Monday, June 13, 2005

Injury to Insult

Last week, I was riding to work on my most excellent fat guy bike - the Raleigh Retroglide 7. It's smooth. I'm about 4 blocks south of our downtown office and my handle bars began to come loose as I was about to go over a curb. The handle bars turned, but the front tire did not. Next stop, Endo City, population: Matt. The split second that I knew I was going over the handle bars I thought: oh shit; weee -- no hands; this might hurt, separate yourself from the bike; don't stick your arms strait out; in hindsight, Star Wars Episode 3 wasn't a complete shit sandwich; monkeys are funny; Trump University is interesting, funny and sad; here comes the concerete and then -- ugh. It felt like all the air in my lungs rushed out to greet the fine folks at WIC. I tried to get up right away to make sure that I could quickly get out of there bruised ego, shoulder and all. No!!! The Retroglide let me down and the chain was off the sprocket (with my palm bleeding, I'm not going to try and fix the chain a couple blocks from work). So, I'm walking my bike the remaining blocks. When I locked the bike up and took off my helmet (which I purchased two days before) I noticed a big scuff mark on top of the helmet. All of this before work on a Monday. Nothing eases the pain of a bike wreck quite like a grey cube. Last monday my brain was serving a lot of 404 errors, but nobody at work really notices. I just couldn't serve up as many corporate-speak cliches. A week later my chest and shoulder are still stiff, but the bike is fixed -- complete with a new bugle horn. And my brain seems to have rebooted.

The linked picture above is how I think my crash may have looked, if I was in a race with Tim Blake Nelson, I was thinner, and the grassy area was replaced by city buildings.