So there’s this lake pretty close to our apartment in Wilmington called Greenfield Lake. It’s right in the middle of a residential area, and the city has built a park along parts of it, and a walking/running/cycling track around the whole thing that runs about four miles. Rachel and I both like to ride our bikes there, though it’s been more of an alternate route for me recently. I was feeling alternative yesterday, so I thought I’d ride over to the lake a do a few laps (one of the advantages of living south of the Mason-Dixon Line is I can still ride in shorts in December).
One of the other things about Greenfield Lake and its cycling circuit is that the latter doesn’t exactly go all the way around the former. By that I mean, the lake as some long appendages that the bike route avoids by way of a few wooden bridges. It was on one of these bridges that I took one of the biggest spills I’ve taken on a bike in a long time. I was riding along at a decent speed and came up over this bridge and just as I was about to leave it, BAM, I was down.
And it really happened that fast. There was no slipping, sliding, or skidding, just sheer overwhelming gravity, like a huge hand had reached up and yanked me down. I was just barely conscious of falling and had enough time to form the “O” of “Oh shit,” in my head before I was making out with the tarmac. Well, to say I was making out with it is misleading. This wasn’t really a face-plant; I fell flat on my side.
It took a second or two to realize what happened, and then to understand that I was still stuck with my bike shoes clipped into the pedals. So I sat there and cursed for a little while, then tried to get my shoe out of the clip but to no avail; I couldn’t get the leverage to jerk my foot out while I was lying down. It reminded me a lot of those times when you take a spill skiing and your skis don’t come off, so you’re stuck there upside-down on the hill trying to flip your akimbo skis together while they’re still attached to your boots. It took me a good minute and at least one moment of real panic to realize that I was not trapped but would have to take my shoe off to free myself.
So I did that, got my sock wet, got my other shoe free, and got up, all with a smattering of obscenity. I surveyed the damage. A few scuffs to the bike on the pedal, the crank arm, the horns (thankfully, I landed gearside-up and there was no damage to the derailleurs). The handlebars were out of alignment with the front tire, but that was no biggie. I was dusting myself off and looking for a place to lean the bike so I could inspect myself for damage, when I turned around and saw this sign:
I started to laugh. It had indeed been a wet morning and may have even been drizzling as I was riding. A lot of good that sign did me (plus I was coming from the other direction). Still, it was a nice moment of catharsis. In the end, I didn’t seem to be too badly scuffed up myself, so I did another circuit of the lake and rode home. As it turns out, the pavement did take a bite out of my left flank, but nothing too serious. Oh, and I ripped the outer part of my bike pants. All in all, not too bad.
But as I finished the ride I started thinking about all the other spills I’ve ever taken on a bike. A few recent ones came to mind. The was the time I was riding onto the boardwalk downtown and as I approached the railing over the water I realized that I didn’t have enough time to unclip from the pedals and just ran straight into the railing (I tried to grab on to a nearby historical plaque, but that didn’t work). There were several people around, but no one came to help. They must have thought I was retarded or had done it on purpose like those guys on Jackass.
Then there was the time Adnan and I were riding to Natale’s Pizza on a half-day. We were riding side-by-side (“abreast,” his mother later said, which I thought was hilarious when I was thirteen) and a car went to pass us but cut it way too close and sent me into Adnan to avoid getting hit. Adnan, of course, was not about to let me hitch hike, and we both went flying off the road. Adnan walked around for two weeks thinking, “Jeeze my arm still hurts,” before he went to the hospital and found it was broken.
The only other crash I can remember other than the Crash, was on the first ride in Wilmington where I fell over while at a complete standstill at a stoplight. No witnesses for that one, thankfully.
As for “the Crash,” I was referring to the spill of spills I took at about the age of seven, my first time off training wheels. This was back in New Hampshire, and my dad had just jogged alongside me as I rode up to our cul-de-sac and back down again. As we came in for the home stretch, Dad backed off for the first time, and I started to turn into the driveway.
That driveway in NH was flanked by these sort of drainage-ditch things in the bed of which were all these really pretty and really quite hard white stones. As I turned into the driveway I could feel myself start to lean to the left (so many jokes I can’t fit them all!) toward one of the ditches. Somewhere along the way, I had been instructed to turn into a fall to help correct my balance. Well, I did that and just ended up turning myself into the ditch.
My mom had been filming with the home video camera at the top of the driveway, but she has since erased the tape. Too painful to watch, I guess. I would have liked to have seen it. I don’t remember much of the aftermath except that I hit my elbow and my head pretty good on those white rocks (my turn for a broken arm). My dad broke several traffic laws getting me to the hospital and I remember the doctors had to cut off my favorite t-shirt at the time, a Notre Dame shirt with a giant Fightin’ Irishman on it, since they couldn’t get it off with my broken arm. There followed a neon-green cast and a few months of very painful physical therapy that put a strain on my relationship with my mother. Really it’s a wonder I ride at all today.
Oh yeah, and last weekend I was on the same plane as the Harlem Globetrotters on my way back from visiting NJ for Thanksgiving.
