in slow-motion; my right handlebar clipped the car door, which turned the wheel perpendicular to the upcoming intersection and nearly threw me overtop the bike. While I was struggling to stay on, the SUV's tires squealed behind me. A fall from the bike meant a fall from this mortal coil.

Thankfully the impact of the car door, which threw my right arm off the handlebar and turned the wheel sideways, caused me to make a B-line for the sidewalk. The bike snuck in between two other parked cars and, lying across the handlebars like a surfer paddling toward a wave, I somehow reached safety.

A woman on the sidewalk gawked.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"I'm fucking pissed," I replied. "Motherfucker son of a bitch asshole cocksucker motherfucker." (Or something similar, the adrenaline was really pumping.)

The door-opener was long gone, so I pedaled home. And then it was back to work. Today was the first time I thought about being potentially splattered across the pavement. It wouldn't be a real good look for me.

So no more street riding for Sereno. I'm sticking to the bike path on the beach.