Celebrated Too Soon

There were still 9 days left of October when I celebrated surviving October....

There was, of course, bike crash #1 in October of 2004.
Then, there was bike crash #2 in October of 2005.

On Halloween, 31st of October of 2006, to break the monotony, I was steps away from a shooting in the annual Castro Halloween Parade.

We were just walking through a thick crowd one minute, then (as I was following D) suddenly I was standing in a little open pocket where a millisecond later, I realized there were several young men who were yelling at each other, about to fight. We just quickly crossed between these two particularly angry men, snarling at each other like animals pace before they attack. Less than five seconds after we were swallowed up again by the crowd, I heard short fire-cracker-like sounds and immediately was pushed on all sides by the collective weight of people hitting the ground for cover. I didn't even know that THAT is what gunshots sounded like. It sounded like firecrackers. And I was lying on Market Street with two people on top of me, all alive - thank god. Then, I got up and tried to crouch-run to the edge of the street into the pocket of a building's entryway. All the short parade barricades, which are linked into each other, had fallen like dominoes in two parallel lines down the middle of the street. Within five minutes, the streets were empty.