One year anniversary of getting KO by an old lady.

It’s an easy date to remember: smack in the middle of the year. I scurried away from the bike shop around 10am to get a donut from the coffee shop to celebrate. Fifteen minutes after finishing my donut, I come into the lunchroom to wash a handful of mini cucumbers and find a box of donuts, free for all, on the table.

I was encouraged to have a second donut. I’d lost interest at that point and chomped down on my mini cucumbers in front of that box of donuts with a sense of superiority about my dietary choices.

ICBC is our province’s disgraced vehicle insurance company. It’s provincially funded, so we have only one choice when it comes to auto insurance. I say disgraced because I hardly know anybody who has anything positive to say about them. I may be the only person I know who has had something positive to say about them: the claims specialist I had for the coverage of my physical injuries was prompt, helpful, and clear.

I got assigned a second claims specialist for property damage coverage. This person has embodied all the worst descriptions I’ve heard about individuals working at ICBC. This person was already the third person to take over my case.

I kept track of the days I sent an email and when I received an email from each agent.

Emails sent to agent #1 after they sent me the initial email on 09/07/24:

09/07/24: I received a same-day response saying they’d be in touch.
25/07/24
17/08/24

Emails sent to agent #2:
30/08/24
11/09/24
17/19/24

Both responses were Out of Office emails.

Emails sent to agent #3:
10/08/24: Responded over a month later, stating they were still in the process of resolving the claim and would reach out once they had an update.
27/09/24
24/11/24
23/01/25
30/01/25
27/02/25
23/03/25
05/04/25

Every email I sent to agent #3 was brief and to the point: “I’m following up: what information are you still looking for?” I wasn’t expecting a resolution; I wanted an update.

I sent the above timeline to ICBC’s general email account. I got a response explaining that agent #3 was on vacation. Again.

I received these out of office emails in my general inbox. Even my spam folder had nothing but spam emails in French and newsletters from a yoga studio I visited once ten years ago, whose “unsubscribe” link doesn’t work.

Last Wednesday, agent #4 jumped into the mix. Here is the gist of their email:

“Hello! Hope you’re having a great day! Based on our findings you are 100% liable because you were merging onto the road!”

IT TOOK THEM A YEAR TO COME UP WITH THIS INSANE THEORY?!

Here’s the road I merged on when I got hit:

Incidentally, there’s a bus on the line separating the bike lane. So, that was my merge: into the bike lane.

Agent #4 was quick to respond to my email when I pointed out that there was a painted bike lane. They explained that because there were no independent witnesses and neither the driver nor I admitted to crossing the line, the law defaults to the existing vehicle having the right of way.

How the devil did it take fourteen emails (sixteen if you count the timeline emails I sent to the general account) and almost a year to come up with that answer?

These people got paid while I worked for free!

I’ve avoided riding on that side of the bridge since the accident. I have been riding less frequently. Every time I go on a solo ride, I don’t venture far from home and share my location on Google with someone, usually my roomie. I ride with the uncomfortable knowledge that a too-large percentage of seniors who should have their licenses taken away are sharing these roads with me.

Before receiving the email from that cheerful ICBC twerp, I spotted two packages of folded-up pink Panaracer tires on the hold shelf a few metres in front of my repair stand. Limited Edition tires. Do I need them? No. Do I want them? Yes. Do I have them?

Also yes.

I’d like to see an updated version of the hit MTV show from 2004, Pimp My Ride, with the rides being bicycles. (Or horses? I’d also watch that one.) I don’t have the wizardry required to mount a lactose free soft serve machine in the cockpit.

However, I have the skills to mount an Ikea lighting strip, complete with internally routed wires.

I’m a handylady.

What makes this blog-worthy was my stubborn resolution to get it done that particular day. In this house, we have a Mastercraft socket wrench set, a case of Ikea tools, and assorted bike tools. In other words, we only own manual tools. I overestimated my aptitude for manual tools as a substitution for an impact drill. To make the first hole, I gradually increased the girth of the hardware. For the 8mm hole, I assumed the psyche of a ham-fisted ogre and hammered the end of an 8mm Allen key through the smaller hole, which, up til then, looked reasonably clean. Bits of the laminate cracked and flaked off when the tool erupted through the outside of the cabinet.

The roomie wasn’t home to witness the chaos, so I was able to use crazy glue to reattach the bits of laminate back in place. It took an extra day before I crossed the project off my to do list. I borrowed a drill from work and created the remaining three holes in under ten minutes.

Now that the project has been completed, despite my disrespect to the industrial arts, I can declare it a success. The light nicely illuminates the brown, shrunken grout along the edge of the backsplash. There is more work to be done.

Trust the process. Unless you’re dealing with ICBC.