When I Was Just a Baby, my Mama Told Me, "Son, Always be a Good Boy, Don't Ever Play With Guns,"

So....

I'm convinced that my bicycle is trying to kill me. I'm afraid that the nickname I gave it last post just won't cover it anymore. King Gnarly is dead. Long live "That Yellow Bastard".

Here's the story:

This morning, I biked to school. I left early with my roommates. We had a midterm today in Exercise Physiology. Our ride to schoo takes us through a research park which only has roundabouts instead of proper intersections. It looks really cool and new. Except that no one in Waterloo understands how to use them. But that's a story for another day.

On this particular morning, I was bicycling along the bicycle lane, 5 fet behind one of my roommates, when I heard the loud grumble of a dump-truck gunning it up behind us. Followed by another. We pul into a roundabout and I veer as close to the right-hand side as I can to get away from the scary trucks. I turn my head to look for my other roommate. She hadn't ridden a bike since grade 3 before we made her start riding again this year, so she's a little shaky. I was worried that a) one of the dump truck might have blown her over or b) she would hve just stopped and waited for the trucks to go by. Nope she was just fine, about 60 feet behind me, just entering the roundabout. I trned back and saw something rushing towards me at great speed. A truck? A fock of seagulls? Another person on their way to school?

None of the above. It was the kerb. Now Yellow Bastard may not look lke much. And that's because he isn't much. If I impacted that kerb, I'd probably survive. However, my testicular fortitude would be greatly diminished (remember the end of my last post). So I swerved and attempted to stay on the road. It worked, for the first 1/3 of the swerve. Then the steering locked. I impacted the kerb at an angle. This is a dramatic recreation of the event.

It wasn't actually that brutal. I certainly did go flying over the handlebars at a decent clip (That Yellow Bastard's brakes don't really work either), but I got lucky for 3 reasons: 1) I misse the road and the sidewalk, I merely ploughed (and you can take that literally) into the grassy boulevard; 2) I finished my flight less than a foot in front of a telephone pole (as opposed to parts of me landing just past it); 3) I was garbed in both my leather bomber jacket and my leather "strangler"/"creepy rapist" gloves due to the crispness of the morning (I was also wearing the scarf that Nora's grandma made me, but it's not pertinent to my crash details). It wasn't all nice, though. That lawn was freshly mown, and my beautiful self was covered in clippings. So what happened? Well, the crash itself has left my memory, but you can be reasonably assured that I got up, grinning sheepishly, glasses hanging from my beard, and uttered something retarded like "haha, whoops"

There was someone walking to school 6 feet away from me. I remember seeing them standig there totally agape (or at least what I understood to be agape without my glasses. The face was more of a flesh-shaped lump with a big black spot covering the lower half). I'm pretty sure that I addressed my remark to this character. Then they turned around and left. Luckily no cars stopped to help me, otherwise I might have flared up and died of embarassment right there...

So then I was coming home from school. I'd parked my bike on the opposite side of the math building than usual for my calculus class. Thriling info, I know, but its important to know because that single event was the cause of my next velocipedic misfortune: It forced me to take a different route than normal back through campus to get to the research park (which led to the street outside the research park, which lead down a hill to my house, etc). This involved going through a walkway between two buildings, one of which was under construction (necessitating the walkway). The walkway was fairly broad, four or five people could walk abreast easily (and they were, slowly), and there was also a grassy patch on the right side which no one was walking on. I figured that it would be an easy choice to weave in and out of pedestrian traffic (which I love to do on campus anyway) and use the grass when I couldn't do anything else. Once I got closer, it became apparent that the grass was pretty much my only option (unless I wanted to get off of my bike and walk. pfft). So I sped up and just prior to entering the walkway I saw a really attractive girl from my program walking out of it. We exchanged smiles and nods and my mind filled with pleasant thoughts until about 1 second after I saw the dip in the ground coming at me.

Now, when I say dip, that's just what I mean. Not a trench, not a hole, a slight dip. The same sort of natural 1 or 2 inch rise or fall in the earth that one sees everywhere when not on asphalt. Just to recap: a slight drop in elevation, no more than 1 or 2 inches, grass covered, no different from the surrounding terrain. Totally harmless. However, once I struck it, things became quite different. I'll swear that the fucker was 8 inches deep. My front tire exploded into it. Exploded? With mud. I drove, full force, into a massive mud-puddle. If I hadn't hit it straight on, I probably would have been thrown from the saddle again. As it stood, I recieved a nice coating of mud halfway to my knee, 100% coverage of the underside of my bike, and an artistic dapling of spots all across the front of my shirt. However, I bit back my curses and pushed on before the ten other people I sprayed with mud had a chance to mob me.

So yeah. We can draw the conclusion that my bike is out for my blood. What's interesting, thought, is the momentary distraction by women that precedes each attack. It knows how I work.


In other news, some of you may have noticed that FORTITUDE has begun commenting here. click the link and enjoy.

Kiersten and MTOD, you've had than your month. Post again if you want back into our glorious organization.