Close call

I had a close call Thursday morning. I was nearly involved in a motorcycle accident. Normally I carpool to work, but on Thursday I had to go by the post office to pick up a new key to my mailbox so I drove separately on my motorcycle. When I left the post office, I wanted to cut across Jollyville Road onto Pavilion Blvd, but there were quite a few cars travelling in both directions at the time so I decided to just mosey down Jollyville and get on Highway 183 at Braker Lane.

Jollyville Road has a middle turn lane separating two lanes of traffic in both directions. I was following a car south in the lefthand lane, probably going 40-45 miles per hour, and saw a large SUV in the turn lane waiting to merge into southbound traffic. At this point I switched over to the righthand lane to make room for it. Up ahead of me I noticed another SUV, I believe a Ford Explorer, stopped on a side street. All of a sudden, the green Explorer started to pull out directly in front of me. It all happend so fast I don't recall if I honked and applied the brakes properly or not, but I know I hit the rear brake pretty hard because the wheel locked up and I fishtailed a few times. I'm not sure how close the Explorer came to hitting me because I was focused on keeping the bike upright and in control. I believe the other SUV on my left saw most of this happening and made some room for me to get by, so I'm pretty thankful for that. Once I was back under control I looked back and threw up the bird while screaming several expletives into my helmet. I was able to regain my composure waiting at the next traffic signal which wasn't too far ahead. Anyway, the whole experience scared the shit out of me and I'm thankful there wasn't any metal to metal or skin to pavement contact.