There are just some days when you feel like you ought to have just stayed the hell in bed.
I thought today was going to be one of those days for me. It didn't start out that well.
On the bike ride into work, I had to stop to tighten the bar that holds my left pedal to the gear sprocket thingie. It keeps coming loose, and every time I ride the bike I have to stop a couple times to tighten it up again. After I got it tightened and had embarked on my journey across the Manhattan Bridge, some guy came out of nowhere and nearly plowed into me. The effort to avoid him caused a crack up in which I was the sole participant and my bike was, by far, the biggest casualty.
When all was said and done, my pedal had dug a furrow out of my lower right calf, my back brakes weren't working, and my handlebars were out of alignment with the front tire. And I had to retighten the pedal post.
Actually, I'd feel very manly and handy about figuring out how to fix the brakes were it not for the fact that the answer was pretty much the simplest thing ever but it took me nearly 25 minutes of fiddling to figure out how to do it.
Anyway, despite that inauspicious start, I got everything fixed up, got on my way and the remainder of my day went pretty well. 'Twas busy and non-stop, but not particularly unpleasant.
It was on the ride home, however, that I discovered that someone was living under a bad moon, it just wasn't me.
As I got to the end of 59th Street, and made to turn south onto the west side bike path, a guy on a ten speed behind me decided I was going too slow and decided to zoom past me and cut across me to enter the bike path on an angle. This approach would have worked out were it not for a problem that often comes up at the 59th Street entrance to the bike path.
The quality of the bike path sorta drops off precipitously north of 59th, so there's a stop sign for traffic in both directions, sight lines being poor and the path suddenly narrower.
Thus, Speedy Gonzales didn't see the couple approaching from the south; a couple – like most people who bike the path – that didn't have any intention of stopping at the stop sign.
I bike that path often, and I know that nobody bothers to stop at those signs. That's why I was going slow.
So Speedy cut in front of me and nearly plowed into the young woman, who was in the lead. She swerved into my path, I swerved out of her way, and Speedy plowed, nearly at full speed, into the young woman's boyfriend.
I've never seen anything quite so violent up quite so close. Before I knew it there was a tangle of limbs and bodies and bicycles, and the two guys were lying in a heap on the ground. One of them kept shouting, "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" Over and over again. I hopped off my bike and rushed over to them, and had to disentangle the poor guy who'd been hit from his bicycle before he could be picked up off the ground.
Amazingly, neither of them was seriously hurt. The guy who'd gotten plowed into had a few scrapes, but Speedy ended up with a nasty gash over his eye, a smashed nose and road burn all up and and down his arm. The cut over his eye didn't seem to want to stop bleeding. Worse, his front wheel was bent into a wide u-shape. He clearly wasn't going anywhere in a hurry after that.
The couple eventually went on their way, and Speedy was left to carry his bike to the nearest subway station, which I can tell you was nearly a mile away. Uphill.
The worst part, from my point of view, was that Speedy was obviously embarrassed and angry at himself, and just wanted to make sure everyone else was alright so he could get out of there. He used his water bottle to clean the blood off his face and his arms, then stripped off his shirt to check for scrapes elsewhere. And Speedy was totally hot. Like, Hot Nerd™ hot. Under different circumstances, if he weren't in such a hurry to escape and nurse his wounded ego, I'd have been all, "So, can I get your number? That may be a concussion, maybe you shouldn't be alone right now."
Bow chicka bow bow.
Leave it to me to find a prurient thought in the midst of tragedy.
I thought today was going to be one of those days for me. It didn't start out that well.
On the bike ride into work, I had to stop to tighten the bar that holds my left pedal to the gear sprocket thingie. It keeps coming loose, and every time I ride the bike I have to stop a couple times to tighten it up again. After I got it tightened and had embarked on my journey across the Manhattan Bridge, some guy came out of nowhere and nearly plowed into me. The effort to avoid him caused a crack up in which I was the sole participant and my bike was, by far, the biggest casualty.
When all was said and done, my pedal had dug a furrow out of my lower right calf, my back brakes weren't working, and my handlebars were out of alignment with the front tire. And I had to retighten the pedal post.
Actually, I'd feel very manly and handy about figuring out how to fix the brakes were it not for the fact that the answer was pretty much the simplest thing ever but it took me nearly 25 minutes of fiddling to figure out how to do it.
Anyway, despite that inauspicious start, I got everything fixed up, got on my way and the remainder of my day went pretty well. 'Twas busy and non-stop, but not particularly unpleasant.
It was on the ride home, however, that I discovered that someone was living under a bad moon, it just wasn't me.
As I got to the end of 59th Street, and made to turn south onto the west side bike path, a guy on a ten speed behind me decided I was going too slow and decided to zoom past me and cut across me to enter the bike path on an angle. This approach would have worked out were it not for a problem that often comes up at the 59th Street entrance to the bike path.
The quality of the bike path sorta drops off precipitously north of 59th, so there's a stop sign for traffic in both directions, sight lines being poor and the path suddenly narrower.
Thus, Speedy Gonzales didn't see the couple approaching from the south; a couple – like most people who bike the path – that didn't have any intention of stopping at the stop sign.
I bike that path often, and I know that nobody bothers to stop at those signs. That's why I was going slow.
So Speedy cut in front of me and nearly plowed into the young woman, who was in the lead. She swerved into my path, I swerved out of her way, and Speedy plowed, nearly at full speed, into the young woman's boyfriend.
I've never seen anything quite so violent up quite so close. Before I knew it there was a tangle of limbs and bodies and bicycles, and the two guys were lying in a heap on the ground. One of them kept shouting, "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" Over and over again. I hopped off my bike and rushed over to them, and had to disentangle the poor guy who'd been hit from his bicycle before he could be picked up off the ground.Amazingly, neither of them was seriously hurt. The guy who'd gotten plowed into had a few scrapes, but Speedy ended up with a nasty gash over his eye, a smashed nose and road burn all up and and down his arm. The cut over his eye didn't seem to want to stop bleeding. Worse, his front wheel was bent into a wide u-shape. He clearly wasn't going anywhere in a hurry after that.
The couple eventually went on their way, and Speedy was left to carry his bike to the nearest subway station, which I can tell you was nearly a mile away. Uphill.
The worst part, from my point of view, was that Speedy was obviously embarrassed and angry at himself, and just wanted to make sure everyone else was alright so he could get out of there. He used his water bottle to clean the blood off his face and his arms, then stripped off his shirt to check for scrapes elsewhere. And Speedy was totally hot. Like, Hot Nerd™ hot. Under different circumstances, if he weren't in such a hurry to escape and nurse his wounded ego, I'd have been all, "So, can I get your number? That may be a concussion, maybe you shouldn't be alone right now."
Bow chicka bow bow.
Leave it to me to find a prurient thought in the midst of tragedy.
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