on crashing hard

This morning, bathed in the light of dawn, on my way in to teach yoga, I crashed twice on my bicycle. Although the roads had been largely cleared by the end of last night some of the more dismal alleys and less-frequently-used side roads exhibited broad sheets of ice. With temperatures this morning around 15 degrees Fahrenheit and tons of snow still piled up everywhere I should have known that my path would be slick and that I should slow down while traveling, but this was the first snow-and-freeze of the year and I was rusty. The initial crash occurred in a paved alley a half a block from the town's municipal motor-pool storage shed; I was traveling as fast as I normally do under optimal, ice-free conditions when I lost control of my smog-sled. Although I nearly corrected myself I went down left side first, crashing violently enough that I threw my handlebars out of whack. I hit so hard that I triggered an adrenalin rush that woke up my bowels and gave me the spins for a moment while I used an Allen wrench to move my handlebars back to their proper, perpendicular position. Not a full city block later I fell again, next to an elementary school, while trying to figure out what the rubbing sound was I was hearing, going down on my right side not so hard as to require additional fixing but bruising my right ankle and knee. From then on, for the next three blocks, I took it really, really slowly, creeping along the streets and treating every patch of road as suspect. Upon reaching my destination I found my entry barred because the metal box where the key is stored was frozen shut. There's no rush and much less reason, to be bandaged up this season. Mahalo.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥