Went for my first bike ride around 11:30 today. I'd gotten a late start, this morning, and so planned to go out after I picked up my grandson at school around noon. But then he texted that his mom was gonna pick him up and I went ahead with my ride.
I'd been to the bike shop, late yesterday, to have them check an adjustment following their installation of an upgraded shifter and also picked up batteries for my bike computer which, for whatever reason, had quit working at the same time.
So this morning, when I went out on it, I was hopeful that everything would be working as it should, the overall ride and performance enhanced by the new shifters, 24-speed gearing, etc.
Alas, that was not the case, as I completed the ride without feedback from the computer which, even with new batteries in the sending and bar-mounted units, failed to produce accurate speed or distance readings.
So, after my first ride, I parked the bike outside, retrieved the manual for the Cateye Padrone--which is less than 2 years old and wasn't cheap to begin with--and remounted the sending unit on the fork and the computer itself on the handle bar. Then I again reset all the parameters in the computer although I'd already done that when I changed the batteries.
After that, I put my helmet and gloves back on and headed down the shoulder of the road, intending just to circle the block which, on the back side of it, is a less-traveled residential street.
However, about 3 houses down from mine, it was obvious that the computer was still messed up and I turned into one of the driveways intending to do a 180 and ride back up the shoulder facing traffic. Which is something I wouldn't normally do, but traffic was light, it was only a few houses back to my place, so what could go wrong, right?
Well, if you're still with me because, oh, I dunno, it's now a rainy Saturday morning and the car's battery is dead and you can't go anywhere else or you've been wondering, lately, where the hell's the sense in this life--and mistakenly thought you might find it here, allow me to describe what happened next.
Instead of simply hopping off this 27" hybrid with its extended seatpost and rear carrier with bag--which I can barely swing my leg over for a normal dismount (for which I've never, in these sunset years, scored higher than a 7 out of 10)--and, with both feet in full contact with Mother Earth, turning the bike 180 degrees before remounting and riding safely back home, I attempted to turn in the 6-or-so-foot driveway and then, while taking care not to ride into the path of any oncoming cars or trucks, suddenly noticed that the sky was where the ground should've been and vice versa.
And then I landed, left knee, left hip, left elbow and then, inexplicably, painfully, right elbow.
I quickly got up to check the bike to make sure it was OK, and it was. Unlike left knee, left hip, left and right elbows.
The other time this happened to me, my infamous commuting crash near Washington Square following a rainstorm, I did the same thing. Fractured bones in right hand, helmet broken above my right eye, earpiece of cycling glasses embedded in my head next to it, I got up and checked my bike to see if it was OK. (It wasn't.)
And when the neighbor I'd called to come and pick me up, from an electrical supply I'd walked to in the next block, asked me on the way to the ER why, exactly, I'd done that, I didn't have an answer that I thought would make any sense to him. So, I just shrugged and said, "I dunno."
Now, years later, I think I know. And it still might not make any sense, given that our own status, at such a moment, is what determines whether we'll even see the next moment and the next. And the ones after that.
But, when you're out there on that bike, negotiating traffic, defying gravity to stay upright on it, day after day, THAT is what propels you, transports you, carries you from this moment into the next. And the rhythms of those pedal strokes, as much as the contractions of your own heart, are what keep you engaged with and moving through this life.
And so, as I had before, I checked the bike. And then rode it home, lamenting what an idiot I'd been.
Luckily, no broken bones this time and my cycling glasses are OK. Took a couple Ibuprofen, did my second ride, later in the day, and my workout after that. (As expected, I did wake up very sore, the next morning, but 2 more Ibuprofen helped.)
But I am now thinking, more seriously, about the folding bikes I'd been looking at.
They're easier to store, easier to carry, and, most importantly, you're much closer to the ground if anything bad happens. Which, maybe depending on HOW it happens, may be better. (I think this morning it might've been.)
Hope everyone has a good day...
LPK
Dreamwidth
10.15.2021
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